Lots on my mind September 19, 2006

though nothing I’m really going to expound upon just this moment.

I feel… irritable again today. Sad, too. Feeling on the hopeless, discouraged side. I think I’m suffering another bout of depression.

Not so much about the moving, because I know we’ll get everything moved, but maybe a bit about the house. It’s so much smaller than here, some of our furniture just isn’t going to fit. The couch, for example. If we’re going to have a chair or two in the living room, we can’t have a couch at all, we’ll have to get a loveseat. Some of that is very frustrating to me. I want the place to look nice, but no matter what, because the rooms are so small, it is going to look cluttered. I also want it to be comfortable, but…

oh, it just doesn’t matter. It isn’t like we’re going to have company anyway, so if it is all just jammed together, what difference does it make? I’ll learn to live with it, even if I’m not happy with it. The place has other things that balance out the cons, I guess, but the super small dining room and living room are upsetting me a bit. Ah, well. Just being too picky.

Letting go September 8, 2006

I decided to look through the classifieds, to see the ad placed for the sale my mil is having this weekend (hubby is up running “security detail”). I found both the teaser and the follow-up ad, read them, and promptly had to hold back the tears. I know they are just things – but they were part of my fil’s life, in many cases, part of my husband’s life with him. Mil is selling everything – all of the tools, toys, anything that was fil’s that she doesn’t figure she’ll ever use is gone, or will be by the end of the weekend.

Hubby keeps telling me that it hurts her to get rid of those things, but you know, no one made her. And there was no real reason to have to clean out the barns. His stuff wasn’t in her way.

I hope she makes a lot of money off the sale, seeing as that’s what she’s really interested in.

I know, I sound bitter. And I shouldn’t let it bother me – after all, as I said, they are just things, and they were “her” things to do with as she sees fit. It just doesn’t seem right to me, and I guess I really just don’t understand.

That’s just the way it is….

House Elves September 7, 2006

When we do laundry here, quite often it gets left in the laundry room overnight because the dryer is still running at bedtime, so it is still there when the residents go down to use the facililties in the morning. They tend to fold any laundry that is left down there. For a while now, we’ve been teasing Princess that house elves are doing it, and when she protests that we don’t have house elves, we tease that she must be a member of S.P.E.W., and is secretly giving them articles of clothing. (If you are familiar with Harry Potter, you know what I’m talking about).

Tonight, Princess and I had a very, very nice time together. We went to the house after school – Peanut was with us at that time, but my mom stopped by and picked her up on her way home. Mom went through the house, and wasn’t overly critical, much to my surprise. She said she thought it would work fine for us, though there were a couple of things she said she hoped they would fix. I can handle that. Anyway, after mom and Peanut left, Princess and I went to work. I tore down a hanging shelf in the kids’ area of the basement, we washed and scraped the walls, and then… we painted. We had Princess Pink and Cinderella Blue paint that we bought on clearance years ago, and fortunately, after a good stir, was still good. We did the bottom half of the three walls (the other side is open, which is where we are going to hang the roll up shade) in the pink, and the upper half in the blue. Two sides were the outer walls, cement blocks. The other was drywall. You know how cement blocks have the mortar lines between them? We left one stripe of that unpainted – we’re going to go back with white paint and do that. We thought it would look cool that way. I’m also going to paint the inside of the window areas white, because that will be brighter. We got done with that job about 8:30 – and we were both pretty beat. It’s only a 12×12 room, but that painting is hard work! We got stuff cleaned up, then headed home. We decided to stop for something to eat, but didn’t want drive through. We found a little family place and stopped there. We both had the same thing – salad, clams and fries, and shared a bowl of corn. It was *so* nice to have some time just the two of us. We hurried home, both to get her in bed on time, and to make sure we were home before hubby. We didn’t tell him what we were planning to do – it’s going to be a surprise for him tomorrow night when we go over. And you know what?

We’re already planning to tell him that the house elves did it.

Slow going September 4, 2006

Signed the lease papers Friday night, ended up spending two hours chatting over dinner with our new landlord’s mom. Because it was much later than we’d planned when we left the restaurant, we didn’t get to do much of what we had intended to at the house. Basically just emptied out the car, picked up the new swing, and headed to my mom and dad’s to spend the night.

We didn’t end up having the yard sale this weekend, either, because the weather was on the crappy side. Spit rain on and off all of Saturday and Sunday. We’ll do the sale, just at the end of the month, or the beginning of October instead. I’m sure we’ll have a lot more things to add to it by then, lol.

We spent a while at my folks’ on Saturday, just visiting. The kids were playing with their cousins, anyway. So, we got a bit of a late start. Didn’t get much done other than measuring the rooms, and a lot of talking and planning. Sunday, we went back up to my parents’ house to pick up the dehumidifier my dad gave us (didn’t have room for it the day before). Stopped at a few carpet places on the way up to price out remnants for the girls’ play area in the basement. Dropped things back at the house, then went shopping. Picked up a few things we needed to do yard work, most of which were on clearance, which is a good thing!

Today we spent about five hours over there. The girls played over at the neighbors across the back fence, hubby worked in the yard picking up sticks and such – also put together the fire pit, and put my shepherds crooks up for me. I worked in the house, cleaning. I only got about halfway done – cleaned all of the walls, top to bottom, in the dining room, living room, entryway, and the craft room. I also cleaned the inside of the pantry cupboard in the dining room, and the closet in the entryway, which we are going to convert into our linen closet. I got my mums hung up on the hooks in the front yard, and also put a couple of decorations in the dining room. There are two alcoves in the wall between the dining room and the entryway, one on each side of the step going down into the entry. I’m going to hang plants from the hooks in the top of them, but today, I filled two glass pumpkins with candy corn and put those on the bottom of each alcove. Looks very cute!

It is slow going. I didn’t take but one short break, and it took me all that time to get done what little I did. I still have to clean the other two bedrooms, the kitchen, and the bathroom (which I am saving for last, because I don’t think the workmen are done in there). Each day this week after hubby gets home from work, we’ll make a couple of trips to the house to move things over. I have to call the landlord this week, see if they can tell me what projects the workers are going to be doing, and if they have any idea how long they will be out there working. We have so much stuff to get moved over there, but want to be careful about what we leave while the workers are there, for various reasons. It’s going to take us a while to get it done, anyway, but I’m hoping it only takes a couple of weeks, and not the whole rest of the month. *knock wood*

Butterflies! September 1, 2006

In my stomach, that is. I went to the bank this morning to get the cashier’s check to take when we sign the lease tonight. Walking out of the bank, the first thing I thought was, “Well, there’s no going back now!” You can almost feel the door closing on this chapter of our lives. I kept thinking, “I sure hope we’re doing the right thing.”

I know that we are… I just can’t help being nervous, that’s all. Lots of big changes!

While I was out, I made a couple of other stops. At one of them, I bought the girls a swingset. It’s the display model, and was on clearance (only $60). They’re holding it. We’ll have to go take the thing apart so we can get it in the van, to take it to the house and put it back together, lol.

We’ve been looking for a sandbox, too. I finally found one (making phone calls), so I’ll be stopping by the toy store later to pick it up. It’s on sale for only $20, which is good, so all we have to worry about is finding the sand for it.

Now, the girls will be really really happy (going to be surprises for them!), and while we are working on upacking and stuff, they will have something to do to entertain themselves.

Hubby really doesn’t want to do the yard sale this weekend. He’d rather get started on the move. I do understand that, but we promised my mom we’d have the sale. The only bad thing is it looks like it is supposed to rain all weekend, which doesn’t bode well for the sale. I don’t want to get up there and do all the work to get it all set up, only to get rained out. I guess we’ll have to kinda play it by ear. We have to go up tonight no matter what to get the girls, so we can check the weather then.