Category Archives: House Stuff

on the mend (again)

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Cate’s back at daycare today, and definitely doing a lot better. Yesterday she was playing and laughing; she had a few meltdowns, but otherwise was pretty much acting like her normal self again. I probably could have sent her to daycare yesterday, but I wanted a little bit of buffer time to make sure that she was genuinely better. She’s still a bit snotty-nosed, and her sleep schedule is screwed to hell, but we’re working our way back to normalcy. My guess is that the sleeping will work itself out in the next couple of days. These things usually do.

I’m feeling better too. I doubt that the garlic had much (if anything) to do with it, but my cold seems to be mostly gone. Right now, I’m just feeling really frazzled because I have a ton of work to do, and I haven’t been able to do any of it because I’ve been taking care of a sick baby. I have a major deadline on Monday, and I’ve only been able to work in bits & pieces over the past few days. So I’m frantically playing catch-up.

Oh, for what it’s worth, this cold apparently made the rounds of every single kid at Cate’s daycare. I had a random Mommy Guilt attack about that. We went to the pediatrician on Wednesday to make sure Cate’s cold hadn’t evolved into an ear infection (it hadn’t, thankfully), and while we were waiting for the doctor, Cate fell asleep on my chest. She’d been awake and crying for hours, and finally she was just worn out. I got kind of teary while I was sitting there with her. She never got sick once before she started daycare, and it seems like the colds have been non-stop for the past few months. I feel like she’d be so much better off if I didn’t work and could keep her home with me all the time.

When I told my mom about it later, she pointed out that if I did that, Cate would just get sick all the time when she starts preschool. Which is true enough, I suppose. But at least by then, she could blow her own nose and there are some cold medications that she’d be able to take. I hate this right now when she’s so uncomfortable and my resources for comforting her are so limited. But whether it happens now or later, it just sucks.

Unrelated: While I was writing this, I stopped to go downstairs and grab a snack. The cats were all hanging out by the back door, wanting to go outside, so I opened the door and let them out. I went back up to my office, looked out the window in the backyard, and saw two coyotes milling around. I freaked, ran downstairs and outside, and screamed like a banshee. They took off (wisely – keep your distance from the crazy, shrieking human lady), and the cats are nowhere in sight. My guess is that they’re hiding under the deck. My hands won’t stop shaking. Holy freaking hell, I want to move away from here.

I have a headache from the paint fumes, but…

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Yesterday and today, we’ve had painters here working on the house. This company was recommended to me by our realtor, and they did a great job. Our foyer, stairwell, and upstairs hallway are all freshly painted. Also, the ceilings in both the dining room and kitchen have been re-painted. (Both of them had some messy places from various other painting projects that Dave and I had done ourselves.)

On the one hand, I’m a little irritated that I spent so much money (don’t ask) for these guys to do what amounted to about four or five hours’ worth of work for them. But at the same time, I can honestly say that it is such a huge relief that I didn’t have to do any painting myself, I almost would’ve been willing to pay them even more. So, whatever. The job is done, I didn’t have to do it, life is good.

I’m trying to talk Dave into going appliance-shopping with me this weekend. Our microwave is missing a handle and is generally sort of god-awful looking, so we need to get a new one. And our stove/range also looks pretty ragged, so I’d like to get a new one. The main problem with the stove is that it’s gas, and one of the burners always hesitates to ignite, then it suddenly goes FWOOOM!! And almost sets you on fire. I’m terrified to have Cate anywhere in the kitchen when I have to turn on the stove. And it turns out that ranges are a lot cheaper than I thought they were. So hopefully we can replace our old, busted, originally-white-now-stained-to-hell appliances with some pretty, shiny, stainless steel ones, and start making the kitchen look a little jazzed up. Kitchens and bathrooms are supposed to be the two rooms that really help sell houses, right?

It feels good that we’re starting to gain some momentum with the home improvements. Our realtor friend and her husband volunteered to help us out with a few of the other projects, so hopefully that’ll save us some money and keep things moving along. Yay!

Wigging. Out.

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Yesterday, our realtor friend came over to give us the report that she’d done on our house – market analysis, comparing our house to others nearby that have sold, and a whole slew of other information. And oh hey, did you know that we’re currently in a housing market slump? Did you know that it’s mentioned on like every frigging news report? Yeah. Well, the upshot is that with the price she thinks we could get for our house, we’d have enough money left over (after closing costs, realtor fees, etc.) to pay for our move, but that’s about it. We won’t have squat to use as a down payment on a new house.

I’m trying to look at this from a glass half-full perspective. I could easily turn into the Witchy Wife and blame Dave for this, because if he had let me sell the house when I wanted to, before the market crapped out, we probably would’ve gotten a lot more money for this place. But if we had done that, we would’ve ended up buying a house in a different part of Seattle, because that was before we knew about the option to move to North Carolina. And honestly, even if we do have to finance 100% of the mortgage on our next place, it’ll still be a heck of a lot cheaper than what we’re paying for our house right now. So, you know, que sera sera. I’m putting my faith in the idea that we’ll end up where we’re supposed to be, when we’re supposed to be there.

The part that I’m freaking about is that Dave casually mentioned to Renee (our realtor friend) that he wants to get our house on the market “by the end of February.” What-what-WHAT??? So now I’m bouncing back and forth between:
a. “Yay! He’s on board with moving! Let’s strike while the iron is hot and get the H-E-double-hockey-sticks outta here!”
and
b. “Wait, does he have any idea how much work we have to do before we can sell this place? February is a short month, there’s no way it’ll be ready in time! PANIC!!!”

My brain sort of went into hyper-spin trying to think of all the dozens of little things that we have to do before we can move, and I started to seriously wig out. I ended up creating a Word document where I listed out all of my to-do tasks, and I saved it as “Feb08 Freak Out.” It helped to have it all written down so I could relax, go to sleep, and know that I wouldn’t magically forget anything important overnight. (Hey, it’s happened before.) And if it’s saved on my computer, it’s safer than being written on a sheet of paper which could disappear to lord-knows-where at any time.

So far, I’ve left messages for three different contractors for three different projects, and I have four people scheduled to come here to give me estimates on various other home improvement-y and/or move-y things. So it’s definitely coming along, which is good.

But if at some point in the next month or so, you hear a faraway-sounding high-pitched squeal followed by a popping noise, that very well might be my head exploding. Just so you know.

happy new yeaaaaggghhh!!

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So, the new year has begun and I am already freaking out.

It’s starting to sink in that this is the year that we are moving, and how on earth am I going to finish the hundreds of little things that need to be fixed around here, get the house on the market, then move a house full of stuff – plus two cars, four cats and a baby – to another location. Oh. My. God.

I knew this was coming, of course, it was just easier when I was still thinking of it as happening “next year.” Now next year has arrived. Hence the wigging out.

We booked our trip to Raleigh to check out the area and do a little house-hunting. We’ll be staying with the lovely and hospitable Cat, Tony and e-baby from March 6th through 10th. That’s a small item on my big huge list of “Reasons to Freak Out,” because we just did a super-long flight with a baby, and it was not exactly what I’d consider to be one of the more pleasant, stress-free experiences that I’ve had in the past, um, forever.

This trip should be slightly easier – we bought Cate her own seat, so the three of us can take up a whole row to ourselves. And she’ll probably (hopefully?) be walking by then, so I can set her down in the airport and let her toddle around a bit to burn off some energy. This last trip, she kept trying to wriggle out of our arms because she wanted to get down and crawl, and eww, gross. Just the thought of her little hands touching the same dirty floors that all those shoes have trekked across… yuck. Sorry, kiddo, not enough Purell in the world.

Anyway, I have a feeling that once the ball gets rolling on all of this move stuff, I’ll be fine. It’s just the anticipation that’s worrying me. I’ve started making my to-do lists now. Obsessive-compulsive? Maybe. But it helps me fall asleep at night instead of lying awake and twitching, so I guess that’s worth it.

family stuff, etc.

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My mom’s surgery went well. The doctor removed the three lymph nodes closest to the tumor and they all tested negative, which is great news. Not sure yet what the next steps will be as far as treatment, but so far so good. She was discharged from the hospital this morning, so she’s home and high on painkillers. Sounded like things were as normal as can be expected. Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts and prayers.

Just to make yesterday a little bit more stressful for me, my in-laws arrived from the UK, so I went on the Mandatory Cleaning Frenzy that I do every time we have houseguests. I don’t know why I do that – they’re here to see us, they don’t care about the state of the house, but you know, I have this Southern Hostess Gene and it makes me a teensy bit irrational sometimes.

Also, why is it that every time we have company, everything in the house starts falling apart? In the past 36 hours:
1. Cate’s closet door fell off (WTF? No idea how that happened)
2. Our septic tank alarm keeps going off because of all the rain we’ve had. Seems the tanks are getting flooded. Fabulous!
3. Our kitchen sink started to leak, which is the exact same thing that happened back in March when Alphagal and e-baby were here.
4. The faucet in our bathroom broke and we couldn’t turn the cold water off, so we had to shut off the valve under the sink.

Our plumber is here fixing the last two items on the list. We’ll get the closet door fixed later, and there isn’t really anything we can do about the septic tank until all this damn water starts to dry up. Oh, and our street is flooded again, just like it was last year, so we have to go on crazy-long detours to get anywhere.

I hate winter in the boonies. Oh well, at least we still have our electricity. (Quick, knock on some wood before that statement sends me to Jinx Hell.)

NaBloPoMo Day 10: boring stuff about my house

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I don’t know if I’ve written about the saga of our driveway and how much it torments my very soul. A couple of years ago, Dave and his brother (well, mostly his brother) tore up our existing driveway because they had some grand design scheme in mind, which, sadly, never happened. This seems to be the story of a lot of home improvement projects around here: a great idea is born, the project begins, and then it sits in a half-finished state for the rest of our lives.

So, thanks to Dave and my brother-in-law, a mere few days before our wedding, our driveway became a giant gravel pit. I was very upset about it since we were having our rehearsal dinner at our house, and it didn’t exactly make a grand first impression on our friends and family, most of whom were seeing our house for the first time.

And, that’s how our driveway has been ever since. Only worse, because Dave and I haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of maintaining the gravel, so it has a lot of weeds growing up through it, and it’s become increasingly difficult to determine exactly where the driveway ends and the yard begins. It just looks, well, white trash. (My grandmother would be appalled that I used that expression, since you’re never supposed to refer to people as trash, but I think in this case, since I’m referring to myself, it’s probably ok.)

I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate our driveway. It bothers me every time I turn in and drive over those stupid gravel potholes, and then I have to step over all the weeds… ugh. It hurts me just a tiny bit every time. I’m not sure if Dave is as bothered by it as I am, but it’s been driving me insane for the past 2 1/2 years.

However. Today is the glorious day that my being re-employed has paid off, because our driveway is getting paved! I didn’t even mind that the guys showed up at 7:30 in the morning and woke us all up. Who cares? This is like Christmas in November for me. So far all they’ve done is re-gravel and grade it out so that it’s all flat, and I’m already in love with it. I can’t wait to see how it’ll look when it’s finished. We’re even going to have a sidewalk that goes around the side of the house to our deck. Huzzah!

I know this is probably not interesting to anyone except me, but it’s totally made my weekend. And maybe now I won’t be embarassed to invite people over to our house anymore.

not sure if horses apply to standard DUI laws

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Saturday night, I left the baby with Dave and met up with Cara for dinner and drinks. (And dessert. Way too many calories, but oh so yummy.) I don’t think we’d ever hung out together without our respective significant others, so that was very cool to have some girl time and talk about all the stuff we can’t write about on our blogs. In my case, this meant getting to freely use the f-word, which I try never to do here because my dad knows that this website exists, and oh lord I do not need that phone call.

And it was very sweet of Cara to not cancel on me, since Scott’s grandmother had just died and they were going to be taking a flight out of Seattle about 4 hours after she and I met up. I would’ve totally canceled if it had been me, but I’m a wuss like that. Anyway, it was great fun and nice to have some baby-free time.

True story that is totally unrelated to anything: recently when Cate and I were out for one of our evening walks, we ran into two of our neighbors, who were out riding their horses. This isn’t a rare occurrence; so many people around here have horses, to see them trekking up and down the street with the regular traffic isn’t at all unusual.

Anyway, they stopped to say hi to the baby and to let Cate get all excited about seeing the horses up close. (She did her happy foot-kick for them.) They were very friendly and nice, but I noticed that both ladies had a cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other. They would alternate which hand was holding the horse’s reins depending on what they needed to accomplish. Horseback riding, smoking a Marlboro, and swigging a bottle of Corona? Wow. That is multi-tasking at its finest right there.

When we got home, I told Dave that this is another reason we need to move. I am clearly not nearly bad-ass enough to hang with the women of Duvall. And you know what? I am totally okay with that fact.