Archive for the 'Housework' Category

Hey there!

Published on May 21, 2010 in Baby Daddy, Housework, Thing #1 and Thing #2. 0 Comments

What have we been up to? So glad you asked! Let’s see… last month I got strep throat, my first time ever! Then I gave it to Mike so that was fun. Urgent Care, antibiotics, yadda yadda yadda. Then my little brother was visiting from Florida so we put him to work renovating our bedroom! I’ll put up proper before and after pictures later but for now here’s one of the guys working:

And while things are getting done we’ve taken up residence in our dining room. Not so bad actually.

We went to Mission Days and once again I got a terrible sunburn. Every year, honestly! Will I ever learn? I took this picture for the sake of posterity but I think I’ll be submitting it to Photobomb instead.

And then of course there was the Birthday Party. Whoo! If only I was more on the ball there would have been some pictures. I’ll put the few I have on Karrmedia at the end of the month, but for now let me share the awesome (I’m a little proud of these).

And the boy got a Hot Wheels bath ramp jump water toy thing from the Grandparents (Hi Dad and Liane!) that the kids LOVE. Nick completely put it together himself and I took a video of all the muttering for two reasons:

1. The muttering is hilarious

2. I thought it would be fun to have a video of the way he talks now to compare to later in the Summer after Speech therapy. Oh yeah, that’s happening. At his evaluation he tested at the 99.7th percentile for comprehension and the 4th percentile for intelligibility. Yep.

I have to say, just in case this post has made little to no sense at all it is because I’m laying here on my couch, sweating with fever and hopped up (down) on Tylenol with Codeine. It’s strep throat again! Because I didn’t get enough of that the first time.

An experiment in Human Decency.

Published on June 13, 2009 in Housework and Snafu. 3 Comments

I have a “No Soliciting” sign on my door. I don’t like it but it became necessary because of the copious numbers of sleezebags trying to sell magazines that cruise our neighborhood. There were only so many times I was willing to be insulted, sexually harassed and bullied by these scumbags before the sign went up.

A couple days ago a man came to the door looking for work. He had a story about unemployment, kids and hard times. I’ve seen him around mowing yards and he seemed genuine so I told him to come back and we would discuss if we could give him some work. He came back the next day and we hired him to do some painting up on the roof that we are quite frankly too chickenshit to do ourselves. Mike can get up there if there is something like a leaky roof that is an immediate situation, but we both really like to be on solid ground.

After we made the deal he asked for some money to feed his kids that night. I gave him $20. I really like to believe that most people are good and honest, at least the ones I feel I can trust enough to open my front door for. I hoped he would feed his kids, or at the very least feed his addiction and still come back to do the work.

He was supposed to get started Saturday morning at 9am. We waited. 10am and still no show, I was beginning to doubt my trustworthy nature. Then something very surprising happened. At 10:40am he showed up and brought a friend to split the work with. The guys got to work scraping and priming. After that was done they asked for some lunch money, which Mike gave to them. They came back and did the painting. And guess what? They did a good job and were very respectful and thankful for the work.

At one point Mike overheard the one guy we originally hired talking to his friend, telling him that there is always work to be had. You just have to get out there and find it. I really appreciate someone who is willing to do the work, willing to put in the effort needed to find the work and leave the job so that all parties are satisfied.

Today they painted part of our house, but they also restored my faith in humanity. It doesn’t take much but sometimes we all need to be reminded of the good in people. It is so easy to assume people are going to stiff you, which sadly I think many of them would. It’s too bad that those are the cases that stand out — the people that will cheat you, murder you, that kind of thing. I’m just glad that none of those things happened todday!

Some stuff.

Published on May 23, 2008 in Baby Daddy, Family, Housework, Snafu, Thing #1 and Thing #2. 0 Comments

Mike’s home! FINALLY! He got home at 3:45am this morning and had to be at work at 9:30am so he was pretty beat today. He got home so late because the whole flight had to be delayed while a new crew and plane were located because minutes before the flight was supposed to leave the pilot cut off his finger. What, they couldn’t just stick that puppy on ice and get the show on the road? Didn’t they know we were missing the baby daddy tremendously?

Today I spent a good deal of time at my mom‘s house fulfilling her every Mother’s Day desire… for someone else to paint her trim. Ah, but here’s the rub: her walls are RED and her trim is WHITE. Both were already painted but needed much straightening up with a proper trim brush and a neurotic person wielding it. Done and done. I have to finish painting the white crown molding this weekend after I buy another trim brush because the red paint is very unforgiving. And pink trim just isn’t on the menu.

Tomorrow Zoey is having her one-year picture done at the super fancy Super Target Portrait Studios. When I called to make the appointment the girl asked me questions like “What skills has she has recently mastered?” and “What will she be wearing?” Um, climbing? Pulling her brother’s hair? Biting? Also I have no idea what she will be wearing but apparently I’m supposed to “coordinate” my outfit just in case I have to hold her. Super Target Portrait Studios, you really don’t know me very well do you. Maybe they have a tarp they can throw over us and a baby sized muzzle, that ought to sum things up nicely.

So this weekend is the Kansas City Jiggle Jam over at Crown Center. We’re debating about whether to go because on one hand it would be really fun to see They Might Be Giants in concert but on the other hand the thought of that many kids all crammed in together makes me want to jam a fork in my ear, thus rendering concert-going pointless. What’s a girl to do?

For all you germophobes out there.

Published on April 15, 2008 in Family, Friends, Housework, Lists and Snafu. 4 Comments

Here’s a great way to clean your dining room:

1. Secure your baby in the walker, assume everything is under control for five minutes.

2. Go take a shower.

3. Forget there are two bottles of Ecover Dish Washing Liquid for your mom on the dining room table. Don’t worry, your almost 3-year-old won’t.

4. Complete quick shower. Realize the house is too quiet. Wrap yourself in a towel, walk out of bathroom, try not to laugh, then try not to be TOO ANGRY. RAAAAHHHHH!

5. Scoop up what you can using a pyrex measuring cup and plastic spatula.

6. Wipe up what you can with a dry rag. Don’t bother rinsing because it will take 30,000 gallons of water and two years of your life to get the soap out of it. Just save yourself the hassle and throw it away.

7. Mop up what you can with a wet rag.

8. Repeat Step #7 about 150 more times.

9. Cry a little.

10. Give up.

11. Wish your dining room looked a little cleaner after all that.

There you go! Eleven foolproof steps to get you… um, frustrated? With prune hands? You’re welcome.

Also, if possible, Steps 5 through 11 should be done with a weepy, drooly, crying, teething baby clinging to your back or leg at all times. The proverbial “monkey on your back,” if you will.

Well this BLOWS.

Published on April 7, 2008 in Housework. 1 Comment

What blows exactly, you ask?

Why, our new furnace of course! It blows heat, glorious heat into our bedroom! That’s more than I can say for our previous piece of junk. Here, let me show you:

Goodbye sucka!

The lovely new furnace blows this wonderful heat through something called “ductwork” which we apparently didn’t have between our bedroom and the old furnace because our room was an addition. But with his magic Scott Bartmess gave us this:

And lo, there was heat. Who knew?

The funny thing was that the day he was finishing up he apologized for forgetting to tell us that the furnace wasn’t hooked up to our bedroom all night. We were like “It wasn’t? Felt like it always does.”

We absolutely LOVED Scott Bartmess, the man who installed our new Furnace and A/C, dampered the ducts, put all new ductwork to our bedroom, braced up our floor with a jack (that’s a whole other story), put in a chimney liner, and repaired our ghetto return. He did all that but he also pet the dog, was extraordinarily polite, cleaned up any messes he made, worked VERY VERY hard, and here’s the best one… he tried to be quiet during Zoey’s naptimes. Whatwhatwhat? Can you believe this guy? I never in my wildest dreams expected someone so polite and considerate, and also an HVAC genius to be working on OUR house. We struck gold. When he left on the fourth day after everything was complete I wanted to give him a big hug, but I sensed that may be overstepping his boundaries a little. Seriously, just look at his attention to detail:

Even I will be able to follow those diagrams!

And then there’s this:

I can’t even pull my Subaru in there and the dude backed up that full-size van towing a flatbed trailer into the driveway. Wow!

I saved the best pictures for last though. Here’s one of the new beauties:

Rawr!

Hello, gorgeous.

Scott explained all about how our new furnace works and how to take care of it. Here’s something I never thought I would hear, “…down here in the brain.” Our furnace has a BRAIN. What are we living in the 21st Century or something? Apparently the “brain” has a whole sensory self-diagnostic system with blinking lights for different codes and shiz. I’m not sure but I think my furnace may be smarter than I am.

I just can’t say enough wonderful things about Bartmess Heating and Cooling. I wish he had a site to link to but I think he gets plenty of referral business, and I can totally understand why. Mike wrote a great post on his blog about all this as well as the very different experience we had with getting the new windows in last week too. Last week was a big week for us! And so far this has already been a big year for home improvement projects. Many more to come!