Modern Day Housewife

I don’t really know what a “modern day housewife” is, but I think whatever the definition is, I am it.  I spent almost the entire day doing housewifery (housewifey? housewiferic?) things.  Actually, my day consisted of things involving food (of course).  I baked bread, made rice pudding (yum, my favorite breakfast/dessert – hey, it has milk, eggs and rice in it – that is totally healthy if you just ignore the cup of sugar), tried a new banana chocolate chip muffin recipe (one thumb down, one thumb halfway up – man, were they dry!), went grocery shopping, and went to Costco.  I prepped all my veggies for the week and vacuum sealed my two tons of pork chops from Costco.

Kitchen duty is one wifely duty I can handle.  Cleaning is another story.  We got ourselves a really nice Dyson vacuum, and even though it cleans amazingly well, I hate it.  It is heavy and cumbersome and I will let the house get extremely cat-hairy and dusty before I pull it out.  By the time I am done vacuuming, I am sweating and exhausted.  I don’t understand why they can’t invent a vacuum that is light and quiet? 

I don’t mind laundry (although I always forget to take it out of the dryer), but Jesse does most of the laundry these days.  At one point, we tried to divide the chores up equally, but that didn’t work (as I expected it wouldn’t).  The only household chores I leave completely to Jesse are the garbage and the cat litter.  Even though they are gross, I think he gets the better deal.

What’s it like in your household?  Who does what?  Is there a clear division of labor, or is it whomever’s available at the time?

My upcoming vacation

I am on vacation next week.  I’m really looking forward to it.  I’m not going anywhere, I’m just staying home.  The biggest thing on my agenda for next week is to clean the house.

And I have to say, I am really excited about it.

I’ve got the whole week planned out – Monday is Bedroom, Living Room, Dining Room, Kitchen, Bathroom and Millie’s Room.  I know, only one day?  But those rooms are already pretty clean and orderly.  I am spending two days on the back bedroom and two days on the garage.  Those rooms are where we just throw all the junk, so they are extremely messy and disorganized, and I just can’t take it anymore.  My sister is coming to visit in a few weeks and I need to have the back bedroom look like an actual bedroom and not a disaster area.

I’m also hoping to run some errands I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, like drop off all my winter dry cleaning so it’s ready for the season change, and maybe plant some flowers.  Oh, and take some shoes to the repair shop.  I want to hang pictures in our new and improved living room and work on my FSA reimbursement.  I need to take pictures of our couch and entertainment center to post on craigslist to sell them, and I want to get a bunch of stuff ready to donate to Goodwill.

So much to do, only five days to accomplish it all.

Renovations

We are in the midst of renovating our house, and while I’m so so happy it’s finally happening, I’m pretty miserable.

Millie and I have been evicted from our house and are now squatting at my mom’s house.  We’ve been out of the house for about a week, and it sucks.  Don’t get me wrong, it has nothing to do with being at my mom’s house.  My mom is very helpful with Millie and has been very gracious, letting us stay here for so long.  But I HATE not being in my home.  I miss my house.  I miss my bed, I miss my ugly kitchen, I miss my closet and my living room.  I want to be able to veg out on my couch and not have to choose my work wardrobe a week in advance.  I want to be able to futz around in my kitchen.  I want to not share a room with Millie, who has decided that when Mommy gets up, it’s time for Millie to get up, even though Mommy is not ready to deal with Millie at that moment.  It’s so wonderful to wake up at 7am to “Mommy?  MOMMY!  MOMMY!” which gets progressively louder with each MOMMY!

I really am very thrilled that the house is being worked on – I just didn’t fully realize what that was going to mean for us.  I didn’t prepare myself mentally for the displacement.  I thought we’d be out of the house for a day or two, so I only packed up enough supplies for that long.  When I realized we were going to be gone for much, MUCH longer, I had to quickly adjust.  I went back to the house, which was now covered in dust, and tried to run through everything in my closet in order to pack a week’s worth of clothes for me and Millie.  I had to pack all our toiletries and medicines and anything else I could think of, and fast.  If I had had time to prepare, I would have very calmly made a list of everything we needed.  Instead it was me throwing things into a suitcase, willy-nilly.  I HATE being unprepared.

Plus, we had family in town and so we were spending a lot of time with them, which, when piled on top of renovations and being displaced, was really just too much for me.  I can deal with some chaos, but not TONS at a time.  I was very grumpy with Jesse, and when he asked me why I just unloaded EVERYTHING I was feeling, and I think he was a little shocked.  I guess I just don’t do well with lots of change all at once.

In any case, the living room has been completely stripped of everything: the dusty, musty carpet, the wood paneling and the soggy ceiling tiles.  The two closets in our bedroom and Millie’s room have been broken through, and will become one closet for us (Millie will have the one we are currently using).  The old air vent in the dining room has been patched over.  They are in the process of dry-walling everything.  Jesse will be laying a hardwood floor in the living room.  It’s going to be so awesome! 

We’ve also completely gutted our front yard – we had two ugly trees removed, all the ugly bushes, all the ugly mulch and the ugly, rusty fence.  They laid the sod today, and it looks so amazingly different, I could cry with happiness.  We are white trash no longer!  I will definitely post pictures (once I am back in my house, grr), because the change is truly wondrous.

I am beyond thrilled that these changes are finally taking place, after having been in the house for two years.  There is still much more to do, but the living room and front yard have always been the two most embarrassing areas for me.  We used to have game nights at our house, but I was so embarrassed by the living room, and asking people to sit on the disgusting carpet, that we stopped having them.  Plus, whenever someone would come to our house in the daylight, I would have to say, “We are the house with the rusty chain link fence and the mulch yard, please excuse the wretchedness of our house, we’ll fix it someday.”  So I’m ecstatic that “someday” has finally arrived.

Don’t you just hate that?

So we got our new bed today, and I wanted to wash the new mattress pad.  Wouldn’t you know it, my washing machine decides that it is too bulky, and doesn’t spin.  So I pull out this sopping wet, down-filled mattress pad and am trying to figure out how to wring it out without getting water all over the floor.  I decide to put it in a garbage bag and bring it into the bathroom (yes, the one that is still under renovations).  I put it in the tub and try to wring it out, but it’s huge and did I mention sopping wet?  So I get into the tub for more leverage, and I am leaning it against my leg, which I just happened to use self-tanner on that morning.  The self-tanner runs all over the mattress pad, leaving me with very nice streaks down my calves.  I try stomping on it to smoosh out the water, which doesn’t work at all.  I eventually give up and put it in the dryer, hoping it will dry off sometime in the next century.  Surprise, surprise, it dries easily.

Now, should I have just put it in the dryer in the first place?  Probably.  But can I ever take the easy way out?  That would be a definite no.

Remodeling

We decided that this long weekend was the perfect time to remodel the bathroom.  Well, "we" being "me telling Jesse it’s time to remodel the bathroom".  As usual, though, we have hit a few snags.  Such as, the people who owned this house previously were very secretive, and did not mention that they left big giant gaping holes in the drywall.  They covered it up very nicely with wood paneling, but when you take the paneling off, you find great big holes!

I guess since we bought it "as-is", we have no one to blame but ourselves.  Right, Steph?

Not only are there holes, but somehow they managed to put the plumbing inside the vanity so that you have to cut the vanity apart in order to get it off the wall.  Thanks again!

Then, Jesse went and cut the power to Millie’s room while cutting some sheet rock, so he had to fix that before we could do anything else.  We have been scraping paint (most likely lead-filled) for a few days now (don’t worry, we got Millie out of there, she’s at my mom’s house).  We are hoping to at least paint today.

You would think three days would be quite enough to remodel a bathroom.  You would be wrong.  Hey, at least it hasn’t cost us a lot to do this.  Thank God for small favors.

Sleep, beautiful sleep

We are getting a new bed.

I have to say, Jesse and I are really looking forward to, oh, you know, SLEEPING!

I always thought our bed was pretty good.  When I tried it out in the store, it seemed pretty firm.  And I like me a firm bed.  But as the years went by (all three of them), and I gained about 50 lbs during pregnancy, we slowly realized that the bed was EVIL.  My extra weight weighed down the bed, neutralizing all the back support.  So now I wake up every morning with a backache.

I’m too young for a backache every morning.

Jesse, on the other hand, doesn’t wake up with a backache.  Because for him to wake up with a backache would mean that he would have had to sleep at some point during the night in order to then wake up.  He tosses and turns all night and is never able to get comfortable. 

We are a pair, he and I.  A pair of achy, sleep-deprived losers.

So we are getting a new bed next week.  A SleepNumber bed, no less.  So we can each decide how firm or soft we want our side of the bed.  This is such a great idea, I really think many marriages could have been saved if they had just gotten a good night’s sleep.  One of the statistics at the store said that 90% of couples don’t want the same degree of firmness in their bed.  The bed is also supposed to relieve aches and pains, daytime sleepiness, and restlessness during the night.  All of those things are what plague Jesse and me.

The one thing I am nervous about, though, is that we are going from a king size bed to a queen.  I’ve gotten so used to having my own space, I really hope it’s not too cramped.  On the other hand, maybe it will promote more cuddling at night.  That would be nice.

Next Wednesday, folks.  Mark your calendars, that will be the night a sigh of relief is heard around Florida as we finally get a good night’s sleep.

So much for my “resolution”

I really did mean to write on here more, but I am so super busy at work, then busy at home, that I just don’t have the time.  Jesse is working now at Home Depot, so when I get home, I see him for only a few minutes before he has to leave for work.  Then I’m home alone with Millie and spending all my time taking care of her.  So blogging takes a backseat, even though I really want to post.  It sort of sucks, not having any free time anymore.

Millie is doing well, her seven month newsletter is coming soon, so I won’t write too much on here.  The biggest news is, she is eating solid foods now!  I’m so happy about that, I love to see her progress.

I am enjoying American Idol this season.  I haven’t really watched it since the first year (after Kelly Clarkson, how can you top that?), but I like a few of the finalists this year.  I really like Katharine McPhee, she is my favorite.  She has a great voice and great control.  But that comes from having a voice teacher for a mom.  Paris is pretty good, but still very young.  I  like Mandisa a lot, too, she is a powerhouse.  I keep waiting for her to sing, "And I am Telling You I’m Not Going" from Dreamgirls.  That seems to be the song for women who can belt.  I’m not really liking any of the guys this year, none of them have a great voice.  That little Kevin kid with the speech impediment is so cute, but I can’t believe he wasn’t cut this week … not even in the bottom three!  Ace and Lisa being in the bottom three was a shocker.

My Amazing Race is back on, finally.  The Family Edition season was horrible, but so far I don’t really have any favorites this season.  There is one guy who is a real jackass, but other than him, everyone is pretty blah.  But there have only been three episodes so far, so I’m sure I’ll start liking someone soon.

Supernanny is back on – I have two episodes on my TiVo that I haven’t watched yet.  I think she is a very smart lady and I hope I can use her techniques when Millie is older.  The naughty chair is not really necessary for a six month old … I mean, she is only now learning to sit up, trying to put her in a chair is not a good idea at the moment.

I am really enjoying my job – I’m getting to do lots of casting/talent recruiting, which was always my dream career.  And I’m getting to do a bit of traveling as well.  I’m going to New York in April … I’m very excited to get back to NY, I haven’t been there since the wedding.  But I’m sad that Jesse and Millie aren’t coming.  We are going to try to take a vacation in the fall, after Millie turns one.  I would really like for us to take a family vacation to NY once a year.  I want Millie to grow up loving New York like her father and I do.  I’m going to go see some plays while I am there, hopefully Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and maybe Barefoot in the Park (although I heard it’s not that good, but I was named after the title character, and I love the play).

I’m very glad Jesse is working again.  It was a little stressful, him not having a job.  He is liking the job at Home Depot, he works in the electrics department.  I didn’t even know he knew electrical stuff!  The only downside is I don’t get to see him that much.  And now we are both pretty tired all the time.

We haven’t done too much with the house lately.  Jesse is working on the bathroom tile, he is slowly taking the linoleum off – underneath is this really cool blue tile (it is amazing how many layers this house has!), so he is scraping the glue off the tile.  Then we will paint the grout (it’s not white anymore).  Once we get that done, we can finish the bathroom – take the wood paneling off, paint the walls and get a new sink, bath cabinet and fixtures.  It will look very different when we are done.  Other than that, we got our fence installed in the back and Jesse is starting to plant grass seed.  He has a very nice patch of very green, soft Bermuda grass.  We both hate Florida grass (St. Augustine is the type), it is very rough and scratchy, not the type of grass you want to lie down in.  Bermuda grass is much nicer.

I have to go feed Millie now, today we are eating butternut squash! 

Self-inflicted stress, anyone?

We had our first get-together in our house on Saturday, a casual game night with a bunch of friends.

Why is it that when I try to do something that I think has a limited amount of stress, it always ends up being stressful anyway?

We decided to just do chips and dip and some dessert.  That was actually the easy part, I made all the dips and desserts ahead of time so I didn’t have to stress all at the last minute.  No, the hard part was getting the house presentable for company.  We’ve been homebound for the last three months, so the mess had sort of taken on a life of its own.  Plus, we wanted to try to get the front room and hallway finished before the people arrived … we’ve only been meaning to finish it since we moved in in July.  So we (well, mostly Jesse) scraped and sanded and painted all week before the party.  Even so, we didn’t really finish.  But what we did finish looked awesome!  Jesse did an awesome job with the painting, and I tried to help and not splatter too much paint all over our newly refurbished wood floors.  We still have more painting to do, but we are finally getting to a stopping point in all our renovations.  Once the front of the house is completed, we are taking a much needed break.  We are going to be smart and hire someone to redo the kitchen and living room for us.  And we will also hire someone to do the yard.  This is a house where there will always be more to do, but we are finally learning that we can’t do it all at once.

The party was a success, in any event – everyone had a good time, I think, and we are hoping to do this on a bi-monthly basis.  It was really nice to have everyone over to our new house, and Jesse and I were very proud of ourselves for our hard work.

Now if we can just keep the coffee table free of magazines going forward, I’ll be a happy woman.

Our house is a very very very fine house

We are slooowly working on the house, bit by bit.  Problem is, we keep finding more things to fix as we go, which is kind of disheartening.  But, we knew what we were in for when we bought this place.  And we continue to be positive because we know that once it’s all done, it’s going to be beautiful.  Also, we weren’t expecting Millie to arrive so early – we thought we would have more time to work on stuff.  Damn kid.

We had the wood floors refinished and they look amazing.  It’s really interesting to me that people would cover up such great floors with carpet.  When we took down the wood paneling in the front rooms, we found that the family that lived here before us really loved color.  The rooms had been painted numerous times.  I’m talking at least 4 times in each room.  And they were all crazy colors: seafoam green, red, orange, yellow, dark blue … all the colors of the rainbow, except purple.  Millie’s room was orange on two walls and yellow on the other two … maybe they had a circus theme going?  There was a huge mirror in the front room – we took that down and the wall behind it was a pinky red, with mustard color drips from another paint job.  Now, I like color just as much as the next guy, but the colors I have used are very normal – grey or lavender or light yellow.  I would never think to paint a room orange and yellow.  But that’s just me – although I did have a red kitchen.

So far, Millie’s room is the only one that is almost completely finished.  We just need to fix the floor moulding and paint the closet and it will be complete.  In our bedroom, we need to paint all the trim as well, and then it will also be done.  But I think the only room that will actually be completed soon is the hallway (probably because it is the smallest area … Jesse and I don’t do well with big projects).  We painted the walls yesterday and will paint the trim tomorrow.  Hopefully, we will work on painting the front room sometime soon.

The longer we are in this house, the more we think of things we would like to change.  We have way too many ideas.  Jesse has realized that he can’t tackle this house on his own, so once we finish the front three rooms, we will turn the rest over to professionals.  I think we would like to work on the landscaping next, now that the temperature here is cooling down.  It’s bugging me to look out on the front yard and see twigs and crap.  By next spring, I want to be able to play with Millie in the grass, and I want to have lots of pretty, colorful flowers planted.  LIke I said, we have lots of ideas.

It’s both exciting and daunting to own a house.  But we do love it here, no matter how frustrated we get that it’s not yet perfect.

My little house of dreams

Jesse and I are so excited to move to our new house.  Even though I own the condo, this will truly be our first place together.  We have so many plans for renovations – eventually it will be great.

Here are our tentative ideas for each room:

Front room/Dining Room – currently the walls are a cream color with wood paneling on the bottom and a brownish shag-type rug.  We will pull up the rug and take off the paneling to start.  We are thinking, since this is the first room anyone will see when they walk in, that it should really pop! somehow.  Right now, the house is very dark because of all the wood paneling.  Once we tear it down, I think we are going to do all the rooms in very light, bright colors – so I’m thinking this room will be a very light beige or maybe white.  We will eventually get new dining room furniture.  The room is big enough that we could put some shelving in as well.

Foyer between bedrooms – I’m going to use these walls to create a picture gallery of family.

Our bedroom – all the wood paneling must go!  It’s so dark in there right now, it’s pretty gloomy.  The carpet will be pulled up as well and I think we will paint it white to really brighten up the room.  I want to get a new comforter, the one we have now is purple, but I’m thinking I want the room to have blue accents, so maybe a light blue comforter.

Baby’s room – Rhubarb’s room is going to be Classic Pooh, so we are going to paint the walls a very nice green (the room currently has, you guessed it, wood paneling and brown carpet). 

3rd bedroom – currently have no plans for the room, we are going to leave that alone for the time being.  But it does have the omnipresent wood paneling and carpet.

Living Room – wood paneling again, but the carpet in here is a nice light grey, so we will probably keep that.  We don’t have any plans for the room yet, other than eventually taking down the paneling.

Kitchen – will need new cabinets and new flooring, but it’s fine for now.  We were thinking of turning the window in there into a bay window and creating a breakfast nook, but that won’t be for awhile.  Not sure what we want to do in the kitchen – my kitchen now has a sort of 50′s theme, barely realized, but I think now I’d like the whole house to have very clean lines, so maybe a white kitchen with some sort of color accents.

The bathrooms need updating, of course, but I’m not ready to tackle that one.  They can stay as-is for now.  We really just want to have the front room, the baby’s room and our room done quickly.

Front yard – right now, it’s all mulch and rocks, so we are going to put in sod first and foremost.  We have 3 bouganvillea bushes that we are going to try to turn into trees.  There are two bush-like trees on either end of the front yard that we want to pull up, and we are going to replace the chain link fence with a picket fence, of course!  I’d like to plant some really colorful flowers, like impatients, all around the front of the house.  The porch is fine for now, but we are looking for some type of patio furniture to put out there, and I’d like to replace the fan and take up the carpet, see if there is wood under it.

We are really lucky that my condo sold for what it did, because we have enough money to do renovations and not go into debt.  It really gives you so much leeway to do what you want to do when you have money!