I Shouldn't Love Inanimate Objects

Ew! Get your mind out of the gutter. This is the objet de mon affection:

Regina Andrew Small Mercury Glass Clove Table Lamp

It was my "yay, I did our taxes and we got a small return!" lamp. Now, it is stupid, STUPID, to love a highly breakable lamp. Especially when I have:

•  a 7-year-old who would like to be CM Punk and regularly practices patented WWE moves in our living room,
• a 5-year-old who embodies the spirit of 'Maniac' better than Jennifer Beals,
• and a 2-year-old, who is, well, a 2-year-old.

In fact, as I gaze lovingly at the sweet curves of my treasured lamp, this guy is parked next to it:

Little People® Wheelies™ DC Super Friends™ Superman™

The Man of Steel vs. a glass lamp? No doubt of the victor there. The real question is, WHY did my toddler need to get all vroom-vroomy near the new lamp? Why not host a Little People drag race near the old metal lamps that I bought from IKEA?

It's like he targets what I actually care about and tortures me. I know it's my own fault for spending more than $10 on a lamp, okay? But I couldn't help myself. The lamp...it beckoned.

THEM!

This is our third spring in this house, and this will be our third battle with ants. I don't remember requesting that particular conveyance when we bought the house. Or the curtains. Yet there they are.

Anyway, they are not the scary giant irradiated kind of ants. But they are BOLD. Whilst lounging on the couch earlier today, I thought, "Huh, something on my wrist tickles." I looked down.

Agh! Ant!

One flick sent the scout sailing across my living room and I was back to my novel. But ick, right? Listen, I'm not a bugophobe or anything like that. I pinched cicadas off trees with them best of 'em in 1987 and 2004. This is the first year that they invaded my lazy space, though, and I'm not having it. Tonight, Super Ninja hosed down their normal party surfaces with Raid and more bug traps are on order.

I have a Plan B for the chemicals, though.

My daughter is the official bug cruncher in the house. She tracks the ants and the box elder beetles (a.k.a., stink bugs) that lazily kamikaze our lamps, squishes them, and scoops them up and pitches them in the garbage. There's no squealing, no histrionics, just a very business-like, methodical stalking and dispatching.

Hmm.  Maybe I should be worried about that?

Adventures in Plumbing

Super Ninja: You know, this is like every stereotypical '50's sitcom, where the husband insists on fixing the sink, and they end up having to call a plumber when the pipes explode.

Me (from under the sink): How is this like that?

Super Ninja: You, the husband, are fixing the sink, while I, the wife, am watching the children.

Me (still under the sink): Oh, NOW I see what the problem is.

Super Ninja: What?

Me: I'm using a toy truck flashlight instead of a real one.

And...scene.

The House Is On the Market! (Or, How to Drive Yourself a Little Bit Crazy)

Breaking news! We are selling our house. In this economy? Yes! You might ask, "Is the bank making you sell your house?" Nope! We are selling the house because we are morons and prefer to go through major life events at the absolute worst possible time in modern history. I'm pretty sure that if there were a nuclear holocaust, Super Ninja and I would probably turn to each other and say, "You know, maybe NOW is the time to start that vegetable garden."

We like where we live, honestly and truly -- our neighbors are stellar, our daycare provider is essentially a co-parent who is irreplaceable, we know the best places to shop, we're 25 minutes from downtown DC and downtown Baltimore (by car OR by train!), there are about a dozen parks and playgrounds within five minutes of our house, beautifully maintained walking paths and bike trails, AND there are ghosts in our town. You can't beat that kind of combination...

So why are we moving?

The motivation behind this is two-fold: (1) the public elementary school in our neighborhood kind of stinks, and (2) we just don't fit in our house anymore. Most folks, when you cite these rationales, totally understand. But I still feel really guilty. Why on earth, you might ask, would I feel guilty about moving for perfectly legit reasons?

Regarding the poor quality of the school... I work for an educational non-profit whose sole purpose is to help teachers teach better in an effort to improve schools so that every child can learn to his/her fullest potential. To turn a school around takes the investment of each parent and teacher in the school. I'm essentially abandoning the school by not even enrolling my kid there. I'm abdicating any responsibility to make it a better educational institution.

Look at the ego on me, eh? Like ONE parent who can contribute approximately 27 minutes per week would make it a Blue Ribbon school.

I'm not an elitist. I want my kids to go to public school. I want them to understand that the world is made up of a mix of people, and is not uniformly Catholic and white. This, I believe, will serve them best in life since we have no plans to move to a white Roman Catholic commune. And, I don't want subjects like History and English to be shot through with religious literature. Don't get me wrong; religion will be a part of their upbringing, but I don't want it to be the core of their education. All things being equal, I'd rather the money I spend on tuition go to a mortgage in a good school district.

As for the amount of space we need -- I think I equate living within one's space to living within one's means. And by buying a bigger house, we're not addressing the root of the problem. We're not horders or anything like that. But kids, wow, they come with a lot of stuff. And because of hand-me-downs, and possible future children, and visiting children, we actually have everything you'd need for kids from birth to about ten-years-old. And that, my friends, takes up a 10 x 10 climate-controlled storage room.

I'll squash the guilty complex the second our house sells and I can start freaking out about finding a new place. Out with the old stress, in with the new!

What Up, Ya'll?

I've been in communicado lately, as I'm sure you (maybe?) noticed. Partly because of the crater in my head, partly due to home improvement work. Both projects have resulted in scars of one sort or another, but mostly prevented me from being able to think coherently.

Oh, by "crater in my head," I mean the aftermath of an ill-fated root canal/crown combo. The crowns (yes, there were two attempts) wouldn't stay put, which means I'll eventually need to get a tooth implant. I didn't think I'd need fake parts until much later in life. Sigh.

I can only imagine what the oral surgeon had to do to scrape my head clean of toothy bits left behind by the root canal, but my jaw is STILL sore. This little procedure took place 10 days ago. Mix in with that the guilt that I feel about taking pain medication, and I'm sure I have been a joy to live with during my recovery period. Why am I guilty about pain medication? There's a wee history of addiction in my family. I've never been one of those afflicted, but every time I take a prescription pain killer, I wonder if somehow this will be the gateway pill to "Intervention." It's kind of irrational, I know, but it's still there. As Super Ninja points out, though, I'm 33 years old and the likelihood that I'm going to jump on the addiction bandwagon at this point in my life is slight.

As for the other craters in my life... Faithful readers of LtW will know that I've been yearning to do some home improvement forever, and little problems like ignorance and lack of funding have proved to be impediments. I hate admitting I don't know something or can't figure it out, and I hate spending money that I don't have. I'm growing as a person, though, and sucked it up and asked for help from my neighbor. He's a general contractor, so he's stuffed with knowledge about things like replacing toilets. I never thought I would be excited by knowing how to replace a toilet, or marvelling at the efficiency of low-flow technology, but there it is. Also, Super Ninja got bit of a bonus from work, so we had some money to invest in the improvements.

The end result of this new knowledge and little lump of cash are some half-done projects. My powder room has a new vanity, but the taps aren't connected to the water supply because I didn't realize that the new sink sat higher than the old one (oops). My basement has new flush mount light fixtures, but because of random extra wires, one of them doesn't light up.* (Black connects to black, white connects to white, but red connects to...what does red connect to? THERE IS NO RED WIRE ON THE FIXTURE.) Also, I ripped out all of the baseboards so that I could replace the godawful flooring on my first floor. (I mean, really. WHO installs faux pine laminate next to real oak hardwood floors, and installs it so that the grain runs perpendicular to each other? A jerk, that's who.)

Once I have some after pictures, I will post them for your entertainment.

Why do all of this work? Well, Super Ninja and I intend to move next year. Intended, 'til the economy took a header.

Given the way housing prices skyrocketed after we'd bought the place in 2004, I wasn't really bothered about investing in home improvement because I knew I'd still make a decent profit. I knew work needed to be done, though, because the home inspector said that the house "has good bones." This is code for, "the structure is solid, but yeesh, it's outdated. And in some places, very ugly." At that time we did some basic stuff to beautify a bit -- painted, installed new carpet, replaced some windows -- but nothing major.

Why bother, I thought? If you bought the house for X, and houses in your neighborhood are selling for X + $115,000, you can take the hit if someone talks you down to say, X + $100,000 when you sell the place, right? And even houses that need improvement sell within 90 days, right?

Not so much any more. Either the selling price, or the speed in which the houses sell. UNLESS you have a house that a buyer can look at and say, "Sweet, I don't have to do anything to it." I'm not expecting to sell the joint for the song that I once could have. Mostly, though, I don't want to be in selling limbo. If someone wants to hurl wads of money at me, that'll be fine, but I'm not planning on it. Besides, if the place doesn't sell, or would only sell at a sincerely lower price than what we'd need, we can stay put and enjoy all of the lovely improvements. Win-win, no?

*I know how to fix this now, courtesy of the internets. Thanks internets!

Things (Like Me) Fall Apart

No, this is not an homage to Chinua Achebe. I need to check my horoscope from yesterday because things, literally, fell apart. And no, this isn't a metaphorical falling apart, so please don't fret that my marriage is in trouble.

I was home with the kiddies yesterday because daycare was closed. We had a lovely time frolicking at the indoor playground at the mall. Don't wince -- I'm not exposing my children to wanton consumerism, well, wantonly. The Boy and the Girl must sound like a dinner bell to mosquitoes of the world, because every time we play outside during balmy months they come home with at least three new bug bites. Have you ever told a four-year-old to stop scratching? Doesn't work.

But here's what happened... Sunday evening, I developed a bit of a headache. Monday morning, the headache turned into a throbbing lower jaw. Tuesday morning, it turned into a blind headache. Canny health expert that I am, I deduced that I had an abscess. My crown, which was the subject of several posts in 2006, fell out a few months ago. A visit to my dentis revealed that the remaining tooth was too nubby for another crown, and that, in fact, I now need an implant in yon gap. And that walking around with a crater in your gum exposes you to awesome possibilities, like abscesses. I'm on antibiotics to kill the infection in the root of the nub. Thus starts the arduous process of glamming up my smile again.

So, what else fell apart? At one point the Girl needed a diaper change, so I trailed her upstairs. I noticed the carpet on the pie-shaped step at the top of the flight seemed to have shifted a bit. Oh, it had. It shifted right off of the tack board. I didn't want the Girl, or the Boy, or any of us to step on that wicked looking thing, so I poked the carpet back down on top of it. Yeah, except I poked my index finger as well. Huzzah.

Next, as I was scrubbing down the grill (it was a bit yicky from our tiny cookout on Sunday), I looked over the deck railing and noticed that wildlife had foraged in my garbage can. Somehow, it (or they?) knocked over the can and got the lid off -- the lid that snaps on and is theoretically locked by the handles. So, cleaning that up was fun.

When I returned to the house, I needed to wash my hands and slap a bandage on the tack board puncture on my finger. So, I scrubbed at the kitchen sink and then reached underneath for my First Aid kit. But I encountered a puddle of water. Huh? I cleared out the rest of the junk under there (bug spray, cleansers, etc.), and found a quarter-inch deep puddle. When I ran the water in the sink, I saw where the hole was coming from: a pea-sized gash in the garbage disposal. I pondered what could have caused that hole -- a fork? a sturdy green bean? a tack board? -- but realized I didn't care, and that I need a sink that doesn't flood. Three hours later, Mr. Plumber replaced the garbage disposal for a tidy sum, but it was money well spent.

Clearly, this is the biggest sign EVER that I should not be a stay-at-home mother, because my house would collapse if I were home with the kids for more than the weekends and an odd day here and there.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention that I also managed to ping off one of the plastic nosepads from my glasses last night. You do not appreciate just how necessary those things are until you have some metal gouging a crater into the bridge of your nose. Thankfully, I had adhesive goo I could use to mend my specs 'til I can find time to get to the optometrist. Likely, though, I will just continue to reapply the goo 'til I go for an exam and new glasses.

Disaster Recovery, Part III

I'm disconcerted by the hole in my dining room ceiling. It is a very neat hole, a deliberately cut hole, but a hole nonetheless. It measures about 18" by 18", and through it I have a lovely view of my home's entrails. PVC abounds, folks. And one of those pipes has loosened it's grip enough that a rivulet coasted along the seams of all of the drywall forming my ceiling. This has turned the perimeter of the drywall into drywall mush. While I'm thrilled that we will only need to repair/replace one measly pipe, it is clear that we will need to replace all of the drywall of which my ceiling is composed.

As confident as I am in my skillz, this is not a do-it-yourself for someone who finds herself sans nail gun, ladder, burly assistant, or height. So, we will be hiring a contractor. Luckily, my next-door-neighbor is a contractor who's lived in our townhouse community for 30 years and has done loads of work on most of the homes on our block. Huzzah for not having to suss out a competent, honest contractor!

More about this hole, though. As I encounter the gaping maw above my head at mealtime, I can't help but imagine gremlins or elves or a murder of crows emerging from it. If you want to know what I'm talking about, go ahead and sledgehammer an opening in your wall, and tell me if you're imagination doesn't do a little overtime.

One thing is resolved, though: during the repairs, Super Ninja and I will sneak something creepy (à la The Changeling) somewhere betwixt the beams.

Disaster Recovery, Part II

Yeah, so it's never a good sign when there's a small pool of water on your dining room floor. After squishing through an unexpected puddle, the homeowner (yours truly), engages in a frantic game of Find the Source.

I quickly ran through the easy-to-resolve theories -- maybe an ice cube melted on the floor? Maybe one of the kids left a juice cup under the table that we didn't see? And I looked up. And I saw the spot on the ceiling.

Uh-oh.

A few months ago I noticed some spotting on another part of the ceiling. But since it was the first time I noticed it, I figured it could have been there for ages and I just didn't see it. I'd just keep an eye on it, right?

I really, really need to learn to trust that I have keen observational skills, and that if I notice spots on the ceiling, they probably weren't there before.

There's no denying this, though. These spots and bubbles weren't there before. We have a Leak, a professional, hulking leak that is turning the ceiling into mush. And for what it's worth, it's not from the recent monsoon-ish rainfall. Oh no. This is an interior leak, baby. The best kind. The excavate-the-ceiling kind.

Time to research the merits of home equity loans vs. refinancing the whole house. JUST how I wanted to spend my day.

Buy My Junk!

So, I'm hawking stuff on eBay. The amount of time this can take up is outrageous, because I have to do Very Important Things like weigh a MEGA Meatwad "action" figure so that I can accurately calculate its shipping cost and not be accused of being a robber baron by the anonymous denizens of eBay land. Friggin' ratings system.

Selling this stuff is Part the Second of my spring cleaning, about which I posted a particularly scintillating entry. I got the idea from cable TV shows with a mission to teach you how not to be a complete and utter slob/packrat. They make participating clutterbugs create three piles: keep, trash, sell. Into each of these categories ALL of your junk must fall. Over the years, there's a random assortment of stuff we either (a) have but don't use, (b) received as gifts but never used, and (c) were part of the wages of the toy company for which we worked. I'm using the Royal We for Part C.

The thing is, the stuff the sells the best is the stuff that I earned while working for the toy company. But when theres's some interest in "my" stuff -- clothes that I never wore, or shoes that I only wore once or twice -- I find it strangely validating. Weird, eh?

Emerging from the Wreckage

Wow, that sounds dramatic, doesn't it? Super Ninja and I moved into our manse* four years ago. That was pre-Boy and Girl, whose accouterments made the storage areas in my basement look like the Death Star's trash compactor. For all of you who are not familiar with the Star Wars oeuvre, let's just say it was a wee cluttered. Actually, it looked like a maniac had been in charge of organization and storage chez moi. And, this is true.

For the past four years (i.e., while I was pregnant, post partum, nursing, repeat) Super Ninja has been in charge of finding places to store stuff. The only problem with this? He likes things to be done, and likes them to be done NOW. And little things like being able to retrieve things that have been chucked willy nilly into a closet? PAH! Those concerns get in the way of immediate completion of a task. It matters not that hurling a baby walker atop a teetering stack of Christmas decorations is a recipe for a concussion.

But I am not in one of my childbearing cycles, and I'm feelin' pretty energetic. And dismayed, chagrined, and all out annoyed by the junked up "style" of parts of my home. Couple those things with the fact that Tetris is my all-time fave video game, and I was just itching to commence a royal de-clutter.

I can't say that the two days I dedicated to this endeavor have been quite enough. Nay, the are not nearly enough. But I'm almost there. I've got two shopping bags and a box going to the Salvation Army, another box going to Friends of Libraries, a huge bag o'goodies going to my infant nephew, and two 60-gallon trash cans filled to the brim. Oh, and did I mention the eBay piles? That last bit will probably just confirm that my junk is only special to me, but you never know.

So, anyway, just wanted to let you know why my posting's been a bit sparse lately. If you are good boys and girls, p'raps I will soon bore you with tales of home renovation! Ooh! Aah!

*By "manse," I mean a 3-bedroom, 2.5 bath townhome. With 1700 livable square feet. Boo-yah!