I know I have some unfinished business to blog about but guess what!!! Today is a big news day! So the other stuff will have to wait while I fill you in on the latest installment of OUR NEW WINDOWS!!!!!

Remember how the window fell out in the middle of the night more than a month ago? We’ve been living with a carefully taped up plastic tarp over that window all this time and it has been FRIGID!!!

We got used to it though. We’ve been trudging around the house in sweats and socks and a hoodies in the early mornings and night. I put an extra blanket on my shoulders if I sat on the couch near the window. And the noise, well what difference does it make? We live on the highway. You can’t hear yourself think for all the harleys, sirens, leaf blowers, wheezing buses, and that pesky noisy air conditioner on the roof of the restaurant in front of us anyway. It’s just part of urban living.

WELL NOT ANYMORE!!!! It is as peaceful as a cottage in the country here now!

I’m sitting by the window and I can see the cars going by on the highway out of my peripheral vision. I see them whizzing past but I do not hear them! I hear nothing! It’s soooooo weird. You know what I hear instead? Crickets. The crickets living in our house are putting on quite a concert. I guess I never really noticed them before because the constant buzz of road noise blocked them out. It’s surreal what a difference real windows that actually fit make.

I’m in love with them!

Everything is just brighter and cleaner and quieter and warmer. Better better better all around. Although the newness does make the rest of the house look like it’s falling down even more. I guess I’m going to have to break down and make a new couch cover after all. The one we have now looks like bird puke next to our new white windows.

The guys who installed the windows said this would happen. They said, first you fix the windows and then you have to repaint and next thing you know you’re fixing up your whole place. We’ll see. We don’t own this place so it’s hard to justify investing a lot of money into it and our landlord certainly isn’t interested.

We paid for these windows to be put in ourselves with a spectacular agreement with our landlord: that she won’t raise the rent for two years. This is really cool since we used to live under the constant threat of eviction. She’s a crazy old lady and we know the property value is more than we pay in rent. We knew our days were numbered. But with our new agreement (on paper! in ink!) we’re good for two more years. It’s kind of nice to know that one thing is not going to change for two years when the rest of your future is up in the air.

Of course getting the smudges off them is a whole other story. That just might take two years of elbow grease.

More photos here.