Sticks and Stars

Last night I hit a moment of complete and total inspiration as to how my boys’ room should be set up. I’ve been struggling with a) how to include the huge amount of crap that needs to be included while making it look cohesive instead of just overwhelmingly cluttered, b) how to make it fun with extra bits I always dreamed of when I was a kid, and c) how to make it practical, with the kinds of work and play spaces my boys need. And of course, all of this in a 10′ x 10′8″ room. But last night, as I was tossing and turning and mulling, it all started to come together, and by this morning I was madly drawing layouts when I should have been working.

I won’t bother to try to describe the end result — except to say that it includes a circus tent! — but I will say that my hope is that it provides them a space that is colorful and energetic, but not too overwhelming to their sensitive little senses. Solid color without a lot of variation (except the tent of course) and lots of white, I think, will be key.

I think it will be an awesome room and I can’t wait to do it up and show you all!

I spend my non-moving hours pretty much glued to various home-related websites and man, it is super hard to not spend money on things that I know I really must have but that I probably don’t need as much as I think I do. For example, in my small storage-space-less kitchen, I really need a pot rack. I love having a pot rack in general, but in this new kitchen it’s more essential than ever. However, I don’t have the space for my current pot rack (that looks like this) and I wanted to this instead but my ceilings are made out of some kind of weird tile that won’t hold up to that kind of pressure. Instead, I could go with a wall mounted pot rack, or I could get a standing pot rack (I have just the corner for it), or I could put up a peg board and hang everything from that. I love all of these ideas to varying degrees on varying days but really, I need to live in my kitchen for a bit to see what will fit best and it’s so hard to wait!!

Some things I’ve already acquired because I just can’t wait, like cheapo storage for my bathroom so that I can hide away my tampons and toenail clippers and the collection of hair products I never use, and storage for my kitchen since there isn’t enough counter space for things like my Kitchen Aid and my blender, but for most things I really have to wait.

It’s easier that I don’t have any money, but oh how I itch to spend.

I bought this fridge today but I bought it used so I got it for about half the price. I love fridges with bottom mounted freezers and I’ve had both the drawer freezer and the door freezer. I always thought I preferred the drawer (which is what I currently have) until I was standing in front of the fridge at the appliance store and opening and closing the freezer door and realizing that it was so much easier to get at shit via the door than the drawer. So that made the decision easy and I slapped down my credit card happily. Hopefully that is the last of the major appliances I shall be purchasing in the near future.

I’m getting a bit burned out on moving and I sure as hell wish it would just get done. I’m at the worst part where you see that your house is mostly empty and so you think, “Whew, almost done!” but then every successive load of crap seems to make no dent at all.

Right now I’m trying to gird up my loins for one last carload of crap tonight, and then I really need to come home and clean my kitchen. I think I took everything over that could be taken while leaving the kitchen usable, but really, a whole other carload of crap could be hiding in the mess.

Usually I leave my car unlocked because if someone feels inspired to break in, I’d rather that they leave my windows intact. Indeed, I’ve had the contents of my center console and glove compartment rifled on more than one occasion but nothing has ever been taken.

Until yesterday, when some asshole stole my tools. I took my toolbox to my new house so that I could put together my new storage furniture and then I finally brought it back to my old/current house so that I could disassemble things here, but I forgot to bring it in and left it sitting on the floor in the backseat of my car.

It’s not like my tools were super fancy or anything, but they were MINE and I’ve been slowly collecting them over the years until I finally had everything I needed (including a wide range of carefully sorted fasteners that came in handy all the time). The bottom of my toolbox held a bunch of old tools that were my grandfathers. I never used them because my newer tools were generally more convenient but I kept them for sentimental value.

I cannot believe that someone stole my grimy little toolbox full of virtually worthless tools. They couldn’t possibly mean anything to anyone else, but to me they were a little symbol of my independence and my ability to step outside of my comfort zone to take care of things that needed taking care of. This is the icing on the cake of my hatred for this stupid neighborhood.

Today I got invited to present at a work-related conference coming up this spring! I’m nervous but excited because I really love networking with others in my field, and I think that what my workplace is doing around data and information management is really unique and awesome so I love having the chance to talk about it. But ack, standing up in front of people! And talking!! Coherently!!!

The first obstacle, though, is figuring how I can go out of town for two days without my children. The conference is three days long and even if I only go for my presentation I’ll still need to be gone for two days as it’s a six to seven hour drive to get there.

Hopefully I can figure something out because I’d really rather not miss out on this opportunity!

I feel anxious about all that remains to be moved but I’m also really glad this weekend is over so I have an excuse to only take one load over to the new place each day. All in all, I think I did pretty well this weekend. I moved seven major pieces of furniture (three bookcases, two toy storage cases, one cedar chest and a dresser) all by myself, and infinite reusable shopping bags o’ crap. My current house is looking much more barren.

But can we talk about something not moving related for a minute? I mean, I know you really, really want to know about each and every item that I have or have not moved over to my new place, but there are other facets to my life, people!

Okay, so, dating. I’m thinking of doing it and it’s kind of making me want to vomit.

Aack, I feel freaked out just having written that!

The thing is, when I decided to stop dating a million years ago, I was more than ready to stop. I stopped and was completely happy with the decision. I never looked back and when I did think about dating and/or being in a relationship, the thought filled me with dread and I kind of wondered whether I might be single forever because I had absolutely no interest in not being single.

But then, as 2009 wound to a close, I realize that I didn’t get laid during the entire year. Not a biggie, I know. Hell, I’ve been in relationships where I only got laid very slightly more often during the same time frame! But still, the realization of my unintended celibacy made me start thinking about all that dating and relationship business and while I can’t say that I felt some huge overwhelming longing to find my prince and/or princess charming and ride off into the sunset, I did feel…curious. Like maybe I might like to go on a date or something.

And then I decided to poke around okcupid (where I’d post my profile were I to decide to do such a thing) and there were all these hot single dads! It was, like, a sign!

At the same time, though, I have no childcare and not much spare time (especially at the moment) and while I do feel curious, as I mentioned, I also feel intensely anxious about the whole thing. Plus, I just don’t know that I’m emotionally healthy enough to do this…although maybe no one else is either so maybe that’s okay.

Sigh.

I’ll keep thinking about it.

Today we took two trips to the new house and brought over one of the boys’ toy storage units and all of its containings, and one of our Expedit bookcases (and all of its containings). After sitting for a while in the house with both our new kitchen storage set up and both the bookcase and new desk in place, I’m finding that I’m not thrilled with any of it…but I’m trying to withhold judgment both until after we get everything moved in and until I’ve had a chance to live with it and tweak it and have amazing revelations about Exactly How It Should Be.

My plan for this evening (aside from planning our meals for the week and making a grocery list) is to clean out my office and my file cabinet in particular. I’d like to move everything possible from my office tomorrow and that means vacating my file cabinet entirely (woohoo!) so I need to be ready.

Today we moved two large-but-single-humanly-possible pieces of furniture and if we can manage three each tomorrow and Sunday, that will leave us with very little remaining for next weekend and only the truly two person stuff for the moving weekend. That’s pretty exciting.

I have three resolutions/goals for the year, one in each of the following areas: physical, emotional and professional.

Physical: Run my first 5k. When not interrupted by holidays and/or sick children, I run about 2-2.5 miles three times a week and I definitely feel ready to ramp it to the full three miles. Once I do that, I’m going to actually enter a race, which is so exciting!! Really, it blows me away that I run now. This is definitely something I never, ever, ever expected to do in my life and running an actual 5k race is such a lovely culmination of that. And, of course, it probably would not be possible had I not lost 80 pounds this past year.

Emotional: Track my finances and budget. I know this doesn’t seem like an emotional resolution, but if you knew how stressed out I get about money you’d know that this is probably the very best thing I could do for my emotional health. Plus, now that I’m a homeowner I have a ton of homey shit that I want to spend money on and I want to plan accordingly so that I can do just that.

Professional: Learn how to do my real job. It’s been almost two years now that I’ve been in my techie web development job and I still feel terribly underqualified and it’s time to be done with that shit. I spend my days lamenting all the things I don’t know and putting off work because I’m afraid to do it and getting behind in everything I’m supposed to do because I’m too busy lamenting, and that’s just dumb. My job is made up of two parts: database administration and PHP development. But while the PHP portion is shared with another programmer on my team, I am the sole database administrator, and because I spend all my time lamenting my PHP skills, the database administration suffers. Sure, I do what needs to be done, but I don’t really bring anything extra to the job and that needs to change. So starting now, I’m going to really focus on the database portion of my job and really make that a priority. If I never get beyond a “working knowledge” of PHP, so be it. Feeling incompetent at work (for two years!) is a terrible thing, and it’s time for that to change.

So be it resolved!

Today I managed to move my little freezer chest and all of its contents to the new house. I banged it around pretty thoroughly but it still seems to be freezing things, so that’s good. It’s hard to move things like that when you don’t have any help. If furniture is bulky but relatively light, my six year old can help me at least a little bit, but mostly it’s all on me.

We also took a trip to IKEA so that I could nab some of the storage stuff I need for my kitchen and I made the mistake of hitting up the as-is section first. Usually hitting up the as-is section is a wise decision because if you are looking to buy an expensive piece of furniture and don’t mind ones that have been mauled by a million families before you, you can often find great deals. However, I was not looking to buy expensive pieces of furniture, mauled or otherwise, and during the walk across the parking lot after dropping my kids off at the kiddie play area I warned myself that I was just setting myself up for disappointment.

Sure enough, I found the desk I was thinking of buying, the one that will perfectly fit my computer and my decor now that my computer needs to live in the living room, and that will allow me to get rid of my file cabinet, store all of my office supplies, and even hold the printer/scanner/copier I’m ambivalent about getting rid of even though I never use it. And, of course, it was 50% off too.

I hemmed and hawed while picking out my kitchen storage and my new storage canisters (since it turns out there are very good reasons that you are supposed to store things like flour in airtight containers and those very good reasons are called weevils and let’s never speak of it again), and after I picked up my boys and we ate lunch at the IKEA restaurant (kids ate free today and mmmm, meatballs!) I finally decided that we’d pay for our stuff, take it out to the car, come back, and if the desk was still there, I’d say to hell with the fact that it probably wouldn’t fit in my car and certainly not along side my children, and buy it.

And of course it was still there, so I did, I bought it, and I even somehow managed to get it to my new house. It’s kind of amazing what you can accomplish when you know you really don’t have any other options. But now I have the desk I wanted! And for half the price I was expecting to pay! And, perhaps best of all, I don’t even have to put it together!!

I did, however, make one very unfortunate discovery today. Somehow I never managed to look inside the fridge at my new place and wow, it was so nasty it actually made me gag. And not only was it nasty, but someone managed to punch holes in the interior, which surely can’t be good for its health on the whole. So now I have to decide whether I grin (and hold my breath and close my eyes) and bear it, or whether I buy a new fridge. I priced them a bit tonight and jeez, fridges are expensive, especially if you want a fancy one. But even if you don’t want a fancy one, they’re still expensive when you weren’t planning on buying one.

I guess this weekend will see us visiting used appliance stores. If I could buy something used and fancy for the price of something new and basic, I’d be pretty happy with that. Otherwise, tomorrow’s the first day we can actually start moving in to our new place! The plan is to take over one current piece of toy storage and all the toys in it, then hang out while I put together our new kitchen storage, then return home and load up all non-essential kitchen items. Maybe I’ll also see if I can get my new desk in place so that I can bring over all my office supply shit.

Oh right, and today’s New Year’s Eve! Happy New Year everybody!!

Today I managed to move yet one more load of crap into the shed/garage at my new place. I thought I didn’t have anything else to store in there but it turns out that I was conveniently forgetting about my absolute lack of storage space in the house. I was meditating on closet organization and realized that the tiny closets in my house are barely going to hold clothes and linens, much less, say, luggage. If I store my vacuum cleaner in my bedroom closet it will take up about half the available space.

So to the garage everything goes, which is fine really because it means I have something with which to fill my time instead of merely fidgeting and whimpering.

I also purchased my new washer and dryer today. I fully intended on going used, but people on craigslist seriously overvalue their used washers and dryers, especially if the set includes a front loading washer. I could get a new set for less than what they were asking so I moved on to used appliance stores. Unfortunately (or fortunately maybe) I was quickly advised (by used appliance store employees) to not purchase a front loading washer used, as the bearings would likely be just about worn out and many used appliance sales folks might not be terribly up front about that. I could purchase a dryer used and that would be a safe bet, but I’d need a matched set if I planned to stack them, and that combo might be hard to find (new washer and used dryer).

So I set off to find the best internet deal on a new set and wound up purchasing this set for just under $900 including tax and delivery. My initial plan (when going used) was to spend $500, and $900 is definitely more, but I am really, really, really unwilling to go without a washer and dryer, so I feel like it’s worth it, and at least it will have a warranty and all that. And later in the day I accidentally and very randomly stumbled across a website informing me that I also qualify for a $100 rebate through my city because the washer is just so darn fancy, so that makes it even a little bit better.

The only other thing I accomplished today was to make all the calls to switch my utilities. It all went smoothly and in the case of my internet service, they even knocked the price down by about $30 a month for no reason that I could discern. I’ll take it. Best to pocket the money now and ask questions later.

The floor people let me know that they will be done tomorrow morning and that I would be safe to start moving in on Friday. I took a peek at the floors when I dropped off tonight’s load of stuff and wow, they really look amazing. I wanted to choose a darkish, cherry color for the floors but the guy in charge informed me that what I really wanted was the natural color of the wood, so I shrugged and said okay and indeed, it was a good choice. They are a rich honey color and every knot and grain irregularity shows up. They really look beautiful.

I still need to get boxes from the liquor store, or somewhere anyway, but my intent for the weekend is to take over either items that can be put away immediately (i.e. kitchen stuff) or whole items (like a bookcase and all the books in it) that can be immediately set in place and written off. This weekend should give me a good indication of what it’s possible to get done before the big moving (and washer/dryer delivery and internet hookup) day on the 16th.