if anyone is married to an indian, then cricket automatically becomes a part of your life.

no, not the insects.

i mean the sport. if you still don't know what i'm talking about, just imagine the mother of baseball on crack. in india its almost closer to being a cult than entertainment. let's just suffice it to say that indians are passionate about their cricket.


and when india plays it's arch rival...pakistan... that just takes the crazy to a whole new level.
especially if it's in the cricket world cup semifinals!

which is what happened today.
which is why i stayed up all night to watch cricket for 9+ hours in a theater with my husband and desi friends!


thank you to india for making it worth my while, and thank you pakistan for playing a truly great game! both sides should be proud.


now we're off to the finals...which india hasn't won since 1983!
i think i should get instant wife points for knowing that... :)

so this past weekend, staining the fence and deck seemed like a good idea.
staining is just like painting, right? yeah maybe...at least what painting must be like in hell!

the deck stain was all worn and splintery, so since that definitely needed done, we just decided to do the fence too while we were at it. sure, why not? one thing i've learned since being a homeowner is that fences are stupid expensive, and we didn't want to have to replace ours anytime soon...even though it's already on the old side. so it's better to just take care of it and squeeze as much life out of it as possible.


i quickly discovered that the difference between staining and painting is that staining requires loooots more wood prep! the first step was stripping. (the wood, not us!) this was like toxic death. we used a chemical instead of a sander, and that stuff was intense! i small splatter flew up and hit my cheek, and burned straight through my skin! fortunately only the deck required stripping since the fence had never been treated... i would have quit right after the deck if the fence had needed it too! the stripping then required scrubbing the old stain off with a rough brush...creating a serious mess!

the next step was just the overall wood prep to kill mildew and get rid of the worn parts of the wood. this required scrubbing both the fence and deck with another chemical.

seriously toxic job. a few brain cells were lost. and my arms are still feeling it.


this pic was taken at about the super low point. crrrrazy rough. we're covered in liquid fence mildewy gunk. some of us more than others...hmmm....

but everything actually looked kind of awesome after this phase. i was half tempted to just call it a day. but then i would have cried in a few months when everything looked funky again.


the wood on the right is how the wood looked all prepped! it's like a miracle! it took years off the fence! (i forgot to take a pic before we started staining though, so just ignore the other part!)

so then we stained. and stained. and stained some more.

but finally...5 days and many sore muscles later, we made it! at least mostly. don't ask me about the neighbor's side that we haven't gotten to yet...i might cry. i'll think about it later when i'm recovered.




i must say that i'm truly happy with the outcome. it's like everything is brand new!
but never again people. never again.
i'm just praying that next time this needs done we'll have fallen into some money and can hire someone to do it. because seriously... i can work hard. i'm a texas girl... but that was rough.

so please admire.
and i'm sorry. i love you... but i won't help you stain yours!

history is cool.

i basically just stumbled across a huge genealogical gold nugget in my family.
and no, i'm not related to oprah. ;)

i still think it's pretty awesome though...

but first, part the of awesomeness of this is the way that i found out.
as i mentioned previously, i've kind of been on this genealogy kick lately. i don't really know what i'm doing, but it's been fun to dabble in.

since my dad and aunt had traced back our family pretty far on some lines, i basically decided to cheat a little. i figured on the lines that go the furthest back, there would more likely be some research already done out there...since there would be a bigger pool of descendants to work with.

so i started searching around for the name of one of our further back ancestors.
william capps. born in 1724. my 7th great grandfather.

that's all we really knew about him...except for that his son was also named william capps (my 6th great grandpa), and he was married to a zilpha bulls.

when i searched these names i ran across the title of a book:
William Capps of Jamestown, VA, his Johnston Co., NC Descendants, and his Bulls and Rains Kin

Capps? Bulls? That all sounded familiar.

so i went to my local library to see if i could get an interlibrary loan or something for that book.
no dice. apparently libraries won't loan out genealogical materials.

but i got my library to give me a list of the libraries in the US that did carry the book...
there were only like 4...and they were all in NC, VA, or DC. not cool.

so i thought maybe at least i could get a librarian somewhere to check in the index of the book for me so that i could see if it was something worth tracking down.

i randomly called the first library on the list.
i had them transfer me to the genealogy department, where i gave the librarian all the info i had. he was really helpful, and he said he'd look into it and call me back to let me know if the book had any of my ancestors listed in it.

that was a couple weeks ago. fast forward to today.

i spoke to the library again.
the librarian of the genealogy department happened to have the last name Rains. he told me he had some good news for me. the book was indeed about my family, and it was also about his! we were related!

how crazy is that?! what a small world.
for me it filled in so many missing gaps of a mystery, and apparently it did for him as well!

so, to tell you a bit about our ancestor, we've finally traced back our first immigrant on that line of the family!

william capps, born in 1575 in norwich, england, was one of the original jamestown colonists. he was on the ship, the sea venture, which ship wrecked in bermuda on it's way to virginia. that shipwreck was actually the inspiration of shakespeare's play, "The Tempest".


they rebuilt the wreckage from the ship into two smaller ships after several months in bermuda, and finally made their way to jamestown... where he was on the first virginia council, and traveled back and forth from england with a message from king james!

ironically, 160 years later, his namesake and descendant would fight in the american revolution to be free of the british government.

history is pretty cool.
especially when it becomes personal.

so now i'm inspired to unravel more family stories. the irish side, the german side, the native american side, and who knows what else there is to discover!

ok, so remember a couple months ago when i posted about my brother planning to make me a headboard?!

well, that headboard is now living behind my bed!


for my birthday, my lil bro said he would make a headboard for me out of an old door from our family home.


i love old doors. they certainly dont make them like they used to. this one is probably 50 years old, and there isn't a single nail in it. the door is just pieces of wood locked in perfectly together to make the panels.

anyways. i love it! it's such a special gift!

and to make things even more awesome, he added shelves and back lighting!!



that solves my night stand issues! since our bed fits right in between two windows, there's really been no place for a nightstand with out blocking something. so alas, we have gone without...

and the result has usually been piles of books on the floor, and junk getting lost in the abyss under our bed...or getting dragged under there and destroyed by the under-the-bed monster...aka bindi.

oh, and i just have to brag for a second...the back lighting has 3 levels of brightness that is activated by touch! and guess what we touch to turn it on? the old door hinges! my bro is not only handy, but he's also smart!


and let me just tell you...that back lighting sets an awesome mood in there! my crappy cell phone pics don't do it justice...


so now that i have my headboard, i'm thinking again what kind of art or decor to use to fill in the blank space over the bed. the previous stuff we had there just looks too dinky now next to the headboard.

also, the headboard sticks out about a foot from the wall since it has the shelves and lighting and all back there, so i'm trying to think of multi-dimensional solutions to fill the space as well.

for the moment though i have a few moorish lanterns just hanging there. not sure if they'll stay or not, but i got a super crazy steal on them for $1 each, so that made them look pretty good to me for now!


i had another idea though that may be just really stupid, or it may be totally awesome...that's how most of my decorating ideas usually are it seems. but what if we put a long narrow planter back there against the wall and grew some tall indoor bamboo?? too crazy?? too creepy?

hmmm...i'm open to suggestions.
but anyways...thank you lil' bro! i love you!

i've been on this weird genealogy kick lately.

i've always been a little fascinated with history...and since genealogy is like history about myself, it's doubly awesome. :P

my dad and aunt have did a lot of family research. i remember as a kid going to libraries with my dad and finding ways to entertain myself while he looked through old library newspapers and documents on microfiche. at that point i didn't really see the appeal.


but along with the library of my dad's books that i recently inherited, there were also some family history books that i've been looking through when i can find a spare moment.

combine that with getting hooked on who do you think you are, and i think i'm officially becoming a genealogy nerd.

so far some branches of my family have been traced back to the 1600s...but not to countries of origin...though it looks like i'm a typical american mutt. lot's of german, irish, english, a bit of french, a bit of native american, etc... and who knows what else!


i've been trying to get shomik to look into his family background too...but he doesn't see the point. even though he's not as mutsy as me, you still never know what you'll find!

there aren't as good of records in india, but shomik's family all lived in the same house together in west bengal for about 200 years, so that's a start.

i think maybe the main reason genealogy fascinates me is because i'm intrigued by the spirit of adventure.

i admire people like my husband even today who leave their home land in search of better opportunity...that takes guts.

but i can't even imagine the courage it must have taken hundreds of years ago. before skype, photographs, and airplanes. when you didn't even know if you would reach your destination alive, or ever see your family again.

honestly, i don't know if i could have done it. i would have needed a very strong reason.
maybe they did have very strong reasons? i guess i just want to know what those reasons were.

since i've been talking about my mutsy dog this week, i just thought i'd take the opportunity to share about some dogs that really stole my heart on our trip to india.

the indian street dogs. or pi dogs.
pi being short for pariah. pariah meaning outcast.

by their name, you can tell that not many people take them in as cuddly house pets. but the streets of mumbai are filled with them. scrappy little dogs who clean up after society.

these dogs are 10xs smarter than any dog that i know. the can cross indian street traffic better than i can! they may be smarter than me. i've literally seen them look both ways and weave the traffic like frogger. it must be due to generations of natural selection.

they stay out of peoples way...just lurking to find some trash to eat, or a shady spot to sleep.
many of these dogs have seen a lot of abuse. they cower if you reach out your hand to them.

however, i also found them to be some of the sweetest and most gentle dogs i've ever met.
i would freak out my inlaws in india by trying to pet every street dog that i saw! most of them, even though they were wary in the beginning, would be so happy for affection once they learned that i was their friend.


so my husband and i decided that we're going to be advocates for these dogs. there are probably billions of these sweet and intelligent street dogs in india, yet no one wants to adopt them. if people get dogs there, they will usually import a pomeranian or some kind of foreign breed. and most of those breeds are not at all suited for life in the indian subcontinent like the pi dog.

pi dogs are hardy. and cute. and smart.

so anyways, that's my two cents on that issue. if you live in india, please adopt a pi dog. even in the US, muts are awesome people.

i would say that the pi dog of the USA these days is probably the pit bull. of course they don't roam the streets here, but they're kind of the social dog outcast. people have bred them for the wrong reasons, and given them a bad rep. if you go to an animal shelter, the majority of the muts you see look like they have a bit of pit mixed in.

bindi is kind of a social outcast mix. there's no way of knowing her true ancestry, but to me she looks like a mix of pit and pi dog. but i'm telling you, even though she is the biggest and strongest, she is also the sweetest and gentlest natured of all of our dogs.


with her surgery and being in pain this week, it's really had me thinking about God.

weird and random? yes, maybe. that's how my mind works.

i was reading a book last year though by one of my favorite authors. cs lewis. he was talking about the problem of pain...on how God can allow it. he said (in a much more eloquent way) that maybe sometimes it's like when you take your pet to the vet...

you know that the pain is going to make your dog better. the pain will lead to it's healing. but there's no way you can tell your dog that. there's no way that they would understand. all they can know is the pain that they're feeling now. that something horrible is happening to them.
all they can do is trust you.

but i still feel awful seeing my pet in pain...pain that it appears that i'm the cause of....even if it's for their own good. i can't explain it to them. it makes me wonder if God ever feels the same way.

or what if God made us responsible for these creatures to give us some kind of window of understanding...to try to explain these things to us in just some small way?

who knew how bad a vet could botch a spay?
well, unfortunately we found out. and so did bindi.

bindi is the pup that we found, and fostered, and then ended up keeping for ourselves. she's a bundle of mutsy energy and fun.
but not so much today.

she was spayed more than a year ago, when she was just a 6 month old pup. but then a few months later, she went into heat!

i asked our vet about it (not the same vet who spayed her), and he said that a small piece of her ovary was probably missed in the spay, which releases enough hormones for your dog to have a heat, even if they can't get pregnant.

so yeah, each heat cycle is messy. blood drops everywhere. gross.
but if bindi couldn't get preggo, then we didn't see the mess as good enough a reason to have her put under again and go through all that. and a heat only comes twice a year anyhow.

well, at least that's how we felt...until she had a false pregnancy.
bindi basically thought she was the mama of four squeaky toys and a bone for a couple weeks. she could go no where without them, and would groom them and talk to them. it was really adorable and sad at the same time.


so we called the animal hospital who did the spay.

they told us that the vet who had done the operation was no longer with them *ahem*, but that next time bindi went into heat to bring her in. if there was a small piece of ovarian tissue left in there, then during the heat would be the most likely time to find it since it would be swollen.

so...of course bindi started her heat this time during icemaggedon.
the vet was closed all last week, but we were able to get her in first thing yesterday.

a normal spay incision is 1-2 inches, but since they didn't know where a piece of ovary might be floating around, so they had to make a 7-8 inch incision to do an exploratory surgery.

what they found made me seriously question the sobriety of the original operating vet.

they found half her uterus, plus both her ovaries!

i cannot imagine how someone could take out half a uterus and call it a day! missing a small piece of ovary is something i could maybe understand, but not this!

anyways, bindi is hopefully all taken care of now. the animal hospital is of course covering all the expenses...i think they're eager to smooth things over.


poor baby. seeing her down makes me so sad.
our dogs are like a part of our family. seriously our furbabies.
i imagine someone will get extra spoiled this week.