Chin Up

Holy goodnight.  What a week.

This was a week of family visitors – the good kind.  And family emails – the not so good kind.  But both the kind that leave you drop dead bone tired exhausted, where at the end of the week you are surrounded by all the things you must do every day just to keep your head above water, the things you’ve been ignoring all week -  the laundry and the always growing grass and the plants that need gallons and gallons worth of watering.

A week where a fourth furlough is announced before you have time to finagle the budget to accommodate the third furlough, and you wonder again if you should go back to work, and you hope people know that of course you’d work, anywhere, doing anything, before you’d let your family come apart at the seams for the lack of it, and you wonder if this struggle is somehow something you deserve, if it’s your fault that you actually need what they told your husband they would pay him, if you deserve this because you have credit card debt and student loans and you should have saved more, and you think of the comments you used to get telling you to get off your ass and get a job and you think how much you don’t say here, how many times you’ve looked at the classified ads and done the math and how there’s so much people don’t know about what will work for your family right now, and then you remember that’s why you banned that IP address and that’s why you don’t read your spam anymore.

This was the week you gave your first spanking – quick as lightning, without thought, as glass shattered everywhere and your son headed for the thick of it, and then the instant afterwards his face crumpled and you saw his dream of you change, right there, right before your eyes, and it made you hate yourself so very much.

A week with a hair cut you aren’t too sure about.  A hair cut strangely difficult to photograph.

(Why do I do ANYTHING after four o’clock? It never goes well.)

(Please tell me I don’t have Kate’s hair.)

A week where you scream “No!” and your son screams “No!” right back at you and you realize again, you are two of a kind, cut from the same mold, halves of a whole, and it scares the shit out of you.

A week with first tomatoes, quickly forgotten, because it is also a week with a first “stitches or no stitches” conversation.

A week with an emergency trip to Home Depot for deck rails.

And week in which you replay-  over and over – not the moment your son pitched off backwards, but instead the moment last year when the housing inspector told you that the porch wasn’t up to code, that children could fall off of it, and how you waved your hand, blase, as if to say “not to worry about that tiny detail!” and you wonder at anyone that would let you have children, and that night you sleep curled into a C, wrapped around your son, and you listen for his breathing, and you think as hard as you can that you want so much to take it all back, all the yelling and complaining and declaring “I have had enough from you!” and it’s all you can feel, all you can think, that you take it all back, as hard as you can.

But don’t worry too much about us.  We’ll be ok.  We might be a little banged up, but we’re gonna make it just fine.

We’ve got each other, after all.

Sleepy Time

So it turns out that these creatures:

turn into these creatures,:

like, overnight.

I know! It’s blowing my mind as well.

Sadly, someone needs a big boy bed, which means I need advice.

Because we live in a really really really small two bedroom house, every single piece of furniture we buy has to be SMART furniture.  Does that make sense?  We can’t just buy a bench, we buy a blanket chest.  Or an ottoman that opens, or a sleeper sofa for the living room, you get the idea.  So I want to get a trundle bed for Senor Pants, because that way we have more room for guests or future babeez. Eventually we’ll be able to sleep six to seven adults in 960 square feet. More if I get my way when it comes to building the deck and screening off sections off it.

Anyhoo, I found a trundle bed online, at Amazon, that gets rave reviews. It’s solid poplar and comes with a headboard, a trundle, and two mattresses for around $500 dollars including shipping, and I’m wondering, is this a good deal, or is this obscene?  I’ve looked at IKEA, but their trundle options are practically nil, and I’m not really a fan of their beds anyway.  I’ve looked on Craigslist, but most of the trundles I can find there are girly iron day beds or these weird eighties monstrosities that take up entire walls and have like, built in desks.  And I don’t have a way to pick up a bed from anyone anyway, a twin bed is so not going to fit in the trunk of a Jetta.

I can find cheaper beds, but they are built of pine and have terrible reviews. And of course I can find beds I LOVE at Pottery Barn Kids or Land of Nod, but they are SO overpriced, and they don’t tell you what they are made of. If I’m paying $1200 for a bed, it damn well better be made of solid gold, you know?

I suppose I could visit some local furniture stores, but all of my experiences with those have always been fraught with disaster.  I don’t want my kid to sleep in Carmela Soprano’s bed, you know?

Also, the Amazon bed comes unfinished. This is good because I could stain it brown or paint it aqua or red or whatever my little heart desires, but this is bad because I’d have to do work. Obvs.

What do you think, parental bed buying types?

Seven Quick Takes

1. Holy suckiness, batman.

2. Tess’s three most recent posts about Jon and Kate and flickers versus flickees have alternately riveted and terrified me.  Seriously, the woman needs a book deal. Or at the very least a professorship or an advice column or something.

3. I was all set to make some elaborate jello flag cake for the Fourth of July, because I do so love patriotic jello.  Then I started mentally adding up the costs of four boxes of jello and two packages of cream cheese and a tub of Cool Whip AND strawberries and blueberries, all for a cake that we probably wouldn’t even finish, and I decided against it.  You see what this recession has stolen from me?  It has stolen my patriotism AND my jello.  That shit’s just not right.

4.  And also, I’m going to have to call shenanigans on this whole raising a child hoo ha, because the system is severely flawed.  One second you’re sprinting across the house as fast as you can to fetch your fat little prince his bottle because he made some random noise that sort of maybe sounded sort of like “bottle” which you’re obviously going to have to call both of set of grandparents about, and the next minute that very same fat little prince is two and half and spends every waking minute screaming “BOTTLE” or “COKE” or “MCDONALDS” or “TORTY” at you and NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO HE WILL NOT SAY PLEASE.  For the love of all that is holy no matter what if I ever have another kid, I will be teaching him or her from moment A that every request on earth is to be bookended at all times with Delightful Mother May I Please How Wonderful And Also Thank You Most Delightful Mother of Wonder and Delight.

5.  I just read The Luxe.  It ruled.  Now I’m sad I’m not reading it.  Lucky for me there are two (about to be three) more books.  The descriptions of the clothes alone thrills my greedy little heart to no end.  I love it when an author describes those sorts of details.  Conversely, it drives me BAT SHIT when an author keeps fun stuff like this to him or herself – if Christmas occurs in a book and we don’t hear what everyone got, the book is pretty well ruined for me.

6.  So in our house if you go to the bathroom in the bobby (potty) you get a wahbeebah (lollipop) ! Isn’t that exciting! Yes, well.  Number of lollipops Senor Pants has received so far = 0.  Number of “messes” I’ve cleaned up off the floor = 4.  I, however, am EXCELLENT at peeing in the bobby.  And I hardly ever poo on the kitchen floor now adays.  I have earned LOTS of lollipops.

7.  I am working on a theory, so just humor me here.  But wouldn’t you agree that if you can ONLY sleep with your stuffed turtle, that no other animals will do, and that sleep will be nothing more than the vaguest of concepts if you don’t have said turtle clutched in your hot little hands, than maybe you shouldn’t throw said stuffed turtle into your large wet play pool every time your mother’s back is turned for three seconds?  Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

Sparkle and Fade

I used to look forward to the 4th of July all year long.  It came second only to Disneyland on my top ten list.  And not because of the food, or because my parents had the day off,  or because of parades or ball games or grand displays of pyrotechnics, or any of that.  We didn’t really do any of that stuff, our family.  Or if we did, I don’t remember it.

Instead, every year, my dad would take us to one of the rinky plywood firework stands that sprouted up everywhere, overnight, along the side of the road, and he’d help us pick out $25 or $35 or $45 dollars worth of fireworks, big sets of stuff that came in plastic wrapped cardboard boxes and had names like “Showering Pheonix” or “Blazing Betty”, and then he’d add a few packages of sparklers and some roman candles to the top of the stack, and pay for our Fourth of July.

We’d start asking if it was dark enough at about four o’clock, and it seemed like it never was, as though it never would be, as though the night would never ever arrive, but eventually my dad would say “Ok.  Now.” and we’d set everything up on the curb, right outside of our big suburban house, in the middle of the subdivision, and then for twenty minutes or a half an hour, we’d choose fireworks, and he’d set them at a safe distance, light them, and run away, and we’d stand back, in awe, and watch sparks and colored flames shoot skywards and then fizzle to an end, or write our names in circles with sparklers, or lean in intently as layers of a chinese pagoda smoked and popped up out of a small cardboard box, and I’d wonder if it was the kind of thing you could save.

It seems strange now, an odd ritual.  Why were we on the curb, in the driveway, on the street in the middle of our neighborhood?  Ordinarily, we never hung out on the front sidewalk.  Why didn’t we ever go to fireworks shows?  Mr. E and I have never set off our own fireworks, nothing more than sparklers, although we usually try to track down a fireworks show sometime on the weekend of the Fourth.  I can’t imagine we’d stand on the sidewalk in our front yard shooting off roman candles in the middle of our neighborhood.

And yet.  While it’s always fun to sit on a blanket in the dark now, to ooh and awe over million dollar fireworks shows, to guess at the grand finale or laugh at the bad country soundtrack someone chose,  it isn’t magic.  Magic for me was a $30 cardboard box full of fireworks, when I was a kid, standing on the curb with my dad, in the dark, watching showers of sparks climb towards the sky.

Second Quarter Book List

Here’s the books I read in April, May and June. I was hoping to read sixty something, but I got bogged down with wedding programs and a kid who all of a sudden won’t play by himself, ever.

Also, because no one asked, I find books to read in these ways:  blog recommendations, The New York Times Book Review which I subscribe to, ads in the New Yorker (these books are often terrible but the ads always suck me in), prize winners, new books by my favorite authors, classics I always felt like I should read, books my mother buys at the airport and then sends me, and books at Amazon that pop up when I add things to my wish list (these are also often horrible).  I haven’t signed up for Good Reads yet because the thought of figuring out something new right now makes me tired.

39. Driving Sideways. I have no memory of this.  I think it wasn’t very good? Kristabella tells me it’s awesome, so since I can’t remember it AT ALL, maybe I need to read it again before I further disparage it.

40.  Leaving Dirty Jersey – this was ok.  I decided after I read it that maybe books about being a drug addict aren’t for me.  I mean, basically, a drug addict lies, steals and acts like a d bag ALL THE TIME in order to get drugs. Reading about that behavior? It gets old really quickly.  The interesting part is mostly how the person quits being a drug addict, and that’s the part the author never seems to go into in any kind of depth.

41.  The Nature of Jade – This was the first thing I have read by Deb Caletti and I was underwhelmed.  The characters fell flat for me.

42.  Matrimony – I think I saw this in an ad in the New Yorker and liked the cover.  That or Amazon recommended it to me.  I really liked it though.  It was an easy read, entertaining, interesting.

43.  North of Beautiful – Meh.

44.  Waiting for Normal – There’s no reason on earth why I should like this book, it’s that same old tired “my mom sucks and leaves me all the time” plot, and yet I loved it. I totally cried at the end too.

45.  Tomorrow When the War Began – This is the first in a series. I reread it because I thought it was a different book.  It was ok, but not as great as I remembered, and I wish I could figure out the book I’m actually looking for…in the one I am thinking of, everyone on earth (or in America?) under a certain age dies, some time in the future.  The kids all band together and raid empty grocery stores and try to figure out what to do.  Anyone?

46.  The Girls Who Went Away – The stories of the women who gave up their kids or who were given up for adoption were really interesting, as was some of the history of what it was like to grow up in the fifties, but it became intensely repetitive very quickly.  Regardless, I’m glad I read it, even though it was crazy depressing.

47.  Suicide Blonde – Mr. E read this and said it was so bad I shouldn’t bother. And yet I am still counting it.  Shhhh.  Don’t tell.

48.  Maynard & Jennica – I really really liked it.  Jennica was a great character. I need to check it out again – there was a description of a breakfast that I want to try to make – I can’t get the thought of french toast covered in blackberry sauce and whipped cream out of my head.

49. 10 Cents a Dance – Interesting, but the whole “I’m so innocent and why does no one like me” thing got old after a while. Still, I’m glad I read it, I learned something new I knew nothing about, and it was a quick entertaining read.

50.  Perfect Chemistry – This book was terribly cheesy and so obvious right from the start and nothing more than one big old cliche and still, I loved it.  I was in the perfect mood to read a dippy YA romance and it was actually pretty well written. It wasn’t exactly memorable or award worthy or anything, but still, awesome.

51.  Red Leather Diary – Such an interesting idea (a writer finds an old diary in the dumpster outside her apartment and tracks down the author of the diary) but it was absolute poo.  Wretched writing, and the writer is SO FREAKING in love with herself.  Every twelve minutes she tells you how she’s a feature writer at the New York Times.  I can only hope she somehow does better work there, because GOOD LORD THIS BOOK STANK.

52.  Perfect Fifths – This is the fifth and final book in the Sloppy Firsts series.  Now, please note. Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings are two of my favorite books OF ALL TIME.  I’d take them with me to a desert island, no lie.  But the third and fourth installments were VERY disappointing to the point of being almost unreadable.  This was…not as bad as that.  And an ok end to the series, but overall, nothing and nowhere near as good as the first two books. I would recommend reading Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings and just pretending the series ends there.

53.  Forest of Hands and Teeth – Loved it! Although not as scary as I was hoping.  But still, a great adventurous fast and fun read.  Although still not as good as The Hunger Games, it was right up there for me.

54.  The Brother Torres – Boring. Had to make myself finish it.

55.  The Art of Racing in the Rain – um, I found out after I started reading it that this book is written from the perspective of the dog.  No. Just…no.

56.  Firefly Lane – Total lifetime movie of the week cheese.  Mentions Jessica Savitch every twelve minutes, which is obviously bad news.  And yet, I found it wildly entertaining, and I couldn’t put it down.

57.  Girls In Trucks – I think I picked this because I liked the cover? Regardless, I really really liked this book.  The southern deb thing was fascinating, and it was surprisingly well written and funny.

58.  Cutting For Stone – I wanted to like this. It was so well written. But it was just SO boring. I had to make myself read it.

59.  The Other Side of the Island – meh.  It didn’t do it for me.  Too boring and obvious and derivative of The Phantom Tollbooth.

60.  Voluntary Madness -  This was the book that made me decide I can’t read about crazy people in mental institutions.  It hits too close to home.  She kept talking about her meds failing after a certain amount of time and it just stressed me out.

61.  Beautiful Boy – A little self indulgent, and maybe not as introspective as it could be, but this book was really interesting and well written. It made me want to read some of Judith Warner’s stuff on divorce.  The son in the story, Nick, is devastated by his parents divorce and says, at one point, “I was always missing someone.”  This is SUCH a true statement of what it’s like to be the child of divorced parents.  It affects you profoundly. It made me think, a lot.

62.  If I Stay – I wanted to really like this, because Janssen loved it, but I don’t know. I didn’t hate it, but it just didn’t move me like I thought it would.

63.  Gang Leader For A Day – When I started reading this, it fascinated me.  All the stuff about sociology and the different attitudes that academia takes towards learning about poverty, race, and class was so interesting.  But ultimately this book just didn’t dig deep enough for me.  I much preferred “There Are No Children Here.” Just read that if you’re interested in this stuff.

64.  Cracked Up To Be – Oh, yeah, no.  This was one of those books with a HUGE ENDLESS plot build up – the main character did something SO BAD and she can never UNDO it and her life is SO meaningless now and blah blah blah, in the end the BIG HUGE DEAL wasn’t really anything too shocking and I  just sort of thought “that’s it?  Really?”.  Although now that I think about it, what happened was sort of a big deal, but I think it just wasn’t written correctly, or something. Meh for me though, for sure.

65.  The Hour I First Believed – Dudes.  This book was so so so so so so so so soooooo long.  And then everything bad that’s happened in the world in the last 20 years happened to the main character and I… I just don’t know.  This should have been two books, or three.  Or edited more, or something.  And the ending? Hrrrrm.

66.  Schuyler’s Monster – I really liked it.  I had some trepidation going into this because sometimes I don’t always see eye to eye with Rob, but I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a great read, and I STILL to this day get goosebumps reading about how Schuyler got her Big Box of Words.

67.  I Know It’s Over – Weird, and kind of dirty for YAF, but I really really liked it.  The main character was really well written.

68.  Child of Mine – The internet wets its pants for this book about what to do to get your kid to eat. I was so ready for all of the magic answers on how to get Eli to eat! But then it was a weird combination of the totally obvious and stuff I don’t agree with.  Disappointing, for me at least.  And if one more person/book/doctor tells me not to feed my kid juice, I am going to LOSE MY MIND.  HE DOESN’T FREAKING DRINK JUICE!

69.  Service Included – As soon I finished this, I googled the French Laundry Cookbook AND the restaurant.  Turns out I can’t afford either, but I loved reading about them.  And some day I will eat there, you mark my words.  Although I did look up the famed salmon cornet on Flickr, and, uh, let’s just say it reminded me STRONGLY of something.  Or is it just me?  Anyone?

70.  New Moon – oh good lard just no.

71.  Lowboy – Urgh.  To me it felt like manic depression portrayed using a random string of nonsense.  Yuck.

72.  Secrets to Happiness – I really really really liked this book.  The main character, Holly, cracked me straight up. So funny I read parts out loud to Mr. E.

73.  Mexican White Boy – Way way way predictable.

74.  Her Last Death – Wow.  Now there’s a bad mom.  Totally fascinating, but also very bizarre.

I am still in the middle of Earth Abides (totally boring), Hard Laughter (I really don’t love Anne Lamott’s fiction, is this terrible of me?), The Ten Year Nap (meh, so far), and The Millionaires, which I just realized is one of those books that thinks it’s too good for quotation marks which I find SO INCREDIBLY ANNOYING it’s not even funny, so I might not finish that one.

But I am almost halfway to my goal of 150 books this year! Go me!

And now, if you’ll excuse me, this month’s copy of Dairy Foods Monthly just came in the mail, so I have to go read about cheese.

Not Working

I’m not even sure if I should be talking about this, really, since I haven’t exactly figured out how to say what’s on my mind and I am probably going to horribly offend someone (unintentionally), but this is what I have been thinking about  so that’s what you get.

Anyway, yesterday Mr. E and I were sitting around the dinner table and grousing about our respective days and I said something along the lines of “Oh, please, I’ve already done two loads of dishes AND I made dinner AND I put away all the laundry” and he looked at me and said “Yeah, but that’s your job.”

I was quick to inform him that no, raising our child was my job. Feeding and changing and entertaining a two year old is my job.  All the rest of it, the laundry and the gardening and the mopping and the cooking, that’s just extra.  In my humble opinion. Mr. E just changed the subject, I think, or we went to get ice cream or Eli started screaming about trucks,  but the conversation really stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Because really, when you’re a Stay At Home Mom, who decides what your job is?  In “traditional” couples, it’s a proven fact that no matter who does what or holds what job, the woman does more housework, and I know that even if I went to an office every day, I’d do more laundry, I’d make dinner more, I’d clean up the living room more.  I just care more about that stuff.

But somehow having the cleaning and the cooking defined as my “job” rankles.

And it’s tied up with the fact that when you’re a SAHM, there’s a very real undercurrent passing all about you – a constant implication on the part of the world that you’re a slacker.  And so you begin to spend a lot of time trying to prove to the world, to yourself, that you DO work hard.  That you work JUST AS HARD if not harder as anyone else.  Before you know you’re in some kind of never ending competion with your husband -  at the end of the day you throw his cushy office job in his face and he bitches about he has to get up at 6 am EVERY SINGLE MORNING and doesn’t get to lie around in the  yard reading books, EVER.

And the truth is I don’t get up at 6 am, and I don’t want to. I don’t miss my office job because I never really liked making photo copies and taking meeting minutes that much.  On the other hand, I won’t lie, digging poop out of someone else’s scrotum three times a day doesn’t exactly light my pants on fire either.  So there’s that.

I can’t figure out where it comes from – this need to prove all the time just how damn hard I’m working, the lists I recite of all the petty shit I completed at the end of the day.   It’s a constant defensiveness, an endless competition I signed myself up for.

It’s not because of Mr. E, it’s really not – my husband never fails to tell me that he thinks I’m a great mom, that he appreciates everything I do, that he’ll do whatever he can to help.  He takes over baby duty the second he walks in the door and most nights he doesn’t relinquish it until it’s time for Senor Pants to go to bed.

And what prize am I angling, for exactly?  What do I hope Mr. E will say after I rattle off all I’ve done in a day?  Because if I ask  him to make dinner, he will.  If I ask him to bring me a glass of wine, he will.  If I ask him to let me read a book by myself and if I ask him to pick green beans while I sit and read my book and drink my wine, he will.

I tell myself that maybe I should just stop complaining about the laundry and the dishes.  Maybe I should stop listing off everything I’ve done and expecting some kind of prize at the end of the litany.  Maybe I should admit to myself that since my husband makes ALL the money, and I don’t work outside the home, that this shit IS actually kind of my job.

And yet, I can’t.  I just can’t.  And I have no idea why.

Pardon My French…

but HOLY SHIT we are going to AUSTRALIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tickets are booked and everything.

Thanks to an email I still haven’t written back to from Kristin, last night I sat down at the old lap top and just casually started punching in destinations – SFO to Thailand, SFO to Paris, SFO to Greece, SFO to Hong Kong, which is where I thought we’d end up, but everything was pretty expensive until I typed in Sydney.

FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY NINE DOLLARS A PERSON from SFO to Sydney Australia. Sold!

With our vouchers from Delta we paid $21 dollars.

Holy crap. I’m going to Australia.  I am totally excited to meet Crocodile Dundee.

Now I just hope I don’t get face chomped by a rogue net hole finding shark.

Seven

1.That thing on my dining room table that has all of you so terrified is a carved wooden elephant head that my best friends mom got me in Thailand.  Actually it’s a pretty hilarious story because Sara’s mom knows that I love elephants and I collect them so she brought it back for me and then she decided that she liked it rather a lot HERSELF and put it on her own wall, and I kept asking Sara where the heck my elephant head was and she sort of hemmed and hawed and then she had to admit that it was actually on her mother’s wall but then she felt bad and started to emotionally pressure her mom into giving it up and then I felt bad and told her to never mind the whole thing, but as you can see Sara is a persistent gal with a well developed sense of personal justice and now the elephant head is MINE and is just hanging out on my dining room table scaring mommy bloggers.

2. I seem to have made a grievous tactical error when I planted green beans this spring – I was so excited to GROW and PICK green beans that I forgot that I don’t actually like EATING green beans.  Anyone have any recipes that are going to make me change my mind?

3. I was emotionally pressured by my entire set of in laws to read the rest of the Twilight books  so I stole borrowed New Moon from my sister in law and read it on the plane.  Oh, man.  My opinion is that New Moon = SO MUCH POO.  Are the other books going to be better?  Because as far as I can tell that entire 500 page drivel can be summed up in one sentence: “I like Jacob kind of but not really I mean not as much I as lurve Edward of course oh well eh. “

4. Eli is what, two and half?  And he still can’t fall asleep or stay asleep without a pacifier.  Mr. E and I both kind of think it’s about time he gave the pacifier up,  but when it comes right down to it, TODAY’S nap never seems like a good time to implement THAT change, if you know what I mean.  Unfortunately we want him to quit enough that we refuse to buy any new pacifiers to replace the seven million we’ve already bought and lost, so we spend half of each day trying to find the one remaining pacifier we have left.  Should I cave and buy more, or give it up?  For the sake of context, I feel that I should mention here that I sucked my thumb until I was TEN. And I still kind of miss it. Making a kid give up a comforting oral fixation isn’t going to be my strong suit.

5. A bunch of us have been passing around a copy of “Schuyler’s Monster”. Does anyone else out there want to read it?  If yes leave me a comment and I’ll send it on to ya.

6.  On Sunday Mr. E is going to ANOTHER concert and he’s taking Eli to stay with Sara (BFF) and I am spending the whole day by myself! I am inordinately excited because this means I am going to vacuum AND mop my floors.  Partay time!

7.  Eli! Dancing! And popsicles! Please ignore my deranged stage mom shrieking in the background.

You Be The Judge

So tell me, oh wise and powerful internet, did I just paint my dining room purple?

Or can I tell myself it’s greige and move on?

But seriously, how hawt do those white flowers look against my new purple walls!?

PS Please ignore my filthy kitchen, my ghetto back door, and those weird blotches the chandelier makes on the walls.

Housekeeping

It has been a little over a year since we closed on our house.  I can still remember in the midst of all the loan wrangling and frenzied phone calls and camping out at the Ramada Inn, driving through our neighborhood at dusk, sprinklers going, streetlights just coming on, the clean wide streets, the peacefulness, and squeezing my hands into fists and thinking “please let us get this house. Just please let us get this house.”

Sometimes I think I lose sight of all we have accomplished this year.  There’s so much left on the to do list and funds are lacking.  And it’s easy to feel like a failure while you’re moving from a place where you announce “we will ALWAYS buy each other presents!” to a place where you just don’t have the money for a Father’s Day present and all the announcements in the world won’t change that.  Happy Father’s Day Honey! I got you this tub of old spackle!

Anyway, I thought maybe I should tally up everything we’ve done in just this one year so maybe I would feel better about the fact that our floors are still awful and there’s no new front door in sight, because this transition from spoiled brat world to real world does get old sometimes and I could use some motivation to keep on keepin’ on, as they say.

Done!

1. bought and installed dishwasher

2. bought and installed refrigerator (more complicated than it sounds. Sawing was involved.)

3. painted dining room, half of living room, and hallway.

4. Bought new furniture, including: sideboard, couch pillows, side chair, rocking chair, dresser, dining room chairs, rug for Eli’s room,new sheets, bathroom rack, hall table, laundry room shelves, bathroom shelves, living room bookshelves, filing cabinet, and desk.

5. bought and repainted blanket chest

6. painted china cabinet

7. moved water heater out of kitchen, replaced with tankless on the back of the house

8. roofed garage

9. replaced gate to the backyard

10.  pulled out old juniper and roses, planted peonies, dahlias, lilies, nasturtiums, mandarin and orange trees, daffodils, tulips, tomatoes, beans, carrots, cucumbers, poppies, zinnias, mint, basil, and half a truckload worth of succulents.

11.  had asian pear tree cut down, graded, filled, graveled and edged side yard.

12.  Began restoring fire place.

13. Added outlets to the kitchen.

14. Buried live wire in trench in backyard.

15. had two pipes replaced and gross water sucked out from under the house.

16. Bought stacking washer and dryer

17. Pulled old rebar stakes out of the backyard.

18. bought new lawnmower and electric weed whipper

19. Added window boxes, hose reel, doormat, and hanging baskets to the front of the house.

20. Repainted the trim on the front of the house.

21. Installed gutters and rain chains.

22. Installed chandelier in dining room.

23. Replaced weird orange lamp.

24.  Started scraping hall way paint.

25. Put up living room and bedroom curtains.

26. Purchased and assembled stainless kitchen rack and pot rack.

27. Spackled holes in the hallway.

28. Installed rolling racks and bag holders in kitchen cabinets.

Mr. E, what am I forgetting?

Here’s What’s Left To Do:

1. sell kidney, buy leather sleeper for living room.

2. paint living room, E’s room, our bedroom, back hallway.

3. install shelves, hooks, etc in the back hallway, and figure out how to make the trash can less annoying.

4. Paint kitchen cabinets white and add hardware, move them up, add crown molding, install subway tile, add shelf, add pot rack from the ceiling, new lighting, new counters, new floor.

5. Restore original hardwoods.

6. Buy one more gray pillow for the dining room.

7. Mirrors and artwork for the living room and our bedroom.

8. Figure out the unworkable vanity situation in the bathroom.

9. Ebay a shag rug for the living room.

10. Put the windows back into the living room, cover with sheers, redo the window treatment on the front window.

11.  Crown molding?

12. Deck

13. Tile the front steps.

14. Flat screen tv.

15. replace bathroom door.

16. figure out some kind of closet/shoe organization

17. buy a new dresser and a trundle bed for Eli, and a new bed for us, and construct a dog/future babies trundle system.

18. Paint my desk legs red.

19. Finish the fireplace.

20.  Hang black and whites, either in the hallway or dining room.

21. Finish scraping and painting the front porch trim.

22. Hang new light fixture in entryway.

23. Repaint entry way

24. Replace front door and screen.

25. Put french door on the back door.

26. Find something to hold dog food.

27. Build a potting bench.

28. Adirondacks and umbrella for backyard.

29. New backyard furniture.

30. Bauer orb for side yard.

31. Trellises with climbing plants to cover side of garage.

32. Plant roses along side of house in fall.

33.  Make an ottoman

34. Put the shutters back on the house.

35. Redo the carport and add shelving.

36. Train the grape vine to cover the carport.

37. Add stainless steel bulletin boards to the kitchen.

38. replace stove with gas.

39. get new flatware from France

40. buy a new laundry basket

41.  replace all the switchplates

42.  buy new wine glasses, a shop vac, a brown runner, and a glass cloche

43.  paint garage trim black

44.  build Eli a sand box

And that’s it! 6 items less than the last time I made this list! We can do it!