Anita Blanchard: The Remodel

Tue, 14 Mar 2006 21:40:13 GMT

Cleverness in a Hurry

I have 5 minutes before I go pick up Conor from daycare, so I must be brilliantly speedy. Or speedily brilliant. Whatever. It is likely I will fail.

We spent the weekend tearing down trees and painting bathrooms. The bathroom still needs one more coat of paint and I am too damn tired after working all day to finish the job. So, it may have to wait until this weekend or until Friday night. The color is much, much better, and we’ll have the before and after show ready on flickr pronto.

TTC with a head full of snot

In much more exciting news, my wonderful OB has given me the go-ahead to start TTC this month, despite my ENT’s desire for me to wait. I have worked through the ENT’s main concerns by rescheduling my C/T scan before ovulation. And the antibiotics I’m on are just fine for pregnancy, so unless the ENT insists on surgery immediately, we’re a go-ahead for starting again this month.

Ironically, I’m taking some cough syrup, Robitussin G, which will help both with fertility and my sinus infection. Ain’t life grand?

Basa

More adorableness than you can stand: Basa is how Conor says Simba. Simba was the first cat whose name Conor could say and he called her Ba. Now, he’s trying to add the “s” sound but is apparently confused on where it should go. He’s put it at the end. So her name is now Basa (at least to him). At one point, while also trying to work in the “m” sound, he started calling her M’basa, which I thought was some sort of famous politician, but I clearly am not spelling it right.

Late for picking up my son….late for everything.

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 18:49:46 GMT

Spring Break

About damn time. It’s 2:00 on the Friday of our university’s Spring Break and I’m getting ready to Go Enjoy It!!! Yeah, babbbeeeee!!!

You’d think that we professors would get to enjoy a little break from school. But you’d think wrong! I have worked my booty off this week. And finally, at 2:00, although I have more work I can do, I’m going to take the afternoon off and do some chores.

It is an absolutely gorgeous day in the mid 70’s and we’re going to do some plantin’ and some paintin’ this weekend and I need to go get prepped for this. We will be updating the master bathroom and you can check here for our progress. Right now, you can only see the hideous colors from yesteryear. That is, unfortunately, not going to be changed, because we cannot afford it! But we’re going to try to make the rest of it work with a new coat of paint and some kicky accessories.

We’re also going to finish putting in our pink Lenten roses in the shade garden (that now I’m worried is not shady enough) and plant three (or more!) blueberry bushes!! The asparagus continues to grow, and I’m documenting this year’s landscaping and gardening, here. Why? Well, because I can. And it’s nice to see how everything changes. The strawberry plants have flowers on them, too, so we may get berries this year. Yippee!!! Can I just say, once again, God Bless Perennials. It is a buttload easier to plant once and then reap for years than to plant and plant and plant and plant and freakin’ plant again.

OK. Off to be free to be me before I go pick up the little guy and smooch him on the head.

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 17:27:25 GMT

Home Repair

Thank God(dess) I took a shower this morning because this place is filthy with people crawling around doing home repair. Well, OK, not really filthy. People are “here” and there are multiple types of “people”. And it just seemed like it would be a nice visual contrast of me all clean and other people all filthy. Kind of a play on words with “filthy” if you were paying attention.

Of course, now that I’ve beaten all cleverness out of the horse of that paragraph…

Stuff’s going on around here! We’re getting our rotten siding replaced! It’s just a little bit of siding, but I feel like the house is house is getting its teeth flossed. And Tommy the bug man stopped by this morning to lay pesticides down to kill the evil cockroaches trying to enter our house. Yes, I’m supposed to be all natural mama and whatever. But when you live in old houses in old neighborhoods and bugs are the size of mice, you call in the professionals. In any case, the organic vegetables will be arriving soon, so the pesticides goodness/badness will cancel each other out. (Like the calories when you eat a salad and French fries in the same meal!)

We’ve also improved the home on our own. Dave put insulation in the “attic” over the home office and we’re both stunned with how well it holds heat now. I’ve also figured out how to set the thermostat in the portable heater, so funny how that helps too.

And you will note if you go here, that Dave has again been handily working around the house, building a new cabinet in which to store my collection of (artsy) coffee mugs. A few gift occasions ago, Dave got a router (some sort of important and useful power tool thing). It’s one of the most selfish gifts for me that he’s ever received. It’s sort of along the lines of me getting a stove for my birthday, that’s how useful it’s become around the house.

Back to work. But I did get up at 5:30 and go running this morning. Yay for me.

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:05:53 GMT

Money

Ha! Should this be called “Money” or “Money and the lack thereof?” It doesn’t matter. If it’s called “Oxygen” or “I can’t breathe,” we’re talking about the same thing.

This, however, is related to our remodeling efforts and how we’re having to let things go. We definitely are not letting maintenance things go. We have a contractor scheduled to come over next week (during the predicted ice storm!!!) to fix the rotten spots in the siding. But we’ve decided to skip repairing the bathtub. Instead, we’re just going to paint the room, fix the water spots in the ceiling, buy a new mirror, and put up a very heavy shower curtain so that people cannot see that hideously ugly bathtub. We will also issue a warning to anyone foolish enough to pull back the curtain to see just how ugly it is.

You would think that “fixing the bathtub” would fall under maintenance. But it doesn’t. Unless you mean maintaining my ability not to gouge out my eyes when I look at it. The problem is that the white paint on the bathtub and the tiles are peeling away. Hmmmm? Paint? On a bathtub and tiles? Yes.

The remodel folks argue that it’s better to just replace the tiles and tub than refinish and/or paint them and I agree. However, the previous owner did not have enough money to do that so he painted them white. Fair enough. I understand. But the reason he had to paint them white is because the owner before him bought and installed a PINK bathtub underneath green SEA FOAM tile.

Holy Fucking Shit I am NOT KIDDING YOU!!!!! Not only did this man have a PINK bathtub and SEA FOAM green tile, he used the SAME COLORS in the “master” bedroom at some point. I know this from when I was scraping away at the layers of eye-popping paint in the bedroom two years ago. I just had no idea at the time that these colors had co-existed. I thought they had been options one after another. But now that I see the fashion choices in the bathroom, I know these colors existed on purpose side by side in large amounts and in close proximity.

It makes me anxious.

So why don’t we do something about this? Well, we planned on it. But it would cost over $1500 for us to strip the current bad bath-tub and tile paint job and have it repainted. And it would be even more if we had everything replaced. And we know for sure that when we remodel this part of the house is going to go, go, go! So yes, if we remodel in 10 years, it would be worth it to invest that money now. But if we remodel in 3 years? No! What about 5 years? Is it worth $300 a year to have a pretty bathtub? Well, no. Not to us. We don’t have $300 a year to blow just on a pretty bathtub when a fancy $50 shower curtain can keep us from seeing that hideousness. Or at least keep me from seeing it. Dave uses this shower primarily, so I can avoid large splotches of PINK and SEA FOAM most days. (It does make me wonder about the man two owners ago. Who on earth would think those colors were a good choice? Even if they were free, they are so ugly a combination in large quantities that they could be used in jails to get people to confess)

So, yay! We save money by not spending it. We risk gouging our eyes out by leaving it there. But Dave claims not to mind. Fine. He may shower there. I will use the other painted over tub which appears to only have an off-white tub beneath it. Definitely, it’s not as bad.

BFF

What would you do if you found out that it was highly likely that your best friend was going to be moving from across the country to live in your neighborhood? Yes, you would worry about the culture shock of moving from the big liberal California city to middle-sized moderate southern Charlotte. You would recall your own angst at moving across country and how it takes a while to settle back in. But then you would dance the toddler dance of joy around your house not believing in your own good luck.

That would describe our household right now. More news as it becomes more certain. But we are absolutely thrilled at our good fortune.

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 14:07:44 GMT

Detritus

I’m not in a coherent state this morning. Although Conor slept through the night, my body decided to honor our ritualistic waking by sending my diaphragm into a spasm from 3 am until 4 am. Usually, I only get that after a really hard run, but last night, well, last night my body decided to just keep me in that less-than-full-sleep mode. It hurts, but it’s clear there’s nothing seriously wrong. So, ahem, there’s no need for anyone close to me to worry about it. (You have to feel for the folks close to me; it’s hard for them to read this blog and not get freaked out occasionally, what with the twitching, red, spasmy bits I share)

So here are things on my mind:

Bad Mommy

Conor’s daycare is beside a YMCA in Charlotte. Dave and I joined it before Christmas so I could start working off my booty. I feel guilty going to the gym when I could be picking up Conor early. But I figure the 30 year old Conor would forgive me for picking him up a little late if the Mommy he has then was still healthy and vibrant.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t expecting the 18 month old Conor to see me drive into the parking lot yesterday. (When I say his daycare is beside the Y, I mean his daycare is almost touching the Y—they share a plot of land and a parking lot) So he sees the car drive in, he sees me get out of the car and he proceeds to run around the playground squealing in anticipation of me picking him up. Imagine my guilt when I walk into the Y. And then let me tell you that it was worse that you imagine. I did a quick workout and then picked him up.

I’ve got to keep working out and get a healthy body back, but the guilt is pretty overwhelming.

Cooking

Thanks to some very kind gifts, I received two good cookbooks over the holidays which I have been using quite a bit. I think it’s part of the healing process and also part of being on vacation, but I’ve made chicken meatball soup, braised pork roast, Indian spicy cauliflower, Spanish fish and fried cheese, “real” macaroni and cheese, and even more considering the holiday parties we hosted, again as part of the therapy.

I do love cooking and I’m lucky to have a husband and a toddler who are pretty willing to try about anything. Conor isn’t always a fan, but if we can sneak it in his mouth, he’ll eat it.

Of course, in my head, when I blogged about my recent cooking, the details were mouth watering and inspiring. <insert witty, inspiring, mouth watering comments here>

Remodel

Here’s this year’s lesson: we’re ending out third year in this house and finally, FINALLY, the To Do less is getting shorter. We took the advice from Saturday’s Charlotte Observer to write down all our plans for the year and to create a budget (Yikes! Some items immediately went to next year). We also incorporated Nancy Brachy’s To Do list for the garden. (I love her, by the way. I’ve written her so many times I feel like a stalker) It’s a lot: we have two more landscaping beds to do as well as decide on some trees and blueberry bushes; Dave has more work on the garage; we need to repair some rotted out wood, etc. etc. I have even decided to keep the vegetable garden this year despite the fact that I hated it last summer. We’re planting less and we’re using a boat load of mulch to keep the weeds out.

Nonetheless, I turned to our To Do list in April for 2 years ago, and the To Do list for APRIL was as long as our to do list for this WHOLE YEAR!

Holy crap!! We were stupidly ambitious.

And Dave, being unused to the whole point of making a To Do list and then To Put It Off has already started on three of his items and is nearly complete: screens for office windows, change heating filters and MAKE A CUPBOARD FOR OUR COFFEE CUP COLLECTION!! Since Saturday, he’s done all this.

If I had-a known that, we’d have lists stuck up all over the place. I, of course, have done squat on my list. Oh well. I think that’s pretty much my life.

OK. The conference paper is in and I think it doesn’t suck. Now, I need to write an essay and then review a research proposal from Canada. I don’t know how Canada found me, but it’s a pretty big deal and I’m happy to help. I’m not sure when I’ll be back here. Tomorrow I’m teaching and Thursday I’m going to Clemson for a NSF conference.

Did I mention that I woke up Sunday night and found that my shoulders were attached to my ears? In my SLEEP!!!! I’m unconscious, yet nonetheless, my shoulders are up around my ears. I kept pulling them down, going back to sleep and then waking up to them at my ears. That is pathetic. Pa-thetic.

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:40:40 GMT

I’m on a Tear

We’ve decided not to remodel the house.

I really want to fix the problems in our house’s design, but we don’t have the money. We could become “house poor” and suck it up for a few years and trust that financially things will be better when we’re not paying for (hopefully) two children’s daycare.

Or we could take the financially conservative route and just wait. Wait until the kids are in school. Wait until I get tenure. Wait until we have a bit more money in the coffers. And although I don’t like waiting, it is part of our financial philosophy to live below our means so that we can retire at our means. ((Although, to be perfectly honest, we are not currently “living below our means.” We’re still spending way too much money when in actuality we’re poorer than a church mouse. We should cut back on everything if we want to live below our means. No groceries, no electricity, no clothes from anywhere besides Marshalls and Target. Actually, the latter is true.))

So I’ve decided since we are not going to remodel, I’m going to stop ignoring some of the fixable flaws in our house. I’m on a tear. I’m a whirling Tasmanian devil whipping through crap, tossing crap out, and reorganizing the crap we can still use.

So far, I’ve thrown out a great deal of my wardrobe including all those cute, skinny clothes I had when I was cute and skinny in LA. Newsflash: even though I’ve lost all my pg weight, I’m still not as skinny as I was in LA, and my body has changed so that I can’t wear most of my clothes from before. And even if I could ever get my fat ass in my skinny clothes, what looked good as a single skinny girl in LA is not so much in fashion for a mother professor in the South. Result: a nearly empty closet.

I’ve also started on the counters and cabinets in the kitchen AND the infamous junk drawers. I’ve put all those extra appliance cords and birthday candles and matches and whatnot in plastic baggies. (And BTW, we had well over a 100 birthday candles, so Sorry Mom! We could have had candles on your cake for your birthday this year instead of that sparkler which seemed like a good idea at the time but left burnt silver shit all over the white icing of your birthday cake.) Result: I can see the counters for the first time in months. Additionally, there’s a trashbag of shit we’ve never used and will never miss.

There’s more we’re going to do: move furniture around, buy a few pieces of cheap furniture for the living room, hang more pictures on the wall, throw out more and more and more and more and more accumulated shit that we don’t ever use.

One thing that has really stuck in my craw from what the architect said. She pointed out that if we did the remodel, we’d still only end up with 2200 sq. feet “and that’s a really small house. That’s not big at all.” (And that wasn’t even counting the additional 400 sq feet out in the office)

You know what folks? The vast majority of this world lives in a smaller space with more people than we currently live in now. We can manage. No. Really and truthfully. It’s OK. We can do just fine in the house we’re in right now.

We are, however, seriously considering using their plans to revamp the butt ugly bathroom. Their suggestions would fix the one major design flaw in the house that does make our bathroom difficult to use. (Dave can’t use this bathroom because the toilet is so close to the shower that either his butt or his knees are hanging in the shower if he’s at the toilet. I simply sit sidesaddle and bypass the issue). But that’s only about $6-8K. That we can afford.

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 14:18:57 GMT

Lots of Things

Folks, I wish I could say I’ve not been blogging because I have nothing to say. (Un)Fortunately, there’s lots going on and no time to reflect on it.

Remodel

Waaaaaaay back at the beginning of this blog, we said we were going to be remodeling our house in the next year. Two years later, we’re finally ready to make that decision.

Our architects stopped by with their plans last Friday. And we like them. We’re not overwhelmed with the beauty and joy of them, but we cannot afford a remodel that moves us to the level of Beauty and Joy in this old house. We’re not even sure we can afford the Better but Still Charming remodel they proposed. (I believe “Charming” must be code for “We still think it’s an ugly house, but we don’t want to offend you.”)

The gist of their remodel is to add 6 feet onto the narrow side of the house, thus extending our munchkin sized bedrooms into normal sized ones, converting one bedroom into a humongous family room, and adding a master suite of bedroom, closet and big ass bath along the length of the house.

So, yes, it would be an improvement over the existing house. But yes, we could still live in the house the way it is, even if/when we add another monkey/bunny to our household. There would be doubling up of children in a (tiny, tiny) bedroom, but it would be doable.

The fiscally conservative route would be to wait until I get tenure and the kids get out of daycare. That will give us much more security and financial flexibility. The riskier route would be to refinance the home with an adjustable rate mortgage. The “good” news is that remodels in our neighborhood cost about $130/sq. foot and we’re selling the ‘hood at around $175/sq foot. Add the home office to the remodel and we’d make a hefty profit on the house if we sold it. But if we don’t sell it, we’ll be piss poor until we sell it at retirement.

Risky or conservative. That’s really what we’re down to.

Reproduction

Even weirder, being back in the midst of Baby Quest 2005, you’d think that I’d just relax and “do it” and not worry about what was happening when and how. Well, clearly, you do not know me.

I thought I knew all I needed to know about my body and the reproduction system the last go round. That’s when I learned about Ovalina and Sparky’s Big Adventure. The key points being a woman is only fertile 12 to 24 hours a month because that’s how long “Ovalina” lives after her debut. But a National Geographic movie we saw last week brought up even more information/questions and so I’ve thus been on a search of additional info including finding out that spermies can only swim about 1 inch an hour and scientists have no real idea how long it takes them to move up to the fallopian tube. Estimates range anywhere from one hour to ten hours!!! This site says it’s likely it takes them 6-8 hours to reach the top o’ the tube.

And then there is a stunning amount of (dis)information on how long sperm actually live. This site says they only live from 16 to 18 hours whereas others say they usually live two days and up to five. If it’s really only a 16 hour lifespan for sperm and the egg only lives for 12 hours, HOW THE HELL DO PEOPLE GET PREGNANT WITHOUT MASSIVE PLANNING AND IMPECCABLE TIMING????

Seriously, WTF? The likelihood of anyone accidentally getting pregnant is just out of this world!!! But we know it isn’t, so really. What is going on here???

And with that comment, I’d like to give a hardy blogworld shout out to Carter and Evelin who are expecting Baby #2!!!! Dudes, I think it’s time for you all to change your blog name, because your life changes are not delayed at all. Life is coming at you with all fours screaming!

Rethink

I’ll leave you with this thought. I’m walking down the hall a couple of weeks ago. A colleague walking behind me says incredulously “You have lost a TRUCKLOAD of weight!”

“Thanks!” I reply. “I just stopped eating so much.”

Nonetheless, I cannot get the image out of my head of a truckload of fat driving around behind me. A truckload.

Oh, just be honest and say “MY GOD, your ass is not nearly as wide as it was last semester.”

Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:02:39 GMT

Morning Commute

Today’s commute was amazing. I got dressed, grabbed a cup of coffee and walked out the front door. Then I walked off the deck, through the backyard and into my new office.

Wow.

No, really. Wow. The place is amazing. I’m sitting at my desk looking out into the ultra green NC summer through 5 windows and the French Doors. I feel very inspired to power through a gazillion projects and spit out Nobel prize winning research. (If, of course, psychologists could win Nobel prizes!) Pictures of the remodel from start until yesterday are here. View as a slideshow to see the whole process emerge.

We’ve still got a bit to go as far as arranging furniture and filling the filing cabinets. I don’t have internet access in here yet (we’re going to go wireless so we can use the computers in both the house and the office). I’ve got to set up some of the electronic gizmos, still. But it’s better than I imagined.

And ALL HAIL THE HANDY HUSBAND again!!!! Let’s just review what the man has done. He demolished the old workshop by taking out all the drywall and light fixtures. He rewired the room to code. He installed 6 windows and French doors. He added 6 recessed lights and 2 additional light fixtures for when we add chopsticks lights over our desks. He put insulation in the walls. (The house doesn’t even have that!) He hung drywall (with a good deal of help from family, neighbors and friends). We painted the walls and ceiling and floor. He put trim around all the windows and he put in crown molding and baseboards.

Since we chose the colors to match our kitchen and dining room and the molding and baseboards are nearly the same as the house, our neighbor walked out here and said that it looks just like we’ve taken a room out of the house and put it back here. It looks like it’s always been this way.

Here’s the part that Dave came up with on his own that has floored us. We have a window unit A/C in here. (Thank God, because we’re setting heat records this week) We were planning on using space heaters for heating the place. But Dave found a permanent wall mounted heater that he’s going to install for a few hundred dollars. Yes, that’s expensive. But guess what? Once we have permanent heat in here, we think this space now counts as finished, permanent heated space. Which increases our house’s total square footage. By 20%. For around $2500. Which adds over $50K to our house value based on the comps in our neighborhood.

Yeee---iii---kkk—eee—efffin----damn.

We want to talk to some real estate agents to make sure. And no, it doesn’t add any money to our pockets right now. The whole reason we did this so that I could work at home more effectively. Still. Holy Cow.

Hope Haven ((((sigh))))))

Thank you for all your kind words about Hope Haven. I once said in discussing the situation with a friend that if another family needed to be at Hope Haven more than we did, then they should end up there and we’d find somewhere else.

However, upon reflection, I didn’t really mean it. Hahahah. Ha. Ha. Ha. No, I do believe that if a door shuts a window opens somewhere else. That you can jump out of to relieve your misery. Whooo! Hahahah. Ha. Ha. Ha……..ha.

((((((sigh))))))

We’re checking out our other options. We cannot send him somewhere scary. We may have to pay more to have him in a temporary space. We might share a nanny with someone in the neighborhood. However, we’re really hoping to end up at the Easter Seals daycare.

OK. I must start working in my new office. Very exciting indeed.

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:41:50 GMT

Look, Mommy! Look at me walk!

We had a crazily busy weekend. Dave worked at a Habitat House on Saturday, using his new skills for good as opposed to just working just for me (!). I primed the ceiling and walls Friday and Saturday until Dave came home. Saturday night, we put the first coat of paint on the ceiling. Yesterday, we did both coats of paint on the walls. I have to go to Eastway Paints today to get more paint for the ceiling. We have to cut, prime and paint the crown molding and baseboards, and then we wash the cement floor and paint it too.

Our interior decorator recommended painting the floor and ceilings a half shade lighter then the walls. When we painted the ceiling, it looked awfully yellow. But now that the walls are up, it looks so white with a hint of yellow to it. Cool.

But that has nothing to do with the little monkey walking around the house. No, he is not walking. But he continues to think he is. What is so funny is that he will go around and around and around the house. It wears out Dave and me. I would imagine that he should be tired by the third loop around the house. Dave pointed out that we were running marathons before we conceived. Thus, our little monkey very well may be walking marathons by 18 months. You can see a video of him walking.

He also crawled this morning, all fours crawling with arms and legs moving. We were shouting out encouragement to him and he was very proud of himself. We’ve been bad in letting him scoot. He has rug burns on his feet and legs from scooting around.

The real crawling makes up for the head butt into my eye this morning and the reflexive chomp on my nipple after a sneeze during an early morning feeding. Not the real snuggle monkey antics I prefer when he wakes up in the big bed.

More later. I have a ton of work today.

Mon, 23 May 2005 14:21:01 GMT

Garage Update

I will post pictures later on this week, but the garage-to-home-office remodel is zooming right along. This weekend, Dave, my dad, and two other friends worked on installing the dry wall on the ceiling and the walls. As of last night, we have the bottom of one wall and a few odd shapes here and there left to do. Dave will be able to finish those bits off this week.

It’s amazing when I think back to what Dave has done. He has had to learn how to and then actually do the following: install French doors, hang 7 windows, rewire the garage, tear out all the old drywall and install the new drywall, install recessed lights and insulate the garage/office.

We’re going to pay for someone to “mud” the walls, or put tape and spackle the seams on the dry wall. (Apparently, at least around here, that process is called mudding, and is a lot of hard work) Then we have to prime and paint the walls, paint the ceilings and floor, put in molding, wire it for the computer and move everything in. We’re talking less than one more month and the office will be set up!!!

It’s so gorgeous! And it is, in fact, going to be the biggest room in the house! We’ll have a sitting area for reading and editing, two desks, and loads of bookcases. We’re even going to put some benches/storage areas around the windows of the reading area for even more storage space. I can’t wait to have my own dedicated office space for working at home.

Sick Baby

And the other “exciting” news this weekend was Conor’s mystery illness. He’s been in a relatively good mood, but he’s been running a fever between 100 and 102.5 since Friday. Finally, late last night, his fever broke and he was back to normal. But then at 4:00 am, he was roasting again. So far after that last Tylenol, he’s back to normal. We’re keeping him home, though, because if any fever spikes again, it’s time to take him to the doctor. The weird thing is that he’s had absolutely no other signs of illness: no vomiting, no runny noses, just a little less appetite and a little more fussing.

OK. I’m off to the library to copy articles and do some reading. Dave is Mr. Mom today.

(Final, finally, Simba ran across my computer keyboard Friday night and changed the font size on my screen. I have no idea how to get my computer back to normal. Wily little cat....)

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:49:54 GMT

Sleep Improvements and Setbacks

We’ve had some serious step forwards and a major step back this week in the sleep arena. Conor is now only waking up twice during the night, exactly 4 hours and 15 minutes after we give him Tylenol. The Tylenol is for the teething pain for the Tooth That Will Not Completely Break The Skin. We can feel it. We can barely see it, but for nearly one week it has made absolutely no progress in coming further in.

This, in our minds, explains why he’s been teething for 3 months: he has slow moving teeth. We can see the outline of the other 3 teeth (one on bottom and 2 on top) which should be coming in soon, but I’m betting it’s going to be a few more weeks before we have toothage. And yes, we tried ibuprofen which should last 6 hours and it lasted approximately 2. Needless to say, that night’s experiment sucked.

We’ve also decided no jumping between school and bed. Although jumping is an amazing amount of fun, it is apparently a child’s version of crank. It winds our little monkey up so much that he is not even close to being ready for bed until 8. This is nearly an hour to one and a half hours later than what was normal.

My Talented Boobs

(That title ought to get a few google hits. By the way, if you find this blog because you searched for baby cats or baby dogs, let me clue you in that the proper words are KITTENS and PUPPIES, you ding dong. I keep shouting that at the computer, so now I can shout it at you, you lame google searchers).

OK! Back to my boobs. I’ve been pumping a little less at work, and thanks to Carroll (Hi Carroll!) who pointed out that fenugreek is recommended to help increase milk supply. I was ready to start using it because Monday, I felt like I had to send in a little extra milk than what I had pumped on Friday. But then on Monday, guess what happened? Let’s say I sent in 17 ounces to daycare on Monday. However I only pumped 15 ounces on Monday. Guess what? Conor sent two ounces back. On Tuesday, again, I sent in 17 but I only pumped 15. Conor sent two ounces back. This entire week whatever I pump, that’s exactly what Conor drinks at daycare.

Isn’t that fricking amazing?!?! I hate to go on and on and on about how fantastic my boobs are, but for some body part that has done nothing (really, nothing) their entire existence to start feeding another human being the EXACT amount of food this child wants just blows my mind. I’m so proud of my boobs. (Again, someone is going to google that phrase and end up here quite disappointed) Nonetheless, I’ve never been so proud of a body part in my entire life.

Interior Decorator

On a completely different note, we had an interior decorator come by this week. She is FANTASTIC! She is exactly what we’ve been looking for this whole time. She came in for about 45 minutes, made some immediate suggestions on furniture for our living room (b/c it’s so small, use 4 chairs instead of a sofa, buy them all in the same color, buy some stools and a cushioned ottoman in another color which can serve both as extra seats and coffee tables), gave us homework to find furniture/colors we liked, and suggested painting the office floor and ceiling a lighter shade of the wall coloring and using neutral white/canvas for the furniture. It was absolutely perfect. She is exactly what we’ve been looking for. With her permission, I’d like to attach her name to this post so that folks searching for her will find our rave review.

OK. So it’s Friday of spring break. I have done a lot; I have a lot to do. I’ve not worked this hard over spring break that I can ever recall.

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 01:56:37 GMT

Garage Remodel

Check out what my clever husband has done!!! These are the before and (almost) after shots of the garage to office remodel. Dave did this over the last two weekends mostly all by himself!! Our neighbor contractors came over to give some advice and hints, but pretty much he did this alone!

There are a lot of hints and things I wish I could tell you about, but I don't really understand them. He had to move supports and cut holes and do all kinds of things. I do know that the after picture doesn't have all the siding in it yet, although he finished it up yesterday. And we need to paint the siding to match the rest of the garage. The remaining windows go along the back of the garage. Then we have to put the sheetrock up on the ceiling and walls.

Still, amazing what just a door and window can do, eh??

I wish I knew better how to manipulate pictures on this blog to make this really stand out. But I don't! So I hope the pictures will stop over running all the words.

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 14:25:52 GMT

Garage Remodel

I am so excited.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about remodeling. We have not stopped this effort; we were just saving money to do it. Oh, and there’s been this little issue of time lately, but what the hey.

Well, things have just gotten exciting. Last week, Dave and I ordered the French doors and the windows for the remodel. And I’m going to talk real numbers here. When we spoke to the architect and the interior decorator, they gave us estimates that it would cost between $3500 and $5000 for just the windows and doors. (YIKES!) But I’m here to tell you that from Home Depot, we got the doors, 6 windows, and the extra wood and other stuff I don’t understand for $1250. Delivered. Wooohooohooo!!!!

Granted, now we have to put them in. I should rephrase that, Dave has to put them in. But we have them at a boatload cheaper than what we thought. And again, I’m here to tell you that we are so glad we paid that money to an architect for his suggestions. We’ve taped up where he suggested we should put the windows, and it is going to look great. It’s going to be so sunny. Where we would have likely put four windows up and the door, he wants us to put up six windows, four of which will be hung side by side, essentially making an entire corner of the garage/soon-to-be-office full of windows.

So what we have left to do is take off the siding, install the windows with the help of our neighbors, move the electrical stuff around, put up the drywall ceiling and walls, paint the ceilings, wall and floor and then move in! We’ll be done next weekend, right?! Bwhahahahah.

We’ll be done in a few months. But we’ve got the materials and we got them on sale. And after our garage sale this weekend, we’ll have more money and more space to do what we want to do. We actually might be able to get through the whole remodel including new furniture and lights for under $2000. (We’re not going to be extravagant when we buy furniture for the new office space)

One thing that comforts us about this remodel: we’re hoping to add on another room or two to the house by the time we have another bun popping out of the oven. However, if we can’t afford it by then, the current family room/office could go back to being a bedroom and the garage/office would work just fine. I’m the type of person who likes to have a Plan A and a backup Plan B in case things don’t work out. And this whole garage remodel thing feels like it’s a win/win situation.

Landscaping Updates

On other housing news, we’re starting to look around for the next phase of plant and shrubbery additions to our back yard. We had that problem with azaleas over the spring (uh, they died a long and dramatic death). So we’re looking to our next try at azalea planting and growing. Chalk this up to one for the Glad It Didn’t Work the First Time. We are going to plant Encore Azaleas this time. Encore azaleas bloom in both the spring and the fall. More blooms always sounds good to me. And we found a really great web site that sells them for only $10, so if we kill them, we haven’t lost a lot of money. And to top that all off, we can pick out ones that will grow high enough to hide our neighbors. Or at least, our neighbor’s ugly ass shed and woodpile.

BTW, the pink scotchbroom we planted this spring (to achieve the same effect further down the yard) have doubled in size since planting them. They grow up to 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide, so we are thinking that in two years, they will provide a great cover to our neighb’s weed palace. We only need to buy and plant some schip laurel to finish off the green barrier to that side of our property. Oh, and we need to find one or two large trees/shrubs to block the direct view from this desk to our neighbor’s back porch with all their leftover remodeling debris.

OK. I’ve got about an hour left in the little monkey’s first morning nap. I should go get dressed.

Ooops. Too late. I hear squeaking over the monitor.

Tue, 01 Jun 2004 13:45:14 GMT

All Hail the Handy Husband

Before I got married, before I even met Dave, I thought it would be nice to have a handy husband, a man about the house who could do all those clever things that need to be done and I don't know how to do. Let me just say, it is definitely one of those preconceived notions about marriage that is absolutely true.

Dave spent this weekend replacing the siding on part of our house. Yes, that's right. Replacing the siding on our house. I don't know about you, but to me, that seems like a big deal. And based on our soon to be sister-in-law Lisa's calculations that all home projects take your best estimate times pi, it was a very long project. Some of the unexpected complications: bracing part of the frame which was rotting out from water damage, replacing the rotted out window ledge and trim, installing insulation in the attic and walls and thus explaining why I could feel strong breezes inside the house, and (best of all) adding a bathroom fan with switch separate from the light switch to the bathroom. Wooooooohooooooo!!!! What is also really cool is that two of our neighbors who are contractors came by and were quite impressed with the work he was doing and commented that he was doing a good job!!

Of course, the man is pooped this morning and looking forward to going back to work to get some rest. And who can blame him? I can barely walk right now. My contributions this weekend included mostly finishing up the nursery, which is looking waaaay cute, and kind of cleaning up the front part of the house. I also dragged my man to Babies 'R Us and Target to stock up on some important baby things which took a lot more time than it should because I couldn't actually walk around the stores.

The good news is that I have an 11:00 appt with the chiropractor today, and yes, I am expecting miracles. It really, really hurts. ("It" being my butt and back) I've got too much to do to be injured this far into the process.

Off to ready myself for the day.

Thu, 15 Apr 2004 13:15:23 GMT

Don't it make my brown hair blue?

I finished painting the walls of the soon-to-be family room last night. They are a bright, grayish blue. Being the novice home improvement decorating chick that I am, I'm not sure whether I like/hate new room colors because they are different or because they look good/bad. The new bedroom color was easy because we just went one-half shade lighter than the old bedroom color. This is my first "new" pulled out of sky (!) because I thought it would look good. My reasoning is that it was a nice compliment to our main house color, yellow. And I do think that it looks nice. I'm just worried that it's a bit darker than we wanted. Once we have all our white-washed antique-i-fied furniture in there, I think it will bright up. I just really, really, really, really didn't want a pastel blue or a baby blue. And many of the light blues we tried were heading towards that genre. Maybe I could have gone more gray-ish, but the current family room is a gray-brown, which as you may imagine, is just loooooooovely. Hence, why I did not choose it for the new family room color.

There's little else going on besides work. I finally (almost) finished up an analysis on a project in which I've had the data for nearly two years. The good news is that I finally figured out why the analysis wasn't working. The bad news is that it's because the data doesn't fit the model I have been trying to test. Yippee! Now, I have to figure out how to present it so that it still seems like an important insight that everyone should know.

When I'm this focused on work, I have a hard time thinking of things to write about that could be interesting to anyone else but the 10 other people doing research in my area. It worries me about when bun pops out of the oven---how am I going to keep my brain focused on all it will need to focus on? One of my male colleagues suggested that while I'm on maternity leave, I should be able to get a lot of writing and research done. I totally plan on doing that. But when he shared that he was surprised with how much he got done when his children were born, it was only a hint of sarcasm that I asked if he nursed his children. I'm really hoping that on my maternity leave, I can get 4 hours a day of writing done. That's a lot of writing for research. I usually need more though. Writing hurts! At least research writing does. This sort of writing is much more fun and much more interesting. Although, honestly, when I figure out the story behind my research, it turns into something more like this.

Anywho, for some truly funny writing, I found this on a link from Bitchypoo. Also, check out Arianna Huffington's new blog. I love her style and wit; it's one of the few political blogs I can read which is actually interesting, informative and funny. With a topic like this (babies, home, career), I'll never make her blogroll---although that's flattering myself! This blog is not as witty as something like Julie/Julia or Real Live Preacher which are interesting because of their writing, not because of their topics. BTW---both of the latter two blogs have book deals. I can't wait for the Julie/Julia book tour!

Sun, 04 Apr 2004 19:46:07 GMT

Working our Booties Off

Officially, no one in my family has a behind. I have worked my family to a flat bottomed state.

The guys finished the roof at 12:00 today (Sunday). It was truly a 4 day hard working project. And that includes the air pressure nail gun (or whatever you call it!). They worked hard and it looks fantastic! They even replaced a lot of trim and siding that had rotted out.

Mom and Lisa were amazingly productive. Mom stained all our deck furniture and finished the wine rack--which looks like a professional, commissioned piece of furniture. Now the wine closet is finished. It looks really good!

Lisa washed all the outside windows and finished the ring around the tree with our rocks from BlueMax Materials. It looks really good--not too big of a wall, but definitely it sets that plant bed apart from the yard.

Saturday was a rough day for Mom and Lisa. They spent a good deal of time prepping the old master bedroom. There were a lot of paint bubbles that needed to be scraped off. And a few holes from pictures to be spackled. And a huge crack under one window requiring massive amounts of spackle over several days. But the real problem was the caulking around the baseboard. Apparently, this room wasn't built with the same quality as the rest of the house, and there are some serious gaps between the wall and the baseboard. To fix this, someone earlier had deposited a massive amount of caulking in these gaps. The problem is that they then painted the caulking the same color as the room (layered from most recent to oldest: spiced cider apple, then red, then pink, then sea foam) which when it cracked, made a huge line around the bottom of the baseboard. There's a problem with the top trim, too, but it's not nearly as bad. We removed all the old caulking and sanded down to the original baseboard wood and are trying to figure out what to do next. At this point, we're leaning toward painting the caulk the same color as the trim/baseboard so that when the gap occurs, it's a gap on white and not a gap on blue (the new room color).

So what about my projects? Was I a complete slack dog?? Well, I worked on finishing the trenching and spreading pine needles on Friday. I was feeling really, really pooped again on Friday night and spent Saturday as the gopher and working a bit on the room. To be honest, things got a bit hairy Saturday night. I started having a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions and some mild cramps. We checked out the books and what I'm having would be more common for someone who has had several children and not her first. This morning, I've found that if I'm up and about, the B-H's start again, and I'm still having mild cramps. It's not as bad as it was last night, but it's worrisome. YES, I did call the doctor. It was amazing in that 3 minutes later the doctor on call returned my call, and said that it seemed like a good thing that the pains/contractions weren't progressing. He said he thought it was related to the work/projects and to "back off" today and take it easy. I've got my legs up and am using my lap top on my lap. Since I've been typing this, cramps are coming and going, but absolutely no Braxton Hicks contractions. And Bun is moving and kicking with vigor. I'm also wondering if some of what I'm feeling as "cramps" is actually some round ligament pain from the weekend's work. If I poke myself above my pubis symphysis, it is tender...which doesn't seem like a "cramp", right? That should be more internal. But what do I know? It's my first time doing this.

So now it's back to the real world, or at least back to school. Dave is going to be POOPED this week!

And our advice for remodeling comes directly from Lisa: Take your best estimate of how long you think the project is going to take and multiply it by pi. It was certainly accurate for us!

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 15:49:05 GMT

A quick update while I'm taking a break

We're putting all the free labor to hard work---if the early bedtime and stiff bodies last night are any indication. Dave and Dad were able to remove the roof last night. I was able to trench the new landscaping bed---using our electric trencher to cut a line, our manual trenching tool to make the trench and then a hoe and rake to pull back the dirt into the bed--without too much problem. Mom has done an excellent job on the staining. We are so psyched to see how beautiful the wine racks are going to turn out!

Fatigue

The odd thing is how stunningly tired I was. I certainly did not do anything I'd previously call strenuous yesterday, but boy oh boy, was I ready for bed. My arms were actually throbbing I was so tired. I know it's because I'm sharing my blood, oxygen and food with another human, but who woudda thunk such a small being would sap so much out of me! The books say that my fatigue is to let me know that I'm growing another body. I had figured that out already!

Please don't do that in front of company

So last night was one of those awkward moments when the kids act up in front of company. I was getting ready to put the food on the table, and I noticed Scarlett, ummmmmmm, scooting across the floor in the dining room, leaving a bit of a trail behind her. Apparently, she'd had a bit of an early dismount from the litter box, and had a doodle still attached. I think, appropriately, "Oh Crap!" and try to catch her. I signal to Dave that we have an issue, and he begins to chase Scarlett around the house with a paper towel. Patches is all excited by now because he thinks Scarlett is in trouble. I'm trying to distract everyone from noticing this unappetizing behavior. Dave is trying to catch and clean a hissing cat while Patches is doing his part by licking whatever trails he can find. (Lisa accurately commented later that Patches' behavior turned this situation into a self-correcting problem!)

Fortunately, no one noticed anything was amiss. But when Dave and I went to bed, I got hysterical laughing at our zoo of a household and how that has never happened with just us.

We're waiting for the rocks to arrive for the ring-around-the-tree. I'm going to start cleaning the windows, and then finish up trenching in the back. It's a lot easier now that I know what I'm doing. The guys are replacing the rotted wood around the roof and should start putting up felt and shingles this afternoon. All in all, things are going well.

Thu, 01 Apr 2004 12:26:40 GMT

Familial Labor

We're taking advantage of living near our family today. The whole tribe is arriving throughout the day to be set to work on tasks. My Dad, brother, and Dave are going to be replacing the roof on our garage. (We suspect Dad's trip to the hospital last week was a last ditched effort to escape from the hell he's about to enter!!) Mom is going to be staining our wine rack and our picnic deck furniture. Lisa, bro's gf, is going to be organizing a stone wall around a flower bed and helping to paint the family room (if we get that far). I'm going to be prepping our new plant beds, creating trenches around our new plant beds, spreading pine needles in plant beds, washing windows, picking out the stone for the wall, and hopefully nailing down the color for the new family room. If we get that far, then we'll start prepping the room to paint it over the weekend, too. Also, I'll be trekking back and forth to school to keep from looking like a total slack dog at work.

We're hoping this push will be the last big one for prepping the yard and garage, and we can start focusing on, well, for me, finishing up these honkin' research papers. If we finish all these tasks, the last things we'll need to do are paint the baby's room and put the windows in the garage for the remodel. Ok. And then put the dry wall up and paint the new garage office. But honestly, after everything else, that just seems so small!!

Yay for family! Yay for free labor that doesn't complain too much! Yay for us committing to helping them in their own barn-raising in the future. Yikes for everything we have to do!!!!!!

Mon, 15 Mar 2004 12:39:16 GMT

Review of the Spring Break To Do List/Poison Ivy

I’m wondering about the wisdom of trying to essentially redecorate two rooms, put in three major plant beds, move a(nother) truck load of dirt and set up a garden in 4 days. Especially when for two of those days, only one person was able to work on these projects.

The good news is that the beds are set and the garden is ready for planting. We still have a ton of dirt in the driveway to move. OK. Not a ton. We ordered a ton and some of it has already been moved. I was only able to put in two sets of shrubberies: the scotchbroom and the firepower nandina. We decided not to go with the satsuki azaleas. We love that they bloom in June, but they only grow to two feet. Those are supposed to serve as “eye guards” from our neighbor’s tool shed and two feet tall ain’t gonna do it. We’re going to go for the kurume azaleas which can get to 5 feet or so.

The inside of the house looks as though some wild boar has run amuck in it. Clothes are scattered all over the house. First, we’re moving the “good” bedroom furniture to the new “master” bedroom…and Dave and I are reorganizing the drawers, etc. There are still issues with t-shirts which must be resolved. I’m also putting into storage the clothes that are not going to fit around either my fat a$$ or my burgeoning belly until much later this year. The ones that hug the boobs tight, well, they’re staying at least for the time being. In any case, clothes are not stored in their special place yet and the place is a wreck.

The good news is that the furniture mostly fits in the new bedroom and we both are pretty psyched that the old bedroom is going to become the family room. It’s huge and sunny and just off the kitchen (No, I don’t know why someone put the master bedroom off the kitchen), so it will be a good place for us all to hang out.

The future…the future…when everything is back in its special place. That’s what I’m holding onto now.

And joy of joys, I think I have my first case of poison ivy. Just when I thought I couldn’t get any prettier. There are the flea bites, new amounts of fat, frizzy hair and no “beauty routine” up the whole week while on spring break. I confess, I sometimes do not wash my hair or change out of slacker clothes when I’m just working around the house. It may shocking (or not) but it’s the truth.

So, just when I was wondering if my husband was wishing I’d go back to work just so I’d actually wear clothes without holes in them, I notice that some of my “flea bites” are in a long, straight line. And that they are oozing. And that they are continuing to multiply despite our putting flea medicine on the furry children days earlier. And that I’m the only one getting bitten. So the conclusion we’ve come to is that either I’m the victim of some obsessive compulsive straight line fleas or I’ve got my first case of poison ivy. I probably went over the line in developing my sensitivity to it by working three day in a row pulling up the ivy beds.

I’m calling the doctor ASAP tomorrow morning. I’ve checked babycenter.com and I’ve googled like a wild woman and I see no danger to the baby if it is poison ivy. It’s just that soon, I would like to not wake up scratching my arms and legs in painful ecstasy. There’s a moment when I’m half asleep and I’m scratching myself in a frenzy…and then I realize I don’t give a f*ck and I am going to scratch every itch on my swollen body. And according to Dave, I haven’t even hit the itchy stage yet.

It’s a good thing I’m already pregnant, because in the state I’m in, there’s no chance I could get that way.

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:36:38 GMT

Let the Remodel Begin

Today, we start the room switch painting extravaganza. It's actually taken all week and weekend just to get to this point: removing the furniture, spackling the walls, wiping down the walls, taking out the hideous oversized ceiling fan, and taping up all the trim. Now I've start with some Killz water-stain-remover-primer from where the water from the roof leak ran down the walls and then we start the painting. I failed to mention on Monday that they put a new roof on our flat roof...Yay!...and that we didn't have any leaks yesterday during the rain.....YYYYAAAAYYYY!!!!!

Once everything is done, I hope to post some before and after pictures of the green room. And I might even put a picture of the former BUB up here...the butt ugly bathroom. You, too, shall agree that it was BU.

Tue, 09 Mar 2004 01:05:21 GMT

A freak windstorm last night knocked out power (for a little bit) and cable for 24 hours....I'm back up and I have a few things to blog about.

Baby Room Remodeling

So we spent Friday and Saturday making a significant dent in the baby furniture decisions. Once again, I'm so glad I have the baby bargains books. But I'm also glad I live in Charlotte. We have found a baby store that doesn't frighten or overwhelm us like Babies 'R Us does, plus they have good customer service. We're digging Baby Town located pretty close to our house. We're leaning towards an "entry level" Pali or Bonavita crib in a cherry stain. Both of these cribs are the basic model, but they are only $299---$100 more than Baby Bargain's Cheap but Good recommendation and several hundred dollars less than some of the other Pali's and Bonavita's we saw. We asked what the difference was between the $299 version and the other ones...better hardware? Better stability??? But essentially the sales person said that everything is the same within a line of cribs...just the stylish cribs cost more. I can guarantee you that Bun is not going to give a flying dirty diaper if his crib has curved or straight legs. Really. I don't think it matters.

Now the issue with the Pali and Bonavita lines is that although the cribs are cheap....the matching furniture....YIKES! $869 for the matching combo dressing changer, which I'd like to point out will not last a lifetime as far as his or our tastes go!

So Dave and I took a moment to think about what options we might have here in NC, the home of where most furniture is made in the US. Not kidding--why order a dresser from Italy (e.g., Pali or Bonavita) when we can get some of the best quality furniture around in our own backyards. Well, not literally.

So Saturday, we started off by hitting Clark's Antique shop in Plaza-Midwood. Although we love all the stuff in there, we only found one potential piece of baby furniture so we continued on. Then we went to the Boyles Furniture Outlet in Charlotte near Matthews. This is not the place listed on the web site in the previous link, but is a discount warehouse with amazing prices on a whole host of really nice furniture. It's located on Sardis road between Monroe and Independence for those of y'all in the 'hood. For instance, we found a Ralph Lauren children's dresser for a final sale price $325 which had originally been listed around $1300 or so. It was really nice, but we didn't like the stain. However, we both agree that when we'd like to buy a new chair, we're heading here and finding something both nice and nicely priced!

Although we had been to some good places, I was starting to get a little freaked about either paying a ton o' money for a piece of children's furniture or using mismatched furniture. We kept referring back to the Unfiinished Furniture store in Pineville, but I also kept remembering that I didn't like the quality of the stuff we had found. But we ended up in the neighborhood and decided to check it out.

And thank goodness we did. Here's what I learned. When we had gone there originally, I had been focusing on the cheaper-in-price furniture which definitely turned out to be the cheaper-in-quality. First of all, wood makes a big difference. Pine will easily scratch. Oak is harder and Maple is generally harder than that. Second, you need to really check out how the drawers are put together. Stapling the drawer to a drawer-front panel is not as good as using pegs to put the drawers together which is not as good as the dovetail joints where the drawers are interwoven. So, a hard wood like maple with dovetail joint drawers can be pretty good quality furniture. And we found a nice baby dresser of this type designed by Woodcraft Industries which we really like....for only $325. We saw the Shaker style in the store, but after taking their catalogue home, I think I prefer the Cottage style, perhaps even the 4 door mule chest with the solid top.

It just feels like a relief. The furniture is good stuff, but with prices that are not out the wazoo. There are still some problems we have to figure out. No, the stains are not going to match exactly, but since Bun is going to use the dresser longer than the crib, making sure they match is not so much of a priority to me at least. If Bun turns out to have an obsessive compulsive disorder, he will hate the furniture and his life will be ruined. More of an issue is that Maple is very hard to stain. It also tends to show "imperfections" in the wood more easily, so Dave is going to have to get some advice on that.

So that is mostly where we are on the baby furniture. Yes, we are getting a Dutailier glider with ottoman and nursing stool. We're getting that at Baby Town also, and has been the easiest thing to pick out! We found a very cute monkey rug at Baby Town, too, which colors are going to match our room perfectly. I don't know if we'll get it yet, but the price was right and it had a monkey on it!!!! How can you beat that???

Tomorrow, I'll blog about the amazing plant nursery we found and the advice we received on our lawn improvements.

I'm on Spring break now and my plan is to work on school stuff in the morning and redecorate in the afternoon. Of course, after a 73 degree day on Sunday, they are calling for an inch of snow tomorrow. That is bullshit.

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 14:35:30 GMT

Anita Vs. The Ivy: Round 3

I hate ivy. I take that back. Partially. I hate out of control ivy that tries to take over our yard.

Round 1 of the this fight occurred during our first summer here. My goal: take out the poison ivy first. This, quite honestly, had to be my task because the dear husband is very allergic to it. He even walks near it and he's broken out in blisters of various oozing nature. Not a good look. (As an aside, his first outbreak was at our engagement party! It was funny at the time!) I'm not allergic to it so far. I say so far because according to some sites, people develop the reaction after a certain number of exposures. 15% of people are not allergic to poison ivy. So I don't know if I'm one of the lucky 15% or I simply haven't been exposed enough times yet. In either case, Round 1 went to Anita as I hacked off the ivy at its base and rounded up its little stubs to kill it dead. HA! Take that Poison Ivy!

Round 2 was last spring as we hacked the huge rope cords of regular ivy off of our trees. Dave actually had to get an axe out to cut the ivy off at its base. But now all our trees are ivy free and seem to be doing much better. We certainly are doing much better.

Round 3 started yesterday. We are preparing some of our beds for new landscaping, which we're going to do ourselves this time as opposed to hiring it out. The scoop is that ivy doesn't responde all that well to Round Up. Just spraying Round Up on it damages a few leaves, but this is hardy stuff. What one needs to do is to pull it up by its roots in the late winter/early spring when the ground is still damp. I cleared out half of the ivy yesterday. It was amazing: one yank would pull up 20 feet of vine. I'd think that I'd finished one section and be yanking up vines in another, and I'd be pulling up a tendril sneaking back to the cleared spot. This stuff is a virus. I'm actually sore this morning from all the yanking and tugging to clear out what we did. I think one more go at it will clear off most of the evil ivy. We're going to leave a big patch by the side of the house for some easy ground cover, but we're going to tame the parts trying to make it out into the yard.

Decor Redux

My wonderful husband brought home some new software: Total 3D Home. It lets you set up a room complete with windows, doors, closets, etc all the the exact measurements of your specific rooms. And then you can specify your furniture options and move them around the room and organize them. It even lets you paint the rooms and stain the furniture We have put the three rooms we're working on (master bedroom, family room and baby room) on the software and have measured all the furniture which has even some possibility of going in there. After spending hours figuring out how to get our furniture into the new master bedroom, we think we came up with a reasonable solution which will not be crowded. Our solution involved NOT putting a piece of furniture where it looked like it was obvious that a piece of furniture should go. It would have taken me a long time and a lot of effort to have finally gotten out of that conceptual rut and realize the solution was in not doing what seemed obvious.

We have also settled on a color for the room---ix-naying the monochromatic scheme for a one-half shade lighter version of the paint we currently have in the master bedroom. Eastway Paints (a Benjamin Moore paints dealer) rocks! If you're in the area--go there.

They are predicting snow again for tomorrow. We'll see. I think something may happen, but I'm still skeptical of anything major happening. We'll see.

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 22:59:37 GMT

I feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

The meeting with the interior decorator did not go as well as I would have liked. First, she seemed a bit ditzy. And then I'm not sure she really listened to me. No, I know she didn't listen to me because I kept trying to explain what we'd already done and what we'd thought of already and she just kept talking. That's all normal new interpersonal stuff. The part that is bringin' me down is that if we switch bedrooms, only one piece of furniture besides the bed will fit in the new "master" bedroom. That's if we put the bed in the room in a grown-up way. If we put the bed in the room with the headboard against the window, we can fit both pieces of furniture in there but it would be crowded. Of course, bad feng shui. But furniture would fit.

I love our house. It is so cute and has such great character. But it's cottage/bungalow. It's very small.

Then she suggested that we put some of the bedroom furniture in a hall or in the dining room and store our clothes in there. Now folks, I'm willing to be flexible in how I arrange things. But I'll be dadgummed if I'm cross right over into white trash territory without a bit of a fight. Store our clothes in the dining room? Are YOU ON DRUGS???????????????

We didn't even discuss paint colors so much and she didn't bring a color wheel with her. And that's what I was hoping would come out of this. She ix-nayed the stripes idea in the baby's room. Too bold for such a small room. Yes, it's even smaller than the new "master" bedroom. Small small small small small. It describes everything about this house except for Dave and me and our love for it. That's not true. One half of the house is nice sized and big (kitchen, dining room, living room). The other side of the house is small, small, small, small, small. You know, that really doesn't bother me that much. I like the philosophy of the "Not so Big House." I don't want a McMansion. I just don't want to look like I live in a white trash house as I go to the dining room to get my underwear.

You know what I think went wrong with that interaction? I think we jumped too quickly into advice dispension without enough time for understanding of the current house and our goals for the future. And at one point, she asked if we would paint our really nice Arts and Crafts style bedroom furniture. Refinish? Yes. Paint? No.

It wasn't a complete waste of time or money. But I think I need to just trust my instincts and get on with it. And if it sucks, I can change it. Nothing but a can o' paint going on here.

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 12:15:29 GMT

Doulas and Decorators

We've started the search this week, ironically, for professionals to assist us in getting the baby out of me and into the home. We called our architects for an interior decorator rec and also an estimate of how much it cost to put exactly (or even roughly) where we're supposed to add the windows and doors they recommended for the garage to office remodel. Our man-child called back three days later saying he had more questions for us before he could "run the numbers" and did not mention any decorator recs. When I had called he said that his firm could do the interior decorating, but I said we needed something really simple (i.e., what colors to paint the walls) and apparently, my request for a rec went out the window--the one we aren't sure where we should install.

On to decorator option #2, from the Mecklenberg Furniture Market. She's coming over at 2:00 today for a consultation. Her rates are reasonable and I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say about our house. Hopefully, it's not Yuck!

As for the doulas, I checked out both the Charlotte Doulas and the Doulas of North America (DONA). We starting our options with the certified doulas, because apparently, anybody can claim to be a doula and not have any real training. So far, I've talked with two women: one is very pro Bradley method and one served as a doula-on-call in a hospital in Indiana. Although the Bradley method doula seems very "reasonable", we've found that the mominators tend to gravitate towards this group. The mominators are the ones who are so dogmatic about their birth choices and how if women don't do it their way, they are clearly going to be bad mothers (e.g., "don't take hospital birthing classes because they teach you how to be a good patient"). I'm not so fond of dogma, especially in areas of real personal choice. Again, this doula doesn't seem dogmatic at all. But I'm not very enthusiastic about wading into those birthing waters.

The other doula seems to be on the other extreme--she's worked for a hospital. She seems to be much more laid back in terms of what might occur during the birth and she's had completely natural, a c-section and an epidural. I'm not ruling out an epidural--especially after 12 to 15 hours of labor. I'm not sure someone in the Bradley school of thought would support that notion. An added bonus, this doula is new to Charlotte and is offering her services "on sale" for nearly half the price of the other doula. She has years of experience, just not at the hospitals around here.

So that's the scoop on doulas and decorators. I'd like to call a couple of more of the doulas in the area. I hate choosing from the edges. However, the doula on sale seems like a very good option. And I like the idea of helping someone break into the Charlotte region.

No snow today. All rain. Still, the radio is calling for "an inch of snow" by noon. It's the excitement and drama of potential winter weather. Woohoo.

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 12:56:43 GMT

Back in black.
I hit the sack.
I've been in pain so long I wish I had a new back.

Well, the massage was wonderful. And for the first time in weeks, I stood up and felt no pain. Then I went out in the cold and finished shopping. Within 15 minutes, the pain was back. Bleah. I'm calling the chiropractor this morning to see about an appointment on Friday. Nicole said she could feel a huge knot in my right rhomboid and thinks that I've messed up my back from doing something different with my right arm. I noted that the pain started about the same time I switched to using a lap top at home. I think because I've had the pain for so long, it's going to take a while to work out the problem. Bleah again.

Thanks to Karen for the roof suggestion. Dave is going to speak to someone today about doing exactly that and some other little repairs to fix the roof until we do the major renovation. I think we might get a good deal on the garage roof which needs to be redone when we fix our little office out there.

We have three rooms in the house and the garage that we need to remodel before the bun comes. Inside the house, we have the study, the "green room", and the "master" bedroom. I say "master" because it's tiny and a master bedroom only for gnomes. This house built in 1941 and maybe they were all smaller then. The study is going to become the baby's room. We're going to move into the green room (and repaint it from mint green to a nice deep sage color), and make the "master" bedroom the family room with a TV and desk for paying bills. We'll then move all the "office" stuff out to the garage office.

So a few things to do in the next 6 months or so. It seems like it should be a lot of fun. And painting is not all that expensive, which is even better. We just don't need to have a roof thrown at us this year. We need to be able to put that off for a few years until we get the house ready for the bun.

Off to work. And then to yoga. And then to give a final tonight. WOOHOO!!!!