Category Archives: Home improvement

1. Don’t make lists

Posted in Adoption, Home improvement, School, summer fun by

Stuck.

I feel like I am running on a treadmill with the steepest incline and getting nowhere. And the effort isn’t even shrinking my ass. Talk about useless!

Every time I sit down to write this month, my eye wanders to a to-do list that gets longer and longer. I’m not sure what’s gotten into me. I’m all about lists and completing them. Or I used to be. Nowadays I scan the list and become so overwhelmed I shove said list under a book and sit staring into space with no purpose.

ARGH! It’s so frustrating.

I have four doctors appointments I need to schedule, and that’s just for me. Somehow, I manage to get S. and David squared away with doctor visits, just not my own.

Summer… is a hot topic for me. No pun intended. I decided to NOT enroll David in a summer day camp program this year. He’s had a bit of a rough year with school, so we decided to enroll him in a reading clinic at a local university. It’s just an hour and a half in the AM for five weeks. Challenging for my work schedule as it’s hard for me to just drop offline in the middle of the morning and be M.I.A. for a few hours. And you might be wondering how on earth I plan to work for the rest of the days… I am envisioning my laptop on the patio and buying dozens of outdoor games for David to occupy his time in the backyard. This summer I will be the Mom with the laptop and cellphone trying to juggle two months of a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants schedule. I don’t want the boy sitting idle, summer should be about FUN after all, so I am a little nervous how I am going to swing it.

Adoption topic… is still a work in process. I am still investigating, interviewing with a few local agencies. We know for sure that our sights are set on a domestic adoption. At least we narrowed that down.  I have another appointment this month with an agency recommended to me. My stress and fear level goes through the roof when I think about this topic. Fodder for another post, because frankly…. it’s too emotional to just pay lip service in this post.  So you must wait for news on that.

S.’s job… still up in the air. S-T-R-E-S-S-F-U-L. He has one, at least for another 30 days. By the end of summer we could be up the creek. I am being supportive for now. Big changes are coming whether we like it or not. We just don’t know how it will flush out… yet.

Meanwhile, the house is in disarray. After 10 years in this house, we are forced to start upgrading all the builders-grade crap this house came with. And some.  Things are starting to fall apart, and we’ve been spending a lot of time at our local home improvement center. Some of the projects were willingly started by us, like the new front door we have on order (the current one is so warped I can see outside from the INSIDE!). Other projects are the result of things just breaking- the air conditioner, attic fan, bathroom fixtures. Oh, and a bundle of cash dropped last month for termite treatment. Yes, new houses can get termites. Think of me when you see the Termin.ix commercial with the bugs knocking on the door.  Hopefully, they won’t come for YOU.  heh.

Fortunately, not a penny has been spent this year on infertility treatments. I am going to take that as a blessing that instead of trying to fix a broken ME, we are fixing a broken house instead.

At least that money is well spent.

post signature

That sinking feeling

Posted in Home improvement, Home repair, you've got to be kidding by

I was just putting David into the bathtub and taking my vitamins and my (last) BCP, when I heard a bunch of commotion in the master bathroom.

There was S., pulling everything out from under the bathroom sink. The entire cabinet was dripping wet.

It seems that builders grade sinks can rust out and fall to pieces. Really.

The good news is *something* made S. actually look under the cabinet, otherwise we would have ended up with an even bigger problem. I had visions of water seeping through to the 1st floor and a homeowners claim, but thankfully we caught it in time.

The bad news is we have two other bathroom sinks in the house that are also crappy builders grade and likely also rusting and decomposing under our noses. Not to mention we had plans to gut said bathroom and renovate next year so I am annoyed that I have to replace something that I’ll rip out again in a year anyway.

So last night turned into “Bob the Builder FixIt Night” (or so David called it) and S. removed the sink and sub-par plumbing attachments. We now have a big hole awaiting a new sink.

One trip to Large Home Improvement Store today, and we will be ready for Part II… installing a new sink.

Fun times at the BagMomma house.

Control, or lack of it

Posted in family, Home improvement, I am not martha stewart, Infertility, Reflections by
Last week was such a blur. So much going on at work. The funeral. Just a long and emotional week.

So on Saturday I was looking for something mindless to occupy my time and spent the better part of the morning sorting trains, cars, dinosaurs, legos, pirates, ninja turtles, and puzzles. It was The Great Playroom Cleanup.

I wish I had a “before” picture, to truly appreciate the end result. Let’s just say I couldn’t walk on the floor. Literally…
I stepped on a pirate with a sword that stuck to my foot. It didn’t draw blood (well that would have been a better story) but I can tell you I had the imprint of Captain Hook on my foot all day.

You see, S. and I differ on the use of the playroom. He says that it is a kid zone, meaning, it can be messy 24/7 with some minor cleanup now and then.

I am a bit more radical with my thoughts… in that, a playroom should be clean overall (how can you play when you have no room to walk?) and organized. Take a bin out, put it back. Anything David plays with for the day has to go back to its home at the end of the day. With the exception of the trains, that can stay out since I’ve spent an hour building the track. Because only Mommy has the spacial skills to build a track, and it’s far too taxing on my brain to have to do it over and over.

Anyway… I am thinking of labeling the bins (not that David can read them yet) to complete the room. Overkill? Perhaps.

The one thing I’ve learned though the last three years of infertility is I must maintain order where I can. It balances out the fact that I have no freaking control over my body and the little control I have restores my blissful balance.

So, the playroom is my control point.

Now if only I could apply that to the family room…

I want to be FREE… of paper.

Posted in Home improvement, I am not martha stewart by
Do you all keep file boxes for your important data? You know, bills, and such?

I am having a bit of a time with parting with my data. I keep a box for each year and organize into folders for bank cards, utilities, investments, health/medical stuff, insurance, etc.

The reality is once I get through the year, the only thing I ever pull out again is usually tax related items. Because, drilled into my head from previous experience is the fact that the only really important stuff to hang onto are tax files.

Now that I do 75% of my bill paying online, I have less paper, but I’m still buried from accumulated paper over the years.

We’ve been married for almost 13 years, hence almost as many boxes cluttering my upstairs closet. I did make an effort, oh, about 6 years ago to weed through the data, and I consolidated 3 years into one box…. but then I got bored and never finished.

I don’t want to turn into my MIL and have 40 years of data rotting in the basement.

So what do you all do for organizing your household paperwork? What do you keep? What do you toss?

And more importantly, how do you dispose the data? I have TWO shredders that worked for like a month, and died. I’m not buying an industrial shredder for one clean-up effort. But I must shred and have no resources to shred large quantities of paper.

Please share.

Because I am buried in useless paper that would be much happier as recycled paper.

And I want my space back.