Category Archives: House Stuff

Kitchen Tidy-Up Project

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Disclaimer: I almost never do sponsored posts, but I was given a gift card from BlogHer and HomeGoods, and hey, if you’re going to give me money to go shopping, then heck yeah I’ll blog about it. And bonus: if you read this, you get to see pictures of my kitchen. Oooh, special, right?

Since the cleaning lady came to tidy up our house last week, Dave and I have been having ongoing arguments about what I call Chronic Kitchen Counter Crap. This is the stuff that seems to live on the kitchen counter all the time, no matter what. I tend to believe that all food-related items should be put away in a pantry or a cabinet. Dave disagrees and thinks that it’s fine for frequently-used items to stay out, as this keeps them easily accessible. And it drives. me. NUTS.

Also? I am WAY more cranky about things like Chronic Kitchen Counter Crap when I am (a) pregnant and therefore grumpier in general, and (b) expecting many houseguests and visitors over the next few weeks. But it doesn’t matter how many times I put these things away, within a few hours, Dave has left them on the counter again.

So, I decided to take advantage of this HomeGoods/BlogHer gift card offer to do a little de-cluttering in my kitchen, before the holidays are in full swing.

Here are the before pictures, so you can see what I was unhappy about.

Exhibit A:
Before: bread pile
The bread pile. The knife rack and the toaster are fine, I don’t mind that they live on the counter. But we obviously eat a lot of different types of bread products (there’s wheat, white, mini-bagels, and hamburger buns in that pile), and I hate seeing that stuff all piled messily in the corner.

Here’s what it looks like after my shopping excursion.
After: basket for the bread makes it feel tidier
Ideally, I would’ve liked an old-timey breadbox that I could close and shut everything away, but those are pretty hard to find these days. I like the basket as an alternative, because it makes it feel like it’s tidy and organized since it’s all in one place. And it’ll be much easier to clean around it, since I can just pick up the basket (rather than 6 different bread bags!) when I wipe down the counters.

Exhibit B:
Before: sugar, tea & coffee always on the counter
Sugar, coffee, and tea are always out on the counter. Again, I don’t mind the electric kettle or the blender being out, since they’re both appliances that get used daily, but the food items themselves drive me crazy. I don’t even drink coffee or tea! My Diet Cokes are all neatly concealed inside the fridge. But Dave, being an Englishman, drinks a steady amount of coffee and tea pretty much all day long.

Here’s the “after” picture for that one (this is by far my favorite part of this whole kitchen tidy-up project):
After: containers for sugar, coffee & tea
I got airtight containers for the sugar, coffee, and tea. And I love them. It makes the whole counter look cleaner.

I’m very pleased with the results. And I’m no longer anxious about people judging the chronic messiness of my kitchen when they visit my house for the holidays, so I’d definitely call that a win.

unemployed

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Even though I gave two weeks’ notice at my job? My boss did what I sort of expected, and said that Friday was my last day and we’re done. It’s fine because financially we’re ok for a while (and I still get my commission check later this month), and I wasn’t really looking forward to the next couple of weeks anyway.

SO! On that note, here’s a list that I call “Things I’ve done this week while being unemployed”:

* Maintained a clean house. Which is a much bigger deal than you might think.

* Washed, folded, and put away approximately 18 million loads of laundry. (Ok, probably more like 8. But still.)

* Cleaned out my closet. I doubt it would meet Jen’s standards, but I’m still proud of myself.

* Cooked a couple of lovely meals for my family.

* Got Catie’s room ready for winter. Between my sister and my parents, she already has an entire wardrobe for fall and winter, so I sorted through it, and got it all folded and put away. Then I packed away all the clothes she’s outgrown – which makes me unbelievably sad because holy hell, I want another baby girl to wear all of this stuff again. I’d be happy with a boy too, of course, it’s just that whole general-baby-need thing that’s getting me.

* Cleaned up 3 (THREE!!) puddles of cat puke in 3 days. (Seriously, Teenie, WTF?)

* Went for a run this morning. (Side note: I haven’t run for a while, so I thought I’d go back to week 3 of the Couch-to-5K program, and it almost killed me. Clearly, I need to get back to working out more often. On the plus side, though, even though I’ve kind of been slacking on the whole diet-and-exercise thing lately, I’ve still kept off the 8 pounds I lost earlier this summer. I realize that isn’t a huge deal to most people, but I’ll take maintenance over gaining weight ANY DAY.)

* Caught up on almost all of my DVR’ed shows. (LOVE this season of Project Runway so far.)

* Been a hell of a lot more patient with both Dave and Catie, which made me realize that when I’m not happy with my job, that resentment creeps into the rest of my life and manifests itself in really ugly ways. I think I’ve been a LOT nicer this week.

* Bought a new job interview outfit, since my pre-baby dress slacks no longer fit, and wearing maternity pants is just embarrassing.

* Got some pretty encouraging news about two possible jobs. I kind of want one more than the other, but I think I’d honestly be really happy with either one. So y’all cross your fingers for me!

the story of how my cat ended up on mood stabilizers

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For those of you who don’t already know this, we have two cats. Beaumont was Dave’s cat way back before we started dating, and I’ve had Teenie since right around the time of my 21st birthday. (Dave also had 2 other cats back when we lived in Washington, but we re-homed them a couple of years ago, before we moved to North Carolina.)

We’ve kind of done that thing of realizing after we had a kid that we don’t much like cats anymore, but they’re ours and we’re stuck with them. It is what it is. But even though we find both cats pretty annoying now, the one thing about Teenie that’s been driving me absolutely insane? Her neurosis. OMG, that cat is a weirdo.

Teenie was probably always supposed to be an “only cat” (like an only child). She has never jived with other cats, and it’s only gotten worse in her old age. When we lived in Washington, it wasn’t so bad. She basically lived in our bedroom and didn’t interact with the other cats much at all. Then we moved to North Carolina. (Dum-dum-DUUUUM!!!)

Not so camera-shy Teenie
Can you sense the foreboding yet?

A big part of Teenie’s neurosis involves the litter box. If another cat has used it, she’ll go elsewhere. Like the floor. She had a few accidents in our house in Washington, but really, she pretty much had her own litter box there, so it wasn’t often. Then, after we moved to NC, she and Beaumont were sharing a litter box, so we had a lot of incidents where Teenie would go pee somewhere else. Her favorite spot was a corner in the dining room. Which is gross, but the floors were hardwood, so I’d spot the puddle, clean it up, and we were fine. No major damage.

Now, we’re in our new house. My beautiful, beautiful dream house that I adore. And within a couple of weeks of living here, Teenie started peeing in the corner of our family room. Which has white carpet. Oh. My. GAH.

(Ok, to be fair, that carpet had about a million other stains within the first month. I don’t know how the previous owners kept it so clean, but they obviously did not have two cats, a toddler, and a Dave. That carpet is going to have to be replaced someday soon, and it’s going to have to be with something at least a couple shades darker. It’s pretty – or rather, it WAS pretty – but it’s completely impractical.)

I tried a million different things to make Teenie stop peeing on the carpet. I made sure there were two litter boxes in the laundry room and that I scooped them at least once a day, so there was always at least one clean litter box available to her. I got one of those Feliway diffusers that’s supposed to help with feline anxiety. I tried spraying that corner of the room with citrus smells that are supposed to repel cats.

Nothing worked, she kept peeing in that one corner of the room. Finally I figured, ok, Teenie, you win. I set up another litter box in that corner (if you’re keeping track, that’s 3 litter boxes for 2 cats). I didn’t want a litter box in my family room, I think it’s disgusting, but I didn’t see any other options. Guess what happened? Beaumont started using it, because, hey! Litter box! And then Teenie found a new corner of the family room and started peeing there.

GAAAAHHH!!! *gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, lots of mixing distilled vinegar with carpet cleaner and scrubbing the floor within an inch of its life*

Finally, I took Teenie to the vet and explained what was going on. As much as she annoys me, I DON’T want to have my cat put to sleep because of a behavioral issue. And she’s too old and neurotic to have her re-homed at this point, she’d never adjust. But at the same time, we couldn’t keep living that way. I was embarrassed to have people over because no matter how much I scrubbed, our house always reeked of cat pee. And there is not much worse than cat pee on the Gross Smell Scale.

The vet suggested Kitty Prozac*. I know how hard it is to get this cat to take a pill, so I asked about other forms that it’s available. And lucky me, there’s a local pet pharmacy that will get me the Kitty Prozac in liquid form, and they’ll even flavor it with something called Triple Fish Flavor (gag!) (and please don’t tell me what the 3 fishes are, because I’m sure I don’t want to know), so it makes it kind of tasty for the cats.

Teenie doesn’t particularly like the Triple-Fish flavored Kitty Prozac, but she takes it. And you know what? She only pees in the litter box now. Seriously, not a single accident since we started her on the meds a month ago. NOT EVEN ONE. I can’t believe it.

Of course, this means that I’ll be shelling out $50 a month for Kitty Prozac for the remainder of Teenie’s life, which sucks. But if it means no more pee-stained carpet, I’ll take it.

* Not a paid endorsement. Although if the makers of Kitty Prozac happen to read this and want to spot me a month’s supply for free, I sure as hell wouldn’t say no.

still unpacking. no, really.

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I don’t have much to say, since I’ve been in Crazy Unpacking Mode for the past several days. A brief progress report:

* We’ve been doing all of the shopping that you have to do when you move into a new place: we bought a new washer & dryer (because this house came with none, and I’m not hauling our stuff to a laundromat), a new box spring for our bed (since the one that Beaumont spent the night inside on the moving truck reeked of cat pee), a couple of ceiling fans for Catie’s room and a spare bedroom, a new shower head (which feels like getting a scalp massage by angels, no lie), plus some towel hooks and other random stuff.
* We celebrated Dave’s 38th birthday on Saturday. When we asked Catie how old Daddy is, she said, “Forty.” Ouch. Dave is convinced that I taught her to say that, but I honestly didn’t.
* We went to see They Might Be Giants on Saturday afternoon. We met up with Cat & Tony for that, and Catie and Elizabeth had a great time running around dancing. I took some pictures that I need to get uploaded.
* While Dave enjoyed his birthday weekend by lounging around watching the first couple of seasons of “Prison Break” on DVD, I single-handedly emptied the garage of all of the boxes our movers dumped there, and moved them upstairs to the attic. My arms & legs are killing me, but I can now park my car in the garage, and there’s almost enough room to get Dave’s car in there too. We have never, in the history of our relationship, had a garage that was clean enough to actually park a car inside of it, nevermind two cars, so this is huge.

I’m going to try to get some pictures of the house posted soon, as soon as I have it remotely presentable. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorites from our trip to my parents’ house last week.

pulling a Flashdance move with her shirt
Pulling a Flashdance move with her Tinkerbell t-shirt.

tunnels are fun!
Catie recreated the moment of her birth.
(Seriously, that’s the caption I wanted to put on Flickr, because the pink tunnel made me think of it, and the look on her face just cracked me up. But I knew my parents would be offended, so I’m keeping it here.)

flying unicorn!
Catie became a flying unicorn, with a little help from her Pop-Pop.

playing with the hose on my parents' patio
We played with the hose.

Mimi & Catie
And Mimi taught Catie all about gardening.

the trip home, part 2

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Sorry for the delay in getting all this written down, I’m unpacking like a maniac and I’m actually having a hard time making myself sit down at my computer, which is freakishly rare for me.

SO! We spent the night at Cat & Tony’s house, and the next morning we all loaded up our respective children into various cars and went our separate ways. I dropped Catie off at daycare, and went to check out the new house. Still no power or water. I checked on the cats, dropped off our suitcases, and went to run a couple of errands. Came back to the house, and got to work setting up Catie’s room. I wanted the new house to make a good impression on her, so I figured that making sure her room looked like “hers” was a good place to start.

The utilities finally got turned on around 3:00. I was elated. I drove back to Cat & Tony’s house to retrieve our fridge & freezer food that we had stashed at their house. Came back, and picked up Catie from daycare. Dave got home a few minutes before we did, so we both got to witness Catie’s first reaction to the house. She seemed to like it, she was very excited to see a lot of her toys that she hadn’t seen in over a week. She kept saying, “Wow! Hey! Where’d that come from?” Like she couldn’t fathom how her stuff all magically got transported from the old house to the new house.

She’s had a couple of meltdowns since then, where she cries, “I no like new house! I wan’ go home!” Which stinks, and I hate it for her, but I think that once we get this place feeling a little more like a home and a little less like a box factory, she’ll start to like it more. Last night was rough, I found her standing in the dark hallway screaming her head off because she was scared and didn’t know where she was. (There are nightlights in both her bedroom and the hall, but it didn’t seem to make her feel less freaked out.) I’ve been trying to get things set up quickly to help her relax. The kitchen is almost done, then the family room is next on my agenda. I’m so focused on trying to ease Catie through this transition, I have a feeling that I won’t get Dave’s or my stuff unpacked until last. Oh well.

So. The transition is sucking, but we’re here. And this house is still beautiful and perfect and the absolute house of my dreams. So we’re good.

the trip home, part 1

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Yesterday was one of those travel days where it was almost comical how horribly awry everything went. Or rather, it would’ve been funny if it happened to someone else. Like maybe someone I despised. Let’s recap, shall we?

* Up at 5 a.m., so we could leave the house by 6:45 for our 8:25 flight. Catie didn’t get enough sleep and had a huge screaming meltdown before leaving my parents’ house. Fun!

* Got to the airport, got checked in, everything ready to go… then no plane. Or rather, no boarding onto the plane that was sitting at the gate. Turns out there was a mechanical problem, so our 8:25 flight was delayed until 11:00. That means that Catie & I both could’ve had an extra couple of hours’ sleep if we’d known in advance. The ticket agent got us rebooked on the next flight, so we actually left Jackson at 9:40.

Side note to American Airlines: please find the guy who was working at Gate 4 at Jackson International Airport on September 15th, and give that man a raise. I don’t know his name, he’s a thin young white guy with a little beard stubble and almost too-pretty eyes. He was fantastic, he was very fast at getting everyone taken care of, he remembered my name, and he made sure that my 2 year-old and I had seats adjacent to each other (something another ticket agent apparently didn’t think was necessary).

* While waiting to board our first flight, Catie cried, “Mooommy, I go hooome. I see Mimi & Pop-Pop.” I reminded her that we were going home to Daddy and the new house. She replied, “No, no Daddy and no house. I jus’ go hooooome.” Yeah, you & me both, kiddo.

* High point of the day #1: Catie slept the entire flight from Jackson to Dallas. Halle-freaking-lujah.
what she looked like 5 minutes before our plane landed.
Ok, this picture is actually from the flight there & not the flight home. Still, it’s a pretty accurate representation of the moment.

* Got to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport about 10 minutes after our connecting flight had departed. Sigh. We were rebooked on a later flight, and then had three hours to kill until the next plane left. Fabulous.

* High point of the day #2: We found the children’s play area at DFW and Catie had a blast running around playing with the other kids there. Way to burn off the energy, kid. But really, she was very sweet and nice during the entire layover, no meltdowns at all. I could hardly believe it. Lord knows I wanted to throw myself on the ground and scream for a good long while.
revisiting the Dallas/Forth Worth airport children's play area

* Finally got on the 2:25 flight to Raleigh. (Irony: if we’d made our original connection, we would’ve already been home for an hour by the time this plane departed. Sigh.) Oh, but first we had to stand on the jetway for 20 minutes in 90-degree heat because maintenance had to replace a seat cushion. WTF?

* I got us both seated on the plane, then called Dave to let him know we were finally on our way home. Turns out, he had left his office a little early to meet the cable guy at our house. He got to the new house, only to learn that we had no electricity. Freaking fabulous.

* Highlight of the day #3: Catie and I both slept most of the way to Raleigh. I can almost never sleep on planes, but I bought some Dramamine at the airport, which helped a lot. Poor Catie just sacked out for the whole trip.

* We got to Raleigh. Finally. Oh, and American Airlines, seriously? I had a 3-hour layover in Dallas and you STILL managed to lose one of my two suitcases? Are you kidding me??? (They found it later & delivered it, thankfully. But still. ARGH!)

* I called Dave again. He found out out that our utility company had orders to set up our new utilities on the 17th, not the 11th (clearly a typo). So they shut off our utilities, thinking it was the previous owners’ that they were shutting off, not the new residents. No electricity might’ve been manageable – we have a generator, and it’s not insanely hot right now. But we also had no water. So, no. Not staying there. The utility company said the soonest they could get out to turn our utilities on was at 1 p.m. today (Wednesday).

* I called Cat & Tony, made hasty change of plans to instead go to their house to crash for the night. Called Dave, told him to bring the cold food from the fridge & freezer (so it wouldn’t rot), and meet me there.

* Highlight of the day #4: the bath that Catie and her cousin Elizabeth took together. Freaking hilarious.
Catie & Elizabeth in the tub

* We all crashed for the night, prepared to take on the day tomorrow, blah blah blah.

More about the big “new house” reveal later. I’m tired. Will update with pics soon, too.