Tag Archives: house schtuff

Yay productive and House Guest Information

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Today I have done a bunch of reading. For the record: Northrop Frye may have one or two points that are interesting, but in the main he is a twat. The other critics I read today bothered me far less. I have also folded the laundry, made the bed (Arbus–I don’t know why you like making the bed, I hate it), cleaned up the kitchen after a weekend of use, and did a bunch of random picking up to allow the house to once again look “staged”–aka, boring. I’m all proud of me.

I have also been thinking about how I want to do more actual cleaning this week, partially in preparation for the open houses next weekend and partially because we will have a fabulous house guest. Very excited about hosting Brehen. 🙂

Which brings me to my point about house guests. I have had a number of people (it’s got to be close to 20 at this point) mention coming to visit us in Pittsburgh. This is awesome, wonderful, thrilling news for me to hear–but it also freaks me out and terrifies me. I’ll explain why. I am massively territorial about my space. I want things to be set exactly so, cleaned exactly so, and I want to feel like *I* have more history in my space than anyone else. This leads to all kinds of weird things about guests in my house in general. It’s part of the reason that I freak out about hosting events. I have slowly been coming to understand the depth and breadth of my neurosis on this topic as time goes by and more people want me to host parties/weekend stays/etc. I am not complaining about people wanting to visit me or stay with me or what have you. Really, I’m not. What I am saying is that in order for me to feel fully comfortable with that I need to be respectful of my own needs for boundaries.

Which brings me to the blunt part. I don’t want to host anyone for an entire weekend for the first six months we live in Pittsburgh. I may make an exception if there is some kind of emergency situation–but it would take something pretty damn extreme. I know that sounds like a long time, but it probably won’t feel that way to me. I want to settle in to my house slowly and feel like there is no pressure around needing to entertain anyone. I will also be settling into seeing how things work with the Lizard because if things go according to plan, the end of the six month period will mean the Lizard is only about eight months old. After that six month period I will probably be missing people like mad and I will be begging people to come stay with me. It’s just very important to me that I have it. I’ve told a number of people this individually, but I think that a couple of people felt like it was a personal rejection and it really isn’t. If I don’t want *you* to come stay with me ever I’ll bloody well tell you that. 🙂

So if you tell me “I want to come visit you” anytime soon I may cringe and say “Not until spring.”

Oh… unless you mean coming to stay at the Disaster House. Feel free to ask for that. I have all kinds of feelings about this house that mean I am not real attached to who stays here. 🙂

Semi-obligatory emotional post

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I have woken up in a bad mood for several days in a row and that is highly abnormal. Usually I wake up all sunny and happy. That’s why I consider myself a morning person. Even if I go to sleep in a bad mood I usually wake up happier. I’ve been going to sleep feeling fine and waking up kind of angry and fussy.

WTF?

I talked to my mom yesterday. I asked for clarification about something she said to me when I called to tell her about Francesca. I felt hurt by what she said then but I wasn’t sure she meant it the way I took it. So I asked. Novel. She clarified and I can see both why I took it the way I did and what she meant and how what she meant wasn’t so bad. It was good. This whole “asking for clarification” thing seems to be working out.

I keep waffling between grieving hard for Francesca and being numb and forgetful. I feel like I am in a fog a lot of the time. I’m still pushing hard to get stuff done to the house this week. Classes are supposed to start tonight and I’m having registration issues. (My department has record of me filing for leave, registration doesn’t. @#%@(#)$) This week is the last really hard push for house stuff because the open house is this weekend while we are in Pittsburgh. After that, the house is pretty much going to be whatever it is. Tough titty said the kitty!

That means that starting on Monday my life is going to calm down. I won’t have a job. I won’t have obnoxious parents to deal with. I won’t be working on the house semi-frantically. I will have: school two nights a week, a really heavy reading load but that’s not scary for me, my frequent rounds of appointments (acupuncture, therapy, midwife, Chris pictures), and I need to start prenatal yoga and birth classes. Oy. I keep reminding myself that this is *less* stress/time commitments than I am used to.

*fret*
*worry*
*angst*

Ok, I’ll try to stop being a moron now.

Drained

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I feel so empty. I have very little emotion right now. I’m tired.

Getting through today sucks. Then I have to get through tomorrow. I have a lot of typing to do after school to catch up with finals creation. Ugh. It’ll be ok though. I’ll get through.

Noah is amazing. He did an incredible amount of work this weekend and then after being incredibly productive he was still willing to find some extra energy and baby me. I have the best husband ever.

Next weekend we have a laundry list of chores that need to get done. Things like washing windows, sandpapering doors to get the paint off, cutting the front bushes, and cleaning cobwebs off the outside of the house. Anyone who wants to come help is welcome. 🙂 We can probably do it all ourselves, but what the heck.

Next Saturday is also a gathering at a friend’s house and the TNG volunteer fair. I am not sure how I feel about attending either. So tired.

Tired.

Tired.
Tired.

Drowning

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I will be flying to Portland tomorrow evening. I will be staying with a friend. I’m willing to bet I will not be terribly easy to get a hold of. All sorts of things (I’m looking at you Jon) will just have to wait.

Let’s look at the next few weeks, shall we? Tomorrow I need to continue to frantically get my classroom closer to being ready for a sub on Friday and get the kids through another day of finals prep. In the evening I get on a plane and go rent a car by myself for the first time in my life. Kind of spooky. I will most likely go straight to Dad’s house and goodness knows how much sleep I will end up getting. I also need to arrange getting a key for the place where I am crashing somehow. Friday and Saturday will be spent with Dad in some capacity. Sunday morning will likely be spent either with Dad or with the friend I am staying with.

While I am gone Noah needs to finish packing up all of the stuff in the house that is over carpet. Most of it is packed already, at this point we mostly need to get boxes to storage and get furniture out of here. Looks like it is he and I trying to move it with most of it falling on him. 🙁 Whatever I don’t help him with tonight and tomorrow he has to do on his own. The carpet is being replaced on Saturday. I get back on Sunday to help put things back and finish up the last baby steps of touching up paint (there are about a dozen specific spots that need to be touched up). I should also continue packing stuff in the kitchen/bathroom because we want most things out of sight for the showing. The house is being “staged” on Tuesday which means that some pushy-ass woman is coming over and insulting the hell out of my/our taste and telling us how we can make our house look less crappy. I’m looking forward to it.

I need to completely clean out my classroom and get all of my stuff packed and off the walls within nine days, preferably sooner so the next teacher can start moving in. I also need to finish grading all the late work that is still pouring in. I need to continue typing up the questions the kids are submitting for the finals. I need to create the finals. I need to grade the finals. This probably represents about 40 hours of work I need to do sometime in the next nine days while out of town for several of them. I have a mandatory IEP meeting next week where I get to go deal with a horrible parent and her horrible child. Luckily her case manager is pretty cool and is backing me up. Thank goodness for small favors. I have a hysterical family who keeps breathing down my neck about how I am persecuting their child by giving him a bad grade despite the fact that his grade in my class is higher than his grade in any other class. Cheers.

And after getting the house on the market next week we get to go to Pittsburgh from the 25-28th so I can see how I feel about the cold. I think this is the most traveling I have done in this short of a time period in my life. (I will be out of town for like 15 days out of a five week period. And this is on three separate trips.)

And I have an ever increasing flow of email traffic from con stuff, most of it extremely demanding and resulting in someone getting pissy if they aren’t responded to RIGHT NOW.

So, if I don’t get back to you or if I have a fairly short temper or I’m not cheerful, by all means feel free to take it personally.

The danger of teenagers

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They didn’t do their homework earlier in vacation. So they can’t help paint. Looks like me, Noah, and my coworker will be painting today. Much suckiness. I have to be careful because the last time I stretched my arm over my head I pulled a muscle that hurt for days. God damnit. Luckily, my coworker is about 6’4″ so I think he can handle the high stuff. 🙂

This being a grown up shit is totally over rated. I keep telling myself that the house goes on the market in the next two weeks. No more time for procrastinating. 🙁 It doesn’t matter how I feel. Suck it the freak up.

In other news I came back from vacation at 181 (My pre-pregnancy weight–see why I’ve been saying I was heavy?! I gained over 20 freakin pounds in the first year of living with Noah. He’s a feeder.) and was really excited. I’ve gone down to 179 again. I think the soda helped keep my weight up. Hm.

Countdown…

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24 hours. (Ok, and a few minutes…)

I’m not done. For most values of “done” I won’t be done. The yard is going to be imperfect and far from pretty, but that’s how life goes. We don’t have much of a handle on the yard in general and there is no faking that we do. The paint job is… yeah. Lots more touching up is going to have to happen. But the inside of the house is getting much better. To go from a house set-up for daily life to completely tearing everything apart and moving almost entirely into the garage to painting to having a house set-up for daily life again in two weeks is pretty good.

I can do this. Even if Noah does doubt my ability to make the house tidy by tonight. 😛

We are going to try for FNW. 🙂 It’s a maybe.

Oh, dear god no.

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What do I really really really really really really not want to have happen right before a big party? The plumbing get uhm finicky. Yeah. Not good. The plumber will be here in just over an hour. Thank the gods.

Still so much to do and so little time. Thankfully the bathroom was repainted yesterday by the lovely Turtle and it looks pretty damn good. Other friends are volunteering their time to help me finish the rest of the to-do list. Have I mentioned that I have great friends? Cause I really do.

Nervous and overwhelmed, but plugging along. Have I mentioned that this was a bad week to get into a less than pleasant discussion about D/s stuff? Yeah, that was ill-timed. Maybe working on a solution though.

Ok, time to start working.

I need to breathe.

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So little time and so much to do. I actually do this sort of thing to myself on purpose. Many of the things on my To Do list have been there for months, but I only get around to doing them when I have a huge bunch of people who will notice if I have done them or not. The funny thing is–people will notice the really drastic stuff (the house being painted a bunch of very different, very dark colors) but no one but me will notice many of these things. I still care that I want to hang the pictures before the party. I want to feel settled in that way at the party. There is no way that we will be finished with painting before the party, but Noah has requested that I fix the bathroom because it is really badly painted. (The kids just skipped parts they didn’t feel like doing. The paint is incredibly uneven and you can see white wall through big chunks.) Looks like I will spend tomorrow doing that.

Noah told me last night that I should take today off and rest but I fiercely argued with him that if I take today off and I start running behind later in the week then I won’t be able to finish on time and then I will be not sleeping the nights before the event as I try to finish and… All bad. But then we didn’t get out of bed today until around 10. It is very rare for us to stay in bed so long. I’m exhausted and there aren’t very many parts of me that don’t hurt. I have a list of stuff to get done that is growing instead of getting shorter despite the fact that Noah rocks and has been working like mad.

Side bar–Noah and I don’t have the same values or priorities about housekeeping even slightly. Nevertheless he has been working very hard lately to meet and exceed my desires for our house. I’m deeply grateful that he is stretching himself in this way because it means I don’t have to do everything. It is a weird cognitive thing to wrap my head around that he is doing this stuff for *me* instead of just because it “should get done.” He is such a lovely boy.

Anyway, so I’m exhausted and grumpy and fussy and there are miles to go before I sleep.

I can do zen.

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After my stressing and freaking out, the house is painted. It isn’t painted *well*, but I had high school students doing it, some of whom had never painted before. They made more of a mess on my carpet than I am thrilled about. But you know what? It’s freaking painted. I need to go back through and do a lot of touching up and I’m good with that. I can handle that. I’m still overall happy the kids came and did so much work.

I’m waiting a few days before I put furniture back and it will be longer still before the bathroom is actually perfect, such is life. Hopefully I will manage the rest of the touch ups and finish the cabinets on Sunday. Holding my breath would be a bad idea though. I have just seven days left till the reception. Sunday will be insanely busy, but I think I can do this.

Optimism is dangerous.

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Today I had one kid and my former boss come help me. I’m uhm… getting somewhat nervous again. However, I’m choosing to not freak. I will have a minimum of two kids tomorrow and my former boss. I have promises of three other kids, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m not 100% certain we will finish tomorrow, but at the very least we will get quite close. The kitchen is going to be the most suckful room. The living room and hallway are done and a really neato shade of purple.

Have I mentioned that it rocks that my husband is happy to let me paint the house cool colors? Yay!

Shower folks: will be calling ’round tomorrow. 🙂

Shower?

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As of Monday I was ready to cry because only one kid showed up and I was terrified that we would never get even close to my schedule. On Tuesday four kids came and it turns out that one of the parents of one of the kids has a paint spray machine that he will let me borrow. So we got all of the hole filling and wall washing done and we can do all of the primer today in about two hours. Then we can do all of the painting on Thursday. And me and one kid will be doing that bit while another kid does the bathroom and two or three kids work in the kitchen. Did I mention there will be one to two more kids doing yardwork today and tomorrow? I’m terribly excited. We are so going to finish on time.

However, this means we are sleeping in a tent in the back yard for a few days because the spray machine requires so much fucking plastic wrap over everything it’s just not funny. We also shouldn’t use the shower because the paint in there requires drying before it is water resistent. I’ll deal with smelling funny for a day or two, but it seems impolite to go be social on Saturday without a shower. Does anyone have a shower they are willing to let Noah and I come use on Saturday morning? We could just go to 24 hour fitness, but this gives us the mixed excuse of maybe grabbing breakfast with someone. 🙂

Home Desperate doesn’t love me.

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I do declare that the gods of Home Depot hate me. But! I do finally have paint and all necessary equipment to start painting my house. I have about 10 days in which to paint my house and get completely ready for the reception. I can do this. I painted each room in Tom’s house, by myself, in a day. I have 4-6ish students who will be here helping me. No sweat.

The plan:
Monday- do all of the pre-painting stuff (cleaning walls, removing blinds/outlets, fixing drywall, filling holes) with maybe doing some primer, but it isn’t mandatory it would just be nice. The last hour or so of kids being here will involve at least one or two of them doing a bunch of yard work so we can fill the green waste bin for this week before filling it again next week.
Tuesday- primer the whole house and do more yard work.
Wednesday- paint at least half the house and maybe yard work (depends on painting).
Thursday- paint the last bits of most of the house with probably some kitchen stuff remaining.
Friday- finish the kitchen and do yard work.

This way, if I slip I will be slipping with time on the weekend and next week to finish. I don’t think I will slip much with the painting, if anything the yard work will get pushed back. That way next week will be spent getting the house in perfect order before the party. I can do this. I can so do this.

Stuff that needs to get to people.

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aberrantvirtue we have that wireless router you said you wanted, but we haven’t seen you. We also have an American Gift Giving Holiday present for you. I would like to get this stuff delivered very soonish. When?

cyclothemia we have weird stuff from Japan for you. When can this be exchanged? Maybe Thursday at PE?

labelleizzy we have a Christmas present for you. When can this be passed along?

rose42dance we have an American Gift Giving Holiday pressie for you. Must be exchanged. When?

mzmtnlion have two pressies. Must give. When?

teamnoir have pressie. Must give. When?

loren_q see above.

i_am_dsh see above.

flyinamazon see above. 🙂

blackrose900 have shirt that will likely fit you. Is Gorgeous. Will I ever see you again?

Alright! Let the pinging begin…

Progress is good.

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The truck is gone! HAAAAA I declare victory over the truck! *happy dance*

The couch is gone!! HAHAHAHA I declare victory over the couch! *happy dance*

The table is gone!! HAHAHAHA I declare victory over the table! *happy dance*

And I have eliminated the pile of boxes and bags around the kitchen table. The office looks freakishly like a room instead of a dark cave full of shit. We have a pretty cabinet full of pretty glasses. Laundry is going. I’m returning the movies I borrowed like a year and a half ago. We are doing very well on organizing our paperwork and getting bills taken care of. Wow, it’s been a good weekend. AND Noah vaccuumed. My life is good.

Anyone want a desk? tsgeisel think you might be willing to come get the bookshelf soon?

Perspective

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I can describe my life right now and say, “I go to work. I grade papers. I go to trainings. I get up way too early in the morning. I hardly ever see my friends. I spend most of my spare time working or cleaning house.”

And it’s all true. It just sounds like so much more of a downer than my life feels like. I’m working 6 days a week and usually 9-11 hour days. (Weekend training can be as short as about 4 hours. Whoo hoo!) No matter how much time I put into my job there is an infinite amount of work left to do. I vacilate hard between feeling like I am doing a good job and feeling like I am not doing as much as my kids deserve. But my comp & lit kids are doing more work than anyone has seen this kind of group do in years. My juniors are feeling challenged but they aren’t drowning. That is the balance I am searching for. I have unit plans in place for this entire grading period and that makes me feel really good. I have a lot of grading to do, but I am more up to date on it than anyone else in my department so I can’t really feel too bad about it.

I spend most of my time at home, this means I get to spend most of my time with Noah! I am continually blown away by how wonderful he is. Does this mean we always get along? Of course not–I’m a pain in the ass. But he puts up with me cheerfully and helps me figure out why I’m feeling out of sorts which means that hopefully we are making progress towards less-cranky. It’s a goal.

Our house is coming along. He is surprised at how much organizing I have done so far. Yay for kitchens with food in them! 😉 I’m really happy about the nesting process. We have probably a month or two more of work before we can start painting given that I only have a day a week to work on stuff. I’m hoping that I can do lots of work during Christmas break. It would be good.

I’m busy, stressed, tired, and happy. I guess that is all I can ask of life.

Not quite a weekend.

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Friday I came home from work and fell asleep within 20 minutes. So my Noah settled in for an evening of WoW. I don’t blame him, but given how little sleep I got all last week I was kind of cranky when I woke up two hours later and he continued playing for two hours after I woke up. Enh, such is life. I feel really guilty when I am cranky but we usually end up talking about good stuff. He rocks so hard.

Saturday I got up at my normal 6am. I got dressed and went off to a work training in a fairly serious bad mood. It did turn into being probably the best training I have ever gone to so by 20 minutes in I was over my unhappiness. I got some really good stuff. After the training I went to my school and did cleaning, organizing and lesson planning all day. My cutie baby came and spent time in the room with me and we got to talk a little. He rocks! After grading papers I got to chaperone a dance. At the dance many of my kids were total jerks and I felt very disappointed in their behavior. 🙁 So today I have been talking to the kids and telling them why their behavior wasn’t cool. They are taking the lecture pretty well.

Sunday we cleaned house and did grocery shopping. Noah did a *fabulous* job of cleaning the refrigerator. 🙂 It was awful. Our kitchen is about as blacksheep_lj modified as it is going to get and boy howdy am I grateful. 🙂 We were totally dead by 8 and struggled to stay up till 9 so I wouldn’t wake up too terribly early this morning. With the addition of 5-htp (my moods have sucked lately) I had some really awesome dreams. I rescued my “sister” (not my actual sister but some person who was my sister in the dream) from a middle eastern prison by suspending myself from a high window and lowering myself to the room she was in. (For some reason they used a high rise building as a jail. I think it wasn’t a real prison but she was a political prisoner in some random government building.) It was cool. In another dream I was wandering around a city in Africa with karenbynight and she was pregnant. That was really odd. I know I had a few other odd dreams but I can’t remember them right now.

And this morning I got to wake up and talk to my mother-in-law. She drops hostile comments about Noah into the conversation at various points and that makes me sad. Stuff like, “All of us did cartwheels when he moved out of state and we hope he never comes back,” and, “His brothers are so glad they don’t have to deal with him daily anymore,” and they really made me sad. 🙁 I’m going to think about how best to let her know I don’t want to listen to her slam Noah. If she dislikes him so intently maybe we shouldn’t come back at all? 🙁 I know he is so incredibly wonderful that I feel sorry for her that she doesn’t know.

Yay much

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We are still making steady progress on the less-suck relationship wise. There have been a couple of remarkably good days with Noah and Spot and I had a nice dinner then Ikea run last night cause I was getting impatient on the no-date-for-a-while thing. Ok, I don’t hate them anymore. And the house is getting steadily less awful in my view and my view is the one that matters on this one. 😉 Being able to see visible progress on the mess is significantly helping my mental health actually as it lowers a lot of my anxiety. I really don’t handle living in a mess well. I’m still ignoring some of the filth because a lot of it isn’t worth dealing with right now because we are going to be painting soon and changing the carpeting.

I’m still having nightmares about being unprepared for school. I think this is getting ridiculous. I’m almost to a point in the house where I’m going to switch to school prep for a week or three. 🙂