Our Sneer Headquarter’s anniversary passed over the weekend, so we decided that rather than do a Saturday update, we would just wait. No one but us noticed, and nobody tell the house, please! We wouldn’t want to have its feelings hurt.

In the past year, a variety of things have happened, from the painting of still more rooms, frequent rearranging of possessions and reassigning rooms with new meaning. There have been MORE bats, but we are under a warranty, so don’t worry. Don’t you worry about us.

There has still never been a proper Sneer Housewarming party, although Amandoll is having another birthday party in a couple of weeks (Prom-themed). Judy is gone, Jackson is now here. We have learned about FeLV and how to grow carrots, kind of.

We have a good old fashioned vinyl record player in the front room now, and the Study upstairs is now a dedicated “fabric crafts” room. For some reason we have more than one sewing machine despite not being skilled at sewing really at all.

Lisa is out of here, Manny is here half of the time, Melissa has a lot of work trips and family occasions, and Amandoll leaves occasionally too! This is why we don’t have chickens yet.

New neighbors have moved in, a smaller, less popular dumpster took up residence across the street for a while, and we have finally started meeting our actual next door neighbors. Way to go, us! Amandoll’s dad has somehow met all of these people first. We have been questioned by roaming salesman as to whether or not our parents are home for them to speak to.

We had a Passover party, a Holiday party, and our friend Candice’s birthday party — all successes as far as we are concerned. We have not hosted a party every other month as we had originally thought we would, because it turned out that we all had unscheduled ennui for like five months in a row. But we do have new local friends including at least one who actually moved here from another state, buying a nearly-as-gorgeous affordable home five blocks away.

The kitchen upstairs is still un-sinked. The basement floods less but when there are flash floods where water cascades down your cellar stairs, what can you really do about it? Dollissa is under high levels of stress about all of life, and home repairs are for NEXT year. That is fine! Nothing aside from bats has really been a terrible emergency, and that’s the important part. We are replacing a section of the fence in the back yard, and re-staining the rest of it. We learned to plant sunflowers earlier in the year, starting next year…

We are becoming more organized, more focused, more award-winning, better versions of ourselves and the house every single day. Even when we are low with ennui, even when we realize with a dry laugh that we haven’t done anything “productive” in days, even when we go on hiatus from this beloved site of ours, we know in our hearts that we are still on an upward trend of improvement — just a little slower sometimes. It’s great!

This glorious house that sneers saved from other owners who didn’t have its best interests in mind is still good to us. We can feel the optimism and the care exuding from its sturdy walls. Each year here is a year well spent, and we believe that.