Psychotomy

so, thursday after my mother-in-law left, and while waiting to make sure her flight was taking off before taking my shower/going to bed, i put together the shelves for the dining room. that wasn’t too hard.

so saturday i dropped K at camp so I could do the living room shelves. larger, heavier, more unwieldy. he needed to not be there lest he get smushed. and they were heavy :o but i got them up, put on the doors, mounted all the shelves (and those shelf supports SUCK! i mean, they’re probably really good and they inset to the shelf pretty deeply, so the shelves aren’t likely to move accidentally, but they really tore up my hands trying to put them all in because there were a total of 20 shelves 4 mounts each, then screw them in …)

the shelves look nice. and once i finished those i put the new rug in the dining room, moved the table back. we put together some more baby furniture bits that go in the living room.

forgot to bring up the boxes of stuff from the basement, so I guess kiir won’t be putting things on the shelves today oops. oh well. not sure how i’m getting past the annoying laundry thing my mother in law put in the hallway, anyway. not really sure what it’s supposed to do for me, but DAMN is it large and annoying :o

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help! my living room has gone MIA!

my mother in law is in town, and buying stuff. there’s the IKEA furniture, then kiir talked her into a huge spending spree on baby stuff (pack and play, bathtub, etc) at babys-r-us (only 3 outfits, i was so impressed)

then yesterday we got me some pants for work, rugs for the first floor (why’d we put in nice hardwood floors to cover them up with carpets? :o)

so my living room is incredibly overfull. b/c all that baby stuff? i don’t think any of it’s gone to baby’s room yet. which is just as well, i’m going to need somewhere to put the baby furniture when they deliver that :o

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last night i thought to myself “well, those shelves we want aren’t available at either maryland location (of ikea) … i wonder, where’s the one in VA?” b/c saturday is kiir’s baby shower, and since i’m not invited, but i am the official chauffeur, i could theoretically go get them if it’s nearby. maybe.

and the VA location is in woodbridge, which is on i-95 so not that far out of the way, cool! i suppose i need to figure out if they’ll fit in the car …

except VA’s out of stock too. and since it’s discontinued, unlikely to randomly become in stock :o so then i started looking, nearest place i could find it in stock is PITTSBURGH! PA??? screw that, never liked those shelves anyway, we’ll get the split set :o

oi!

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Well, general bits and parts. K’s trainer came by yesterday to look at his “home environment” and give us suggestions on what we might need to do to get him ready for a home invasion by the blob. Mostly we’ve done what she was going to say, apparently, but she did want us to start “ignoring him” and carrying around the baby-doll, so he gets used to something else taking our attention, and so he can learn that when we’ve got baby we can’t play.

I just feel like a complete git wandering around with a baby doll in my arms :o what am I, an 8 year old girl playing with dolls? cripes :o

Put away all of the laundry (well, not all; 90%+ though; mostly have sheets and towels left, and some of my clothes where the dresser is blocked by the crap i threw in that room when i had to clear the floors). Went through a couple of the boxes and consolidated. Went through the filing cabinet, threw away (read: shredded) a bunch of documents. Like, the part where we’ve refinanced at least one mortgage every year since we moved in. We suck with money management :/

Didn’t paint the bathroom. Didn’t hang the shelves. Went to order the furniture for delivery, but apparently at ikea that just means “after you’ve bought it, we’ll d rive it home” and since part of hte problem here is that I can’t lift the stuff by myself … uh, not helping. But one of the parts we wanted is discontinued! DOH! (and it’s not at another ikea anywhere near by, either, I checked :o)

Sliced up my hand trying to take out the drain in the half-bath so i could actually make htat sink work :o tried to cook some over the weekend. The fondue tasted weak. The baked potato soup is all sweet and weird an’ shit. Not sure if we’re gonna eat the rest or toss it later this week :/

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a few week ago, i painted the upstairs bathroom. it was a pale green. or, technically, so i’m told. b/c i couldn’t tell the difference between that, the white primer i’d put on earlier, or the white that the walls had been.

today i went to finish painting, b/c kiir told me there were a few small spots i missed. “not much, just a little touch up.” …

“this whole area, oh, and everything up here on this wall. and that wall.” … in the end “a few small spots you missed” became “3 of 4 walls” … then i had to pick out my own paint and started and … i could see this one. “what paint am i using?” “the green one!” … thanks, you stupid witch! she came up after prodding and confirmed that i was using the wrong paint. then she decided that, since i was doing all the walls anyway, we could just change paint to one i could see. wheee!

then i went downstairs and did that bathroom. which color? “the purple one” … you;ve got to be joking, come point! turns out i can see this one better than she can :o go me!

two bathrooms painted. two showers AWOL for now … uh, oops :o

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hit ikea this weekend for the shelving units/etc to go with our tv stand. out of stock on the units, and the etc is 6′x1′x6″ 80lb boxes … i can’t pick it up (leverage vs torque, gravity wins!). I was thinking of how to get it onto the dolly cart when it occurred to me i’d have to get it into the house. well, we have a handtruck, ok.

wait, i have to get it up into the car … and out of the car … and up the stairs … fuck this, i can barely lift it, it ain’t getting all inside an’ stuff. so we’re going to go back when it’s all in stock (actually, probably just going back this weekend or next) and order it all for DELIVERY! wheeee. which means i didn’t get jack done with the living room rebuild/room cleanouts.

i did shred 2 bags full o stuff, though. and put away the clothes in the bedroom kinda. her clothes at least. and only things that don’t go in teh closet. b/c i can’t get in the closet yet. and the old headboard/footboard are currently half blocking the bathroom door b/c i didn’t have anywhere else to put them. i’m pretty confident that they are NOT going into the attic, though :/ stupid attic! be less anti-social!

played vanguard a bunch, cooked some. went to whole foods for groceries this week. the crab stuffed tilapia was strangely tasteless :o we decided we like the one i do better, go me! (we like flavor and spices, they were obviously aiming at the bland and tasteless crowd “my kids will eat this b/c it tastes just like nothing!”)

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So, I’ve spent the weekends for something like 3 months cleaning the house piecemeal. then in january i had to crash out the living room. i got a lot of the crap from there into the basement room (certianly not using the sewing machine NOW!), but other bits went into the downstairs bedroom, k’s room, baby’s room.

so, even though i’ve thrown out a huge amount of crap, and i’ve worked my ass off, kiir’s mom is coming beginning of march. to help us clean. b/c “the house really needs it” …

why did i bother? i know it’s never good enough, and i know i can only do so much before i get pissy about it. especially when k’s following me all over going “wanna play wanna play?” and pregnant kiir is on the computer playing games like i wanna be doing :o

(more…)

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taped off the two tub full baths yesterday and painted one. may paint the other tonight or something. we don’t have paints for the other two rooms yet, but the first floor needs me to cut out the wall and try again anyway :o go me!

hit ikea to look at furniture bits for the living room/dining room. since we got rid of all the old furniture, we need to get new before i can even work on reclaiming the downstairs rooms! oops, bad planning! oh well. i’ll figure something out.

K had camp saturday, and we played on the computers. i bought a new vid card, too, b/c i was peaking at 15fps in vanguard, while she was getting 30+ average. new vid card (same as hers, basically, now) i’m getting 35-40 usually, 20-30 in populous areas, and down to 15 when it hits a heavy display. which is an improvmenet over 15, 7, 1 :o really fun when i drop to .7fps now, though. “can you say over drawn???”

hopefully my new paycheck (see other post) will start helping us with the cashflow problems :o

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yeah, so, i’ve been cleaning for MONTHS, it’s getting ridiculous. annoying too :/

they finished the floors last week (yay obviously) and after I moved the computers back, we were sitting there and we realized something … we LIKE the living room uncluttered and not packed to the gills.

well, hell. now we wanna KEEP it this way.

aw, crap.

Going to IKEA this weekend sometime to look into the bits that go with our tv stand so we can put that up and have somewhere for the dragons and fairies and such. we’re thinking of moving the small shelves from the dining room to the basement and replacing the big shelves with them. obviously, of course, we have to go through our books and figure out what we really want to keep and what we really don’t care about keeping, see if we can reduce the quantity a bit. and by “a bit” i mean “a lot” b/c we have too many books. we have 4 tall shelves (5 levels), and 7 or 8 small shelves (2-3 apiece). things are stacked double in a lot of places, and there are books in boxes from the last time i had to box books for something b/c there’s nowhere to put them.

a few months ago i cataloged the books in the living room (bookpedia! the isight barcode scanner doesn’t work right for me; first it’s hard to get the light right so it can read it, then apparently a lot of my books have OLD codes so the ISBN it reads doesn’t match my book, oops). I think I got 150-200 books. On 4 3-shelf units, counting what was laying around the room too. say 150. we have that many again in the bedroom (3 2-shelf units with her romance books, plus everything that accumulates near and around her side of the bed). then I’d imagine twice THAT in the basement. I’m willing to say we have >1000 books. 2k seems high, but I’d believe 1500. almost certainly >1000 though.

that is going to take for-FREAKIN-ever. then I’m going to have like 500-750 books that we’re getting rid of. Trying to decide if we take them to the used bookstore and sell them (i mean, even at an avg 1$/book, that’s a lotta scratch!), give them to the library (dunno if that’s deductible), or donate them for hte tax writeoff (at which point i think it might average closer to 2$/book … but has to wait a year before we get a cash benefit, and then it’s probably down to 50c/book in terms of cash value) …

kiir’s leaning towards donate/give away, becaues it’s easier. I’m thinking more the used bookstore. of course, that means I have to cart all these books to the used bookstore and hope they’re willing to buy that many books at once an’ all. but we’ll see. it’s not like we’re there yet anyway :o

first I need to start reclaiming the master and guest bedrooms. baby’s room, too, but that’s 90% removing the painting bits that I’ve left in there since i painted. wheeee

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So, they finished the floors tuesday. Check.

Wednesday we picked K up from camp (FINALLY … that was expensive *sigh*) and he got to come home and experience the new floors. We were worried (well I was) about him slipping and sliding everywhere on the wood and getting no traction and being incredibly unhappy about the whole bloody mess. Figuring on getting an oriental rug (or cheap knockoff) for the living room/dining room, and maybe a runner carpet for the hall. so the puppy can, you know, run on it :o

Except, apparently K is special. He has no issues with the floor yet :o Don’t know if it’s b/c he had just had camp (and he’s back this morning, heh) or if it’s related to the wood being “strip” rather than “plank” (the strips are 2″ wide, plank is usually 6-12 from what I’ve seen), so the inter-piece slat-ridges are really regular and close together. I’m thinking both. Benefit being that, while he’s tired, he gets used to the floor and how to run around on it, so when he’s revved he’ll have a better chance of not flailing around. I think he will have to slow down some, because otherwise he’s likely to slide into walls or off the stairs before he manages to stop. although i also expect he’ll just learn to start braking a touch earlier or differnetly. he’s smart. he’ll adapt.

adapting to the baby, though, that’ll be harder i imagine. we need to start getting those baby sounds cd’s played. i imagine it’ll start with him going nuts when he hears something sudden, but hopefully we can get him to start ignoring it. as long as the kid never makes sounds like a bird or a horse galloping. those sounds he’s not quite learned to accept yet in games :o

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