Category Archives: House Stuff

I wanna move

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Dave left tonight to fly to California. Well, to try to fly to California anyway. Turns out, we’ve been having some crazy weather here – tons of rain (moreso than usual), high winds, etc. He got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, but the parking garage was flooded out, so it took him a while to navigate that. Then, once he got inside, the airport was a madhouse because of all the weather delays, so he ended up missing his flight.

The reason he was trying to fly tonight is because he’s supposed to be interviewing all day tomorrow with the company that is his #1 job pick. He’s had numerous phone interviews with these people (seriously, I lost count somewhere around teleconference number eight), and it sounds like the job is basically his, but they have this whole thing about wanting to meet the people they hire in person. Go figure.

The thing is, this is the perfect job for him – it’s exactly what he wants to be doing, it’s local (in fact, it sounds like he’ll be mostly working from home, which is awesome for me and the baby), the pay is good, it’s basically ideal. He’s gotten himself pretty stressed out during the past week preparing for this interview because he really wants this job. Which is totally unlike Dave – I’m the one who worries, he’s the one who’s always calm and says that everything will work out just fine. So if this is making him anxious, it must be a really, really big deal.

So, since the flight tonight is apparently not going to happen, and it takes over an hour to drive the 25 miles from our house to the airport in rush hour traffic, he decided to just find a hotel room near the airport so he can get up early and catch the first flight out, and hopefully still make it to his interview with plenty of time to spare. The alternative is that he’ll have to say “sorry, unavoidably bad weather” to these people and reschedule for next week sometime, which certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world, but I know that he’d like to go ahead and get on with the interview process. (As would I – it’d be nice to not have to think about his job situation over the holidays.) So I’m really hoping and praying that there are no problems with early flights tomorrow.

Meanwhile, back to me: you know how we live in the boonies? And how our power goes out every time the wind blows? Well, just try to guess how well we’ve fared with this crazy weather. Right. I’ve been sitting in the dark for the past few hours.

Because really, it’s not like being alone in the boonies at night isn’t creepy enough on its own. And it’s not like I don’t already freak out over every little god-blessed noise when Dave isn’t here at night. For example, I’ve never almost jumped out of my skin because of the sound of the auto-scooping litter box. No, seriously, it’s totally ok to just go ahead and turn off all the lights in addition to all of the creepy isolation. I’ll be fine.

I’m actually typing this entry in Word while my laptop is on battery power so I can post it later. I’ve taken a Unisom (a whole one instead of my usual half) in the hopes of knocking myself unconscious for the night. And since I don’t have a baseball bat, and we don’t believe in having guns in the house, I’ve put a frying pan on Dave’s side of the bed, because it was the only blunt, heavy weapon-like item that I could think of. Well, there is the garden shovel, but the shovel is dirty so I don’t want it in bed with me. At least the frying pan is clean. And that sucker is pretty solid, I think it could do some damage if a serial killer were to sneak into the house and try to murder me in my sleep. (Because you know that type of thing happens all the time.)

The wind outside is making creepy whooshing noises like something out of a bad horror movie. One of the candles I had going in our room just flickered out. And I’m starting to seriously reconsider this whole anti-gun stance of mine.

Edited to add: I changed the time stamp on this post to show when I actually wrote it. Another update will be coming soon.

saturday night whining

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I’m sure I have complained before about the fact that living in the boonies means we have no options as far as high-speed Internet access, yes? There’s no DSL here, no cable, na-da. Instead, our Internet connection is through a satellite dish, which sucks because it’s only slightly faster than dial-up. And when the weather is bad – like, say, today – the connection just flakes out altogether. Bah.

(I’m actually typing this entry in Word so I can copy and paste it whenever our Internet access decides to come back.)

Since I haven’t been able to goof around online today, I’ve actually been pretty productive. Dave and I went to the supermarket, I started dinner in the crock-pot, and I cleaned the kitchen. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but believe me, I move pretty slowly these days, so that ate up quite a bit of my afternoon.

Then, I decided to make an attempt at organizing the baby’s room. We’ve been acquiring lots of baby gear over the past several weeks, plus I did some major shopping yesterday. All of the stuff has been sort of randomly scattered throughout the house, so I decided to try to tidy it up. 

 

This baby sure has a lot of gear for someone who isn’t even here yet, doesn’t she? And that doesn’t even include the toys and bouncy seat that we’ve picked up at garage sales, plus baby clothes, bibs, sheets, blankets, etc. Lord have mercy. 

For the record, other than that impressive assortment of boxes in the corner, the only piece of furniture in the entire room is a crib. But I feel like we’re in pretty good shape overall. The only things I know that we absolutely need before the baby arrives is:

* A dresser – I have some empty Rubbermaid bins in the garage that I can use for clothes storage if I absolutely have to, but I at least need someplace to put a changing pad. 

* A Boppy pillow – I meant to get one yesterday and forgot. (It wouldn’t have fit in the cart with all the other stuff I was buying anyway.)

* A glider rocking chair – I know exactly the one that I want, and the store where it’s located, I just need Dave’s car to get it home.

In other news, tomorrow night Kris and I are going to see the Indigo Girls. I’ve seen them in concert at least 3 or 4 times before, and they always put on a great show, but I’m really dreading it this time. I don’t know any songs off of their last two albums, and the whole point of seeing a band like the Indigo Girls is to sing along. Plus Kris went to quite a bit of trouble to get us really good seats way up front, which is great except that I’ll be getting up to pee every twenty minutes. And honestly, the idea of sitting in a narrow uncomfortable auditorium seat at 7 months pregnant doesn’t sound all that appealing, either.

But, I promised Kris ages ago that I would go, and I paid $50 for the ticket. I already feel guilty for not being there for her as much as I should have been over the past several months. She moved here less than 3 months before I got pregnant, so I’ve been very much caught up in my own little holy-god-we’re-gonna-have-a-baby world, and I haven’t been paying that much attention to making sure that her transition here was any easier. She seems to be doing ok, although I know it’s still really difficult for her sometimes. So if it makes her happy to have me tag along to a concert that I’m not necessarily enthusiastic about? I can deal with it. Besides, I keep reminding myself that this will probably be the last concert I see for a very long time.

cushiony goodness

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Yesterday, I bought a body pillow. I really didn’t want to get one, and I held off as long as I could, but I finally caved. I honestly have sort of a problem with the idea of body pillows. It’s fine if it’s on my side of the bed, but if I roll over and drag it with me, then there’s sort of this “line of demarcation” down the center of the bed between me and Dave, and I didn’t like that. Not that we’re very cuddly sleepers, but still. It didn’t seem like a romantic addition to our current stock of bedding accessories.

Another reason why I didn’t want to buy one was because I kept thinking that if I only use the body pillow during pregnancy, where on earth am I going to store the damn thing later? There’s so much stuff that we’re going to have to acquire for the baby, that it’s making me go through this phase where I don’t want to buy anything for myself that falls into the category of “crap I don’t really need.” And I don’t know how familiar y’all are with body pillows, but those things are huge. When I put it in my car, the pillow alone took up the entire length of my backseat. My linen closet is full, I have no idea where this pillow will go when I’m done having babies. I guess it’ll go in a hefty bag in the garage, like so many other things have done in the past.

Also, I guess I figured that since we have at least a dozen or so regular-size pillows in our house, surely I could arrange them all in such a way that I could sleep comfortably at night. That’s logical, right?

The thing is, I could arrange them all, but then I’d have to rearrange them every time I rolled over. And sometimes I’d wake up because one of my hips would start to hurt. (Usually the hip of the side that I was lying on.) Or sometimes I’d wake up because I had rolled into a position where I was half on my stomach, and the baby decided to let me know that she wasn’t too happy about that.

Anyway, last night? With the sleeping? And the body pillow? That might possibly have been the best night’s sleep that I’ve gotten in the last two months. And I had no weird creaky/achy things when I woke up today. I think I’m in love.

Consider this my formal apology to the body pillow manufacturers of the world: you were right, I was wrong. That was the best $9.99 that I’ve spent in a very long time. I shall never speak ill of you again. And if you let me know your address, I’ll send you a box of candy.

cleaning is my cardio

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I thought the whole idea of nesting during pregnancy is that it takes place during the last few weeks? Apparently that is not the case with me. Ever since this second trimester started and gave me back my energy, I have had some house-related project every single weekend. It’s borderline-manic. Dave seems sort of confused by my behavior; I just tell him that it’s helping my brain relax, and he leaves me alone with it.

So even though I’m sure y’all are probably sick of hearing about it, here’s the list, so Dave will have sufficient evidence against me when it comes time for my commitment hearing.

This weekend, I:
* Cleared enough space in the garage that there is now more than enough room for all of the doors and baseboards that are being delivered later this week.

* Washed and folded four loads of laundry. Dave’s sock drawer is now so full that it won’t close all the way.

* Cleaned our bedroom, and in the process, found Dave’s glasses that he thought he had lost weeks ago. Go me. And go Dave, who no longer has to wear his big nerdy glasses from high school that make him look like Harry Potter.

* Cleaned my office. (Except for the litter box in there, because that task is on Dave’s to-do list while I’m in this delicate condition.)

* Started to clean out the baby’s room, which is weird to say because until now it’s just been a guest bedroom, or a junk room. (Mostly a junk room.) That’s going to take a while to finish up, and will require some help from Dave, because there are a few heavy items in there (i.e., boxes of books) that I am not going to attempt to carry downstairs by myself.

Oh, and at some point on Saturday, I went to retrieve our garbage can from the end of the driveway (garbage pick-up is on Fridays), and I noticed it was still full. The hell? A couple of our neighbors happened to be driving by, and they stopped and told me that the waste management guys are on strike. Lovely. Don’t our garbage guys know that I have big important cleaning projects to do? Stupid jerks.

This weekend I also started watching a few of the baby shows on Discovery Health. I know that’s generally not a good idea – I’ve read stories of pregnant women weeping over the preemie babies as their husbands physically wrenched the remotes out of their puffy little pregnant hands. But honestly? Those shows don’t really scare me that much. At least, not in a “oh dear god, what if this baby is born at 24 weeks and almost dies and has to spend the first few months of its life in the NICU?” sort of way.

However, it does make me start thinking about the pregnancy timeline a bit more. And it occurred to me that by Christmas, I’ll be 35 weeks pregnant, and if the baby is born then, it’d most likely be healthy and ready to come home after a very short hospital stay. So that makes me feel a bit “holy sh*t, we have to get our entire house baby-ready within the next 3 months!!”

I don’t know what it is about that February 2nd due date – somehow it seems a lot farther away in the future when you think of it as being “next year.” Next year? Heck, it’s not even really fall yet! We have all the time in the world to prepare!

But if I think that it could happen toward the end of this year? I wig out.

And then I read the crib reviews in my Baby Bargains book (which is seriously the greatest book ever, and I’m going to owe my cousin’s wife a thank you note for recommending it), and I see that sometimes nursery furniture has to be ordered a few months in advance, and I wig out some more.

Logically, of course, I know that newborns don’t really require that much. All I really need is a car seat, and maybe a Pack N’ Play that I can use as a bassinet for the first few weeks. And it’s not like newborn babies can crawl, so I don’t have to worry about the fact that one of the cats got upset about my cleaning a room and decided to go poop in the corner. None of that stuff really matters.

It’s just this idea in my head of not being prepared for the baby by the time he/she arrives. It feels like that nightmare where you’re in school taking an exam that you haven’t studied for. It’s a horrible, anxiety-ridden feeling.

So, in the meantime, everyone will just have to excuse me while I’m using the DustBuster to clean all of the windowsills in the house. Because this is just how I cope.

I still have dried paint flecks in my hair

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I’m officially exhausted.

Since I’ve started doing this part-time gig, I don’t work on Fridays. Which is good, because it meant that I got the entire dining room painted on Friday. I had primed it last weekend, but still. Two coats of paint in one day, go me.

Saturday, I moved all of the living room furniture into the dining room by myself, while Dave was at the hardware store. That was definitely a bad idea, even though the floor is laminate, so all I had to do was slide the furniture, not lift it. But my lower back still hasn’t forgiven me for that little stunt.

Kris came over on Saturday afternoon, and we managed to cover the entire living room with one coat of primer. Well, almost the entire room. There’s one really high part where the ceiling is vaulted, and considering that I’m a klutz even when I’m not pregnant, Dave had forbidden me to go up a ladder to paint that part. I can’t say I disagreed with his judgment. Dave promised that he would take care it himself.

This morning (Sunday), I woke up around 6 a.m., noticed Dave wasn’t in bed, and heard a very familiar shooop-shooop-shooop sound coming from downstairs. It sounded like a paint roller. I thought that was sweet, that he was going to prime that little high part of the walls before I woke up, and I went back to sleep for a couple of hours.

When I got up around 8:30, I saw that Dave had actually painted the entire living room. All by himself. And ok, it was only the first coat, so we still had to go over it one more time, but still. I give him a lot of grief for being a bit of a slacker with house stuff, but every now and then, he manages to knock one out of the park and totally shock me. That was pretty awesome.

Anyway, we did the second coat, so both rooms are all painted. Later, I scrubbed all of the little paint drips off of the floor in the living room so we could put the furniture back. (I had used dropcloths, but they’re sort of useless with my klutziness.) (And for the record, Dave helped move the furniture back in place.) I haven’t finished scrubbing the floor in the dining room yet, but I think I can leave that for later this week. It’s not like we ever really “use” that room.

Speaking of later this week? I think I’m going to be doing some research to find someone around here who specializes in prenatal massage. Because god, my back is pissed at me.

And that, folks, is it. Other than going to Quizno’s for sandwiches on Friday night, I haven’t left the house all weekend. I know it’s pathetic, but the painting is done, so I’m happy. And now, I’m going to sleep.

the second trimester begins…

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…and the mania has set in.

It is amazing how quickly my energy level has come back. I’ve started interviewing contractors to help us with the hundred or so jobs that I want to do around the house before the baby arrives. (I have a list, with the tasks numbered in order of priority. And it’s typed, because my handwriting is atrocious. Each contractor that comes to our house gets their own copy to keep, so they can use it as a reference when writing their estimate.) I’m a big fan of do-it-yourself and all that, but honestly, when Dave and I do some little house project, it tends to look like crap. Also, we both have A.D.D. about our home improvement projects, so we get 80% done and then get bored and move on to something else.

So for things like baseboards and crown moulding that require things to be sawed into exact angles? And where the work needs to be fully completed so it doesn’t look like we live in the Crazy House? Um. No. We’re going to hire help for that.

That reminds me: you know the luck we’ve had with contractors in the past? Like with the siding, and the septic tank, and the dozen or so other things that we’ve spent thousands of dollars on? Yeah. Pray for us.

I guess because I had home improvements on my mind, and even in spite of the fact that I had just admitted to three or four different contractors that I suck at do-it-myself stuff, I decided on Saturday that I was going to paint our dining and living room. Just me. By myself. Because Dave was out working in the yard – and y’all should really see the amount of work he’s done out there, because it is awesome, and I won’t even try to accuse him of using yardwork as an excuse to avoid me and my freshly onset nesting psychosis. Although seriously, that may have been a big motivation for him.

At one point (last Saturday, I think?), when I was manically rattling off my to-do list of errands that I was going to run and things that I was going to accomplish that day, Dave looked at me and said, “Hon, are you really stressed out or something?” I thought about it for a second, and then said, “No, I think I’m just hyper.” It kind of struck me by surprise when I said it out loud. I’ve been feeling so awful for the last several weeks that suddenly having a burst of energy felt totally foreign to me. And I’m guessing it was foreign to Dave too, since he seemed so confused and sort of worried about me at first.

So, I got the entire dining room primed, and most of one wall painted. I only bought one little test quart of the paint color, because I wanted to leave it on the wall for a day or two to make sure that I love it. And I do. So I’ll be finishing the dining room and moving on to the living room sometime this week. Rah! I don’t know how long this whole nesting thing will hold out, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

Also? Kris is going to come over on Saturday to help me paint. We’ll have ourselves a little living room painting party. I don’t know why she isn’t trembling in fear over my nesting mania, but hey, I’ll take all the help I can get.

at our house, we party like it's 1994

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It wasn’t my intention to leave the Prairie Muffin post up at the top for as long as I did, but y’all will just have to forgive me, because I have not had internet access for the past four days. Four days! No internet! Aaaahhhh, withdrawal!

The story: Since we live in the boonies, we have to use a satellite dish for both TV and internet access. That means two different satellite dishes are stuck on the side of our house (as if one isn’t ugly enough). Oh, how I long for DSL… Anyway, the siding guys were out on Thursday tearing the old crappy siding off our house. (The new siding – which we ordered to replace the ugly stuff with big gaping, bubbly seams – will arrive sometime later this week.) When I got home from work on Thursday afternoon, Dave told me that the guys must’ve bumped one of the dishes, because our TV was fine, but we had no internet access. Fantastic.

Since I don’t work on Fridays, I had Dave call the satellite folks to send out a repair guy to fix the dish. I’d be home all day, so no problem, right? Well, they couldn’t get a technician out until Saturday afternoon. Dave stopped on his way home from work on Friday and bought me a couple of new video games to keep me occupied, because I was going crazy without internet access. And for some reason, we couldn’t even get a dial-up connection to work on my laptop. Argh!

Saturday, the technician came out, and the poor guy spent about three hours outside trying to get our dish working again. (Did I mention that we’re having some freakish heat wave right now and it’s been 95 degrees every day? I felt really bad for the guy. But you have no idea how thrilled I am that we got central air-conditioning this year.) Problem is, the dish is about five years old, which in satellite technology means that it’s three or four generations old, and… no luck. The guy couldn’t get it working again.

The thing is, Dave and I have been unhappy with our ISP for a while – our access speed is crazy slow, they have a limit of how much we can download per day, and forget trying to upload anything because dial-up is faster. We had heard that there were other satellite Internet companies in our area that are much better, but to change ISP’s means that you have to shell out the cash for a whole new dish. Since our current one is busted, this gives us a good excuse to go ahead and make the switch to a new ISP. So it’s really not all bad, except for the cost aspect.

Well, that, plus the fact that it will be Wednesday before they can come out to set up the new satellite dish. Cry! So if you don’t hear much from me this week, you’ll know why.