I’m too lazy to keep my promises on this blog. I may as well tell you now, so you know not to expect great things from me. I thought really hard about uploading the pictures of our new floor to my computer, then transferring them onto Blogger, then making sure they were the right size and the borders looked OK. And I thought of funny captions and whether or not I should put them before or after the pictures, and whether or not I should include any additional commentary in the picture post. But the more I kept thinking about it the more it seemed like too big a job for me. Plus, my hard drive crashed a couple months back and I can’t find iPhoto and say what you will about how annoying/crappy/not user-friendly iPhoto is, I like it, I used it, and I’m lost without it.
So maybe this’ll be a blog without pictures. At least for a while.
And I have nothing, nowhere, not much else to say. I thought I did, but I needed to tell you about how useless and lazy I am so that maybe now that you know, I can move on to bigger, better, more depressing things.
Until then—
Monday, May 21, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Out with the old
It was no secret that we needed new flooring. We knew it the first time we saw the house, the day we moved in, and have thought about it every day since. Our house was built in 1995 and the carpet—the once white, now disgustingly gray carpet—was never replaced. Add that to the fact that a family with four boys lived here before we did and we had all the evidence we needed to plunk down the cash to update our downstairs flooring ASAP.
But we languished on the decision. We thought, oh, we’ll wait til CJ’s a little bit older. We’ll wait til we have another baby. And all that putting off meant that in the mean time, we could get the carpet as messy as we liked, because who cared? We’d be replacing it eventually, right?
After an initial steam clean of all the carpeting in the house before we moved in, we reserved vacuuming for special occasions, like Christmas. Or if there was an inordinate amount of crumbs on the floor because someone ate cookies on the couch. The creaminess of the carpet began to fade, and the Pollock-esque stains of the previous owners became ever more prominent. When I could no longer stand to have my crawling baby eat his cheerios off of one particularly nasty black stain in front of the TV, we bought an area rug and covered it up. When I inadvertently spilled an entire cup of coffee over the back of the couch one morning, I blotted it with a couple of baby wipes and then ever so discreetly moved the couch back a couple of inches. No one was the wiser, I’m telling you!
Chris and I like to dream big, and we tossed around ideas about what to replace the carpet with for a long time. I was in favor of hardwood for the entire downstairs. He liked the division of tile, carpet, and hardwood that we currently had. I wanted wood on the stairs with a chic carpet runner in the middle, ending in a wooden landing and a neutral area rug. I think I lost Chris at “runner”. We both agreed on broadloom in the bedrooms, more for comfort when playing on the floor than anything else.
Eventually all our talk led us to a flooring store, which led to an estimate of what we thought we wanted (wood wood wood!), which led to us putting it all on the back burner for a while. We had dreamed big, all right—right out of our budget.
Until about a month ago, when we got a flier in the mail from our floor store for 50% off plus free labor (or something else equally enticing). Suddenly our flooring radar was up and decisions came more quickly. We’d just do the downstairs, and wait a while longer on the upstairs (I just couldn’t fathom having my entire house turned upside down and being pregnant at the same time). We’d pick a quality carpet but would be OK with laminate if the price and color were right. And we’d act fast—fast enough that the downstairs would be done in time for CJ’s birthday party at the end of May.
Our builder basic house is laid out in an O shape. The entryway is at the base of the O, and the floor there was a shellacked hardwood. To the right of the entryway is the dining room, which was carpeted, and to the left, the playroom/living room, also carpeted. The breakfast area is at the top of the O and it’s tiled, as is the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom, which make up the rest of the downstairs. I conceded to Chris’s request to leave the tile where it is—he brought up washing machines and toilets and water damage and my argument for wood just didn’t hold up. Plus, he promised a future kitchen remodel replete with new tile and I couldn’t say no to that. But I could never understand why the dining room was carpeted, and we decided to put wood down in there and in the entryway. We’d keep carpet in the playroom/living room, but update it to suit our taste. And when it was all said and done, our downstairs flooring would be divided into three materials: tile, carpet, and wood.
On Decision Day we found a laminate at the floor store that was everything we wanted in a wood but about a third of the price, so we bought it. We stuck to our guns on the carpet though, picking a neat, burbur-esque pattern that it turns out, is the EXACT same color of our couch. You can take two things away from this, people: (1) When it comes to color, my tastes don’t really ever change, and (2) when Martha Stewart talks about carrying around a swatch book with all the paint colors and fabric patterns you have in your house, listen.
The floor was delivered last week so it could “acclimate” to our house, which admittedly, was kind of a joke, right? I mean come on, people, it’s laminate, which I think also means PLASTIC. Chris and his sister spent Saturday demoing the downstairs floors. Most of the laminate went in yesterday, and today I’m home “supervising” the carpet install. Currently they’re gluing two short pieces of carpet together to make one longer piece, and the fumes from the glue gun are just wonderful.
So I’m going to go continue “supervising” and maybe take a nap. They promised to be done with everything today, so hopefully I’ll have some gorgeous pictures of our brand new flooring for you soon!
But we languished on the decision. We thought, oh, we’ll wait til CJ’s a little bit older. We’ll wait til we have another baby. And all that putting off meant that in the mean time, we could get the carpet as messy as we liked, because who cared? We’d be replacing it eventually, right?
After an initial steam clean of all the carpeting in the house before we moved in, we reserved vacuuming for special occasions, like Christmas. Or if there was an inordinate amount of crumbs on the floor because someone ate cookies on the couch. The creaminess of the carpet began to fade, and the Pollock-esque stains of the previous owners became ever more prominent. When I could no longer stand to have my crawling baby eat his cheerios off of one particularly nasty black stain in front of the TV, we bought an area rug and covered it up. When I inadvertently spilled an entire cup of coffee over the back of the couch one morning, I blotted it with a couple of baby wipes and then ever so discreetly moved the couch back a couple of inches. No one was the wiser, I’m telling you!
Chris and I like to dream big, and we tossed around ideas about what to replace the carpet with for a long time. I was in favor of hardwood for the entire downstairs. He liked the division of tile, carpet, and hardwood that we currently had. I wanted wood on the stairs with a chic carpet runner in the middle, ending in a wooden landing and a neutral area rug. I think I lost Chris at “runner”. We both agreed on broadloom in the bedrooms, more for comfort when playing on the floor than anything else.
Eventually all our talk led us to a flooring store, which led to an estimate of what we thought we wanted (wood wood wood!), which led to us putting it all on the back burner for a while. We had dreamed big, all right—right out of our budget.
Until about a month ago, when we got a flier in the mail from our floor store for 50% off plus free labor (or something else equally enticing). Suddenly our flooring radar was up and decisions came more quickly. We’d just do the downstairs, and wait a while longer on the upstairs (I just couldn’t fathom having my entire house turned upside down and being pregnant at the same time). We’d pick a quality carpet but would be OK with laminate if the price and color were right. And we’d act fast—fast enough that the downstairs would be done in time for CJ’s birthday party at the end of May.
Our builder basic house is laid out in an O shape. The entryway is at the base of the O, and the floor there was a shellacked hardwood. To the right of the entryway is the dining room, which was carpeted, and to the left, the playroom/living room, also carpeted. The breakfast area is at the top of the O and it’s tiled, as is the kitchen, laundry room, and bathroom, which make up the rest of the downstairs. I conceded to Chris’s request to leave the tile where it is—he brought up washing machines and toilets and water damage and my argument for wood just didn’t hold up. Plus, he promised a future kitchen remodel replete with new tile and I couldn’t say no to that. But I could never understand why the dining room was carpeted, and we decided to put wood down in there and in the entryway. We’d keep carpet in the playroom/living room, but update it to suit our taste. And when it was all said and done, our downstairs flooring would be divided into three materials: tile, carpet, and wood.
On Decision Day we found a laminate at the floor store that was everything we wanted in a wood but about a third of the price, so we bought it. We stuck to our guns on the carpet though, picking a neat, burbur-esque pattern that it turns out, is the EXACT same color of our couch. You can take two things away from this, people: (1) When it comes to color, my tastes don’t really ever change, and (2) when Martha Stewart talks about carrying around a swatch book with all the paint colors and fabric patterns you have in your house, listen.
The floor was delivered last week so it could “acclimate” to our house, which admittedly, was kind of a joke, right? I mean come on, people, it’s laminate, which I think also means PLASTIC. Chris and his sister spent Saturday demoing the downstairs floors. Most of the laminate went in yesterday, and today I’m home “supervising” the carpet install. Currently they’re gluing two short pieces of carpet together to make one longer piece, and the fumes from the glue gun are just wonderful.
So I’m going to go continue “supervising” and maybe take a nap. They promised to be done with everything today, so hopefully I’ll have some gorgeous pictures of our brand new flooring for you soon!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Just stop talking
I know we’ve all read posts about this before, but I have to say something about the amount of comments I’ve been getting lately on the size of my belly. I think I would be more understanding if I were, say, 37 weeks pregnant, but people, I’m 27 WEEKS PREGNANT. My baby is barely viable, and the fact that people think it’s OK to comment on my inevitable hugeness at this point is really upsetting, never mind completely inappropriate conversation for a depressed person!
I tweeted this earlier today: “Someone asked if I was pregnant with twins today. This is why pregnant women hate people.” The part about pregnant women hating people is something one of my other pregnant friends said a couple of weeks ago, and at the time, I thought it was a little extreme. But not anymore. My tweet was immediately retweeted by chambanamoms.com, and the thought of it going out to an even larger community of moms hit home with me how true the sentiment is.
We tried hard for this baby. We planned and dreamed and tried and tried and it took us almost a year to get pregnant. During that time, I went through ups and downs with my depression: the intense, achy longing of wanting to get pregnant replaced immediately with thoughts of doubt about my body and my abilities as a parent (maybe I can’t handle two) when my period would come each month, red and angry. I sought out the help of my midwives and eventually, an infertility doctor. I was taking the most miscellaneous assortment of pills: baby aspirin to thin my blood, Mucinex to thin my mucous (sorry if that’s TMI), extra folic acid to prevent spina bifida—every time I saw someone new they would recommend something else, something they’d read a study about that had worked, something a friend had tried, something that wouldn’t hurt to try, since I’d tried everything else.
All of this is not to say that I was infertile and you need to feel sorry for me. I’m not, thankfully, and I know my journey was not as hard as the one infertile couples often have to take. I believe we’re only given what we can handle, and that seemingly infinite string of months that I couldn’t get pregnant was just about all I could handle.
I wanted to celebrate in this pregnancy, revel in it, really, but it has been so much harder than the first. Morning sickness was worse. Then, just when I started to feel better, my clothes no longer fit. I needed pregnancy clothes at 18 weeks with CJ—this time around I was wearing them at 12. Sooner than I expected, my pelvic joints started to ache and before I’d reached 20 weeks, walking had become painful and I started to waddle. At 23 weeks I bought a pregnancy belt, after much hemming and hawing and disappointment over the fact that somehow, my body had failed me.
Reading over this it sounds petty, and I know I could have it so much worse. I really do. I work in labor and delivery at a high-risk hospital—I’ve seen pregnant women with cancer, who’ve suffered a stroke, who’ve been in a coma, who’ve miscarried so many times you wonder how they have the strength to keep trying. The point I’m trying to make is, now, finally, I’m enjoying my pregnancy. I’m used to the daily aches and pains and no longer resentful of my little belt. I’m happy my baby is healthy and growing, and so what if that means my stomach is getting bigger? Gaining weight has always been difficult for me, and at 27 weeks I can truthfully say I’ve never weighed this much in my life, but it is what it is, and it’s what I signed up for. And after everything, after the trying and the waiting and the four thankfully normal ultrasounds I’ve had to date I have to say, it’s been worth it.
So the next time you see me on the elevator at the hospital, or at Target, or wherever, I challenge you to not say anything. Just smile. That is all a pregnant woman needs: a smile. I don’t need to hear that you think I could be due any day now, I don’t need to hear that you think I’m having twins, I don’t really need to hear anything about the size of my belly, whether you think it’s grown a bit in the last week or I’m looking pretty good for my gestational age. I just need a smile, maybe a nod of acknowledgement, and that’s it.
Really.
Just stop talking.
I tweeted this earlier today: “Someone asked if I was pregnant with twins today. This is why pregnant women hate people.” The part about pregnant women hating people is something one of my other pregnant friends said a couple of weeks ago, and at the time, I thought it was a little extreme. But not anymore. My tweet was immediately retweeted by chambanamoms.com, and the thought of it going out to an even larger community of moms hit home with me how true the sentiment is.
We tried hard for this baby. We planned and dreamed and tried and tried and it took us almost a year to get pregnant. During that time, I went through ups and downs with my depression: the intense, achy longing of wanting to get pregnant replaced immediately with thoughts of doubt about my body and my abilities as a parent (maybe I can’t handle two) when my period would come each month, red and angry. I sought out the help of my midwives and eventually, an infertility doctor. I was taking the most miscellaneous assortment of pills: baby aspirin to thin my blood, Mucinex to thin my mucous (sorry if that’s TMI), extra folic acid to prevent spina bifida—every time I saw someone new they would recommend something else, something they’d read a study about that had worked, something a friend had tried, something that wouldn’t hurt to try, since I’d tried everything else.
All of this is not to say that I was infertile and you need to feel sorry for me. I’m not, thankfully, and I know my journey was not as hard as the one infertile couples often have to take. I believe we’re only given what we can handle, and that seemingly infinite string of months that I couldn’t get pregnant was just about all I could handle.
I wanted to celebrate in this pregnancy, revel in it, really, but it has been so much harder than the first. Morning sickness was worse. Then, just when I started to feel better, my clothes no longer fit. I needed pregnancy clothes at 18 weeks with CJ—this time around I was wearing them at 12. Sooner than I expected, my pelvic joints started to ache and before I’d reached 20 weeks, walking had become painful and I started to waddle. At 23 weeks I bought a pregnancy belt, after much hemming and hawing and disappointment over the fact that somehow, my body had failed me.
Reading over this it sounds petty, and I know I could have it so much worse. I really do. I work in labor and delivery at a high-risk hospital—I’ve seen pregnant women with cancer, who’ve suffered a stroke, who’ve been in a coma, who’ve miscarried so many times you wonder how they have the strength to keep trying. The point I’m trying to make is, now, finally, I’m enjoying my pregnancy. I’m used to the daily aches and pains and no longer resentful of my little belt. I’m happy my baby is healthy and growing, and so what if that means my stomach is getting bigger? Gaining weight has always been difficult for me, and at 27 weeks I can truthfully say I’ve never weighed this much in my life, but it is what it is, and it’s what I signed up for. And after everything, after the trying and the waiting and the four thankfully normal ultrasounds I’ve had to date I have to say, it’s been worth it.
So the next time you see me on the elevator at the hospital, or at Target, or wherever, I challenge you to not say anything. Just smile. That is all a pregnant woman needs: a smile. I don’t need to hear that you think I could be due any day now, I don’t need to hear that you think I’m having twins, I don’t really need to hear anything about the size of my belly, whether you think it’s grown a bit in the last week or I’m looking pretty good for my gestational age. I just need a smile, maybe a nod of acknowledgement, and that’s it.
Really.
Just stop talking.
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