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April 28, 2004
April 28, 2004
I’m having one of those weeks where I am one day behind. Today feels like Tuesday to me, but alas, its Wednesday. Yesterday felt like Monday, but thank God, it was Tuesday. This is good. It generally means that the weekend will seem to arrive more quickly. Although what I have to look forward to this weekend is an estate sale at my late-grandmother’s-slash-our-new-home, and I’m not exactly thrilled to be spending what is supposed to be a beautiful weekend at, essentially, a garage sale. But, the end result is that the house will be mainly cleared out and we can actually begin settling in.
I am also having one of those weeks where I feel like I will never accomplish everything that I need to accomplish. Three big, new, challenging projects at work fell on my desk this week. Good, interesting, challenging projects—that is a good thing. But it equals very, very busy (and look how good I am at procrastinating too! I’m writing THIS!).
At home…well, things are just nutty. We have so much more to move, and although logically I know it will happen, it just seems like….so…..much….stuff. Still. We’ve been slowly moving for a few weeks now, and it is becoming like torture. I will be happy when it is all over.
At the new house we still have two more bedrooms to paint. Mike is fast with the roller on the walls, but the trim work has fallen to me, and I’m terribly slow. A true Gemini… I can’t seem to focus on any one thing. I start painting the baseboards, and get distracted and think I’d really like to see how that closet door will look, and I’ll run over there and start painting, and get bored and decide I’d really like to finish up the floorboard in the other corner, etc.. Not the most efficient painter, you could say.
We made an exciting discovery last weekend. Mike began pulling out the wall-to-wall carpet in the 3 bedrooms and found perfectly good hardwood floors! It was like striking gold! I don’t know why it hadn’t really occurred to us that there could very well be hardwoods under all that ugly carpet, but it just didn’t. We were thrilled! First off, we’ve just saved ourselves money on new carpeting for the bedrooms (although we will be buying big area rugs for each room now). Secondly, we LOVE hardwoods. I know the merits of wall-to-wall carpet—its softer, warmer, quieter. BUT I also find it grosser. This is the third house from whence we have pulled carpeting, and let me tell you, that process will encourage one to think twice about wall-to-wall carpet. BLECK. The particles that harbor in there…ick. I’m happy to chase dust bunnies for the rest of my life if it means they aren’t hiding in the fibers of my wall-to-wall carpet forever. In our current house (not the new house), we did end up replacing the old carpet with new carpet, b/c the hardwood floors were in need of a major refinishing and we just weren’t willing to undertake that at the time. So, we’ve had wall-to-wall in this house, and it has made me crazy—spots, stains, etc. That said, I find myself getting emotional (SILLY! STUPID!) over the idea that my next baby won’t get to crawl on wall-to-wall carpeting and will have to endure falling over onto hardwoods. The price we must pay, I guess. The next child will just have to be a trooper, and maybe s/he will get a nice set of kneepads and a helmet while learning to sit-up/crawl/walk. Oh, I forgot to mention…after the discovery in the bedrooms, I went to the living room and peeked under the carpeting (which we were going to keep, at least for awhile, as it was decent), and lo and behold, more hardwoods! So, we’re talking a full floor of hard flooring surfaces. Are we crazy to go for the gusto? As I said, we do plan to buy some big, big area rugs for each room to soften things up a bit…but if anyone out there is thinking we’re nuts to remove all carpet from our house, please let me know and I may (MAY) reconsider our “rip-it-out-and-throw-it-away-yay-for-hardwoods mentality…But I doubt it. The bedrooms already look SO MUCH BETTER. And once we rip out the living room carpet, well, I think its going to look smashing.
Back to how overwhelmed I am feeling. So with the exciting discovery of hardwood floors comes some unplanned for toiling over the floors. Although they are in good condition (the house was built in the 50s and I think these floors have had many layers of ugly carpeting on them since they were installed), we do have to scrub years worth of dust & carpet pad fibers off of them, then we have to Murphy’s Oil Soap-clean them, then we have to wax or polish or somehow shine them up a bit. And of course, we would like to get this done before we move all of our furniture in to these rooms next week. This is on top of the painting that remains, not to mention unpacking our entire lives, organizing everything, etc. etc. Of course, much of this doesn’t actually HAVE to get done right away, but I can’t conquer the feeling that it does.
And as for the current/soon-to-be old house. I feel this overwhelming desire to clean it to perfection after we move all of our stuff out. Our sale agreement says we only have to leave it “swept clean” or something like that. But in theory, I like this new young couple that is buying the house, and I want it sparkling for them. I’m sure reality will win out in the end, and they’ll probably wind up with something closer to the “swept clean” version (vs. scrubbed clean, sparking, shining) but nonetheless, I am feeling weighed down by ambition. Our house was glimmering while it was on the market, but since then I’ve had absolutely zero motivation to clean, and so I really just haven’t. The kitchen floors have crumbs marching along the sidelines, the counters are spotty, the carpet hasn’t been vacummed in over a week, the bathtub is desperately in need of a good scrubbing, every single flat surface needs to be dusted. But I can’t bring myself to go to all the effort when we’re moving stuff out constantly (and thus disrupting dirt & dust in untouched places) and I will have to go through and clean it all again (for one last time) in a little over a week anyway.
My little brother (not actually so little, and he’s 23) has been in trenches of the long Peace Corps application process for almost a year now. He just finally got his official assignment. Romania. For TWO YEARS. TWO YEARS! That means Hana will be FOUR YEARS OLD when he returns. Yikes. And he leaves June 7th. AND, he is leaving for Europe for two weeks tomorrow morning (for vacation), meaning that he will actually only be in the States for another, oh, 3 weeks or so for the next two years. I think he does get one or two vacations during that time, so hopefully he will be home at some point in that period, but still. Two years. Wow. I get all choked up and teary when I think of that in terms of Hana. She could possibly be four years old before she sees her Uncle Kyle again. Sad. Of course, I’m thrilled for him; this is exactly what he wants, and he is thrilled (and nervous). I’m just sad for me and for Hana (who of course has no concept of this). There is also the possibility that Mike & I (but definitely not Hana--no way am I committing to that long of a plane ride with her) might go to Europe at some point to visit him... but I still hate the idea of being away from Hana for that long. And maybe I'll feel differently when she is, say, 3..but then maybe I'll be pregnant or have a baby, and then its just not a possibility. So I'm not banking on that idea, exciting as it sounds to visit Romania (et al).
Hana starts her new daycare on Monday. I’m getting really excited and a bit nervous. I hope the transition isn’t too difficult for her. I’m very curious to see how she reacts. She absolutely loves to be around kids, especially older kids, and this small, privately owned center does a lot of interactive stuff with all of the age groups (1 yr- 5yrs). We’ve visited several times, so it won’t be new to her, except for the BIG facts that she’ll be staying longer, and will be staying without her mom. I am taking Monday off work, plan to spend an hour or two at the daycare with her in the morning, and then meet her back there for lunch and take her home for naptime. Tuesday, similar plan except her Grandma is going to pick her up early that day, and so on and so forth for the rest of the week. She did very well the last time she was in daycare (from about 12 months to about 15 months) and I hope it goes as well this time. I think that more structure, more activity, more learning and more kids will be good for her. I hope she agrees! ;)
Now, back to those big work projects looming over my head……
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