I’m trying to learn to take better photos. My camera, well, it’s a bit broken, so my attempts to use nifty settings are limited. However, I’m learning to take advantage of lighting in a room and shadows and such. It’s been fun for me and the kids. They piled the puzzle pieces around the bowl for me (they were already working on the puzzle and eating the snack, so it was easy for them to help).
🙂
So the vinyl installers didn’t come on Tuesday. Their boss moved to Mexico and didn’t leave a list of jobs the rest of them needed to finish out. I called Lowe’s, as they were the contractors, and got them to talk the installers into coming the next day. Lowe’s offered me a $25 gift card for my trouble.
The next day the installers were supposed to be here at 8am. They show up at 9:45am. I had a meeting to be at at 9:15, of course. Thursday morning they show up at 9:05am. I ask them about transitional material for where the vinyl meets tile, as they hadn’t put any down in the “finished” rooms. They said that Lowe’s hadn’t allocated them any, so they weren’t putting any down. I call Lowe’s for confirmation and they tell me that the person that wrote up the estimate hadn’t included the transitional material and that Lowe’s hadn’t caught it either, so they’re going to comp me the materials. Fine, great. But I have to go get it because “there were colors to choose from.” Yeah. I get there and they have it out and ready to go. No colors to choose from. Grr.
Later that morning the vinyl guys call me and say that the stuff I got from Lowe’s was not enough; they need more to complete the job. I explain to them that I can’t go out; I’ve got a sleeping baby and anyways, wasn’t that them that I saw smoking outside of my house just a minute ago? “Yeah, we’re waiting for the cement to dry.” *sigh* I make them go get more. Later on they call again and tell me that I hadn’t gotten the right product in the first place and that it wasn’t working. Me: “You told Lowe’s what to give me and that’s what I brought you and you looked at it and said it was right.” Them: “Oh, well we didn’t know the tile was higher than the vinyl then. You need to go back to Lowe’s and choose another color of the right product.”
So I pick the boys up from school and head to Lowe’s, where my contact there has just been told that she has to go home because she’s not allowed any overtime this week. So someone new is assigned to me. It takes us an hour to find as many of the right kind of product in the right color that we need. During this hour I have to entertain three children with the contents of my purse. (Contents of my purse: one small hair brush, one bottle of eye drops, one tube of lipstick, three pieces of paper written on both sides, one blue ballpoint pen, one necklace, one napkin, two ponytail holders, and a pack of mint gum–I had just cleaned it out) We make hand puppets (pen & lipstick), pretend we’re rotating Christmas trees (necklace), make a slingshot and see who could fling things the farthest (ponytail holders, eye drop bottle, gum), do the tango, do some swing dancing, brush each others hair (brush), wipe Gregory’s nose (napkin), and read the newsletter in funny voices (paper). Finally we get something and go home.
This morning the installers show up at 9:15am. They finish installing the transitional stuff around 11am. I hook up the computer and read my 12 billion messages, only three of which are personal. I am happy to see the internet again. I look for my list of things I meant to look up all week and start looking things up. It is happy. Whee!
I’ve moved in three pieces of furniture already. Just three. The lightweight things are all hiding behind the heavy things at the moment and Nick pushed things close enough to the garage door that they will fall on me if I attempt to open it. I do not need an injury; I’m still not over pneumonia yet.
But my house, it is almost done! (We just need to put down the baseboards, which will hopefully happen a week from Sunday; we’re full up, schedule-wise, until then).
One thing I’ve noticed as we’ve been living in weird quarters is that we’re more likely to catch the sunrise and sunset each evening. The couch is currently in the dining room, so we hang out on it, regardless of the fact that there’s no TV in front of it, before breakfast and dinner. So for the last few days it’s been “ooooh, prettttttyyyyyyy….” and “who can be the first to see three colors in the sky?” It’s nice. 
Everything at my house is topsy turvy right now. We’ve moved everything out of the workroom, the master bedroom (except our mattress & alarm clock), and the living room (except the tv, couch, & piano–those will be moved the day of). The vinyl installers come in tomorrow and will be finished Wednesday afternoon. Then we’ll put in our own base boards (they won’t do it–they only put in quarter round).
I hadn’t realized how many decorations or just nifty stuff I had in each room until it came time to move stuff. It all had to packed up and put aside in the garage along with the furniture. It was amazing how much stuff we have.
Once we get the flooring in and the big stuff put back I’m going to go through all my decorations and things of interest and decide what stays and what goes. Sooo much to do.
Nick broke his toe. Apparently the train table moved in the night. It looks worse now.
Originally published at tigersquirrels.net. You can comment here or there.
I’ve had a few people wonder how I get everything done on themed days. So here I am explaining:
I made the list of themed days about a month ago and gave it only the tiniest bit of thought as to what I’d be doing for each day at that point. So it comes down to this: every morning I get up, turn on Thomas the Tank Engine for the early rising midkid, and spend about twenty minutes on the internet looking up stuff for the day* (by “stuff” I mean wikipedia entries, worksheets, craft ideas, science experiments for kids, etc). Then I wander the house to see what supplies we have. By that point the rest of the family is up. I feed people, explain what the theme for the day is, and then we start the fun. We do something crafty and I explain facts to them. Then the kids ask bizarre questions and we go back to the computer to look up that info, along with other “stuff” to go with that if it’s interesting.
At some point no one is interested in the theme any more, so we take a break to play outdoors first, eat lunch, then indoor play/reading/rest. After that they’re usually interested in more theme time, so we do something else theme related, like coloring sheets I’ve printed off the internet or building something with legos. By late afternoon the house is a wreck, so we have races to see who can put away the most whatever-is-out. They race, I wash dishes. When someone wins they get something special, like getting to choose what color plate they eat dinner off of or what kind of dinner beverage.
And what does the baby do while all this is going on? Smashing his hands into play-doh or getting paint on his hands or eating construction paper or toppling all the blocks or taking apart the train tracks as fast as the boys lay them down. He’s busy.
*I’ve gone back on the previous themed days and put up links to websites where I got ideas from.
Originally published at tigersquirrels.net. You can comment here or there.
Life with a kid who has been in some sort of programming every day of the week is surely different from a kid who only had programming twice or three times a week. Since David’s been in kindergarten, he requires more activities to keep him happy during the time that he’s at home (as experienced during winter & spring breaks). With this in mind, I have concocted a plan: every weekday has a theme…for the rest of the summer.
Examples of those themes:
-Chimborazo Day (a volcano…yes, we’re making one!)
-Create with your heart day (lots and lots of art!)
-Helen Keller day (blindfolds and braille and no talking! j/k)
– Cheer up the lonely day (visiting the elderly!)
-Meteor Day!
etc…
I got most of the themes/holidays off of this website.
Have you ever gotten to that point where you have been trying to update so many different people about so many different things that you’ve forgotten who you talked to about what?
Yeah. I’m there.
We’re doing all right here. Nick and David have both been asleep for a couple hours now (yes, I know it’s a weird time of day for that) and it’s been incredibly nice. I’ve actually caught up on reading my e-mail without deleting mass quantities of it unread. YAY! That never seems to happen anymore. I’ve also been tidying up my online accounts and such, deleting/unsubbing from things I’m no longer interested in and adding stuff that’s more me.
I still have to clean up all the dead fire ants. They seem to be just about everywhere–they wandered the house as they died. The ones in the bathroom are going to be the hardest, as they are stuck between the baseboard and the row of carpet tacks and the broom doesn’t really do much. I’m waiting on the dustbuster to recharge from it’s earlier cleaning fest (CRUMBS! I hate crumbs on the couch.)
I just signed up for NaNoWriMo. I’m just a bit excited about it. I know it’s an insane time to be doing it (as we may be moving), but it just seems like the time to do it. I’ve been having many writerly thoughts lately, and I do have that dictation software installed…
More news on Nick’s interview: It’s on Monday at 10am at Howe-Baker. The company’s been around a while, the benefits sound like they might be good, and it could be stuff Nick likes to do (he’ll find out during the interview).
I’ve had 44 ounces of Dr. Pepper in the last 4 hours, which may not sound like a lot over time, but considering that I don’t normally have any caffeine during the week…EEK! I’m hoping the bounciness lasts until I get a little further on the scrapbook I’m working on.
Yes, I am still alive. No, no one asked. I just assumed someone out there might care. Hmm.
In any case, I’m home again. I’ve actually been home since Friday night, but my best friend came up for the weekend and we spent the time playing instead of doing useful things.
Last week I flew to California to meet my birthmother and my half-brother. The week went really well, much better than I expected. They’re very nice people. We exchanged gifts, did some much needed talking about important things, had a few meals. It was nice.
The weird part is that I felt like I was gone for six months and my outlook on life has totally changed. I hadn’t thought much before about all the things I have and all the wonderful trips I’ve been on and stuff. Now it’s all that I think about. I am so totally blessed in life. It could have been so very different for me. I just…wow. Yeah.
We’re all going to keep in touch. It was a nice visit. Hopefully they’ll come out to visit me once I’ve moved into a house.
In other news, we’re house hunting again. We have an awesome realtor and we know where we’re looking and what kind of house we’re looking for. We think we’ll prolly find one within the next month or so. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of our apartment lease early, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.
I spent yesterday redecorating my bedroom. It needed it. I repainted some picture frames, framed some other art, hung it all up. I also made a canopy of sorts for my bed, which looks awesome. I’m working on painting my dresser blue. I’ve got it half-way done and Nick is bringing me more paint when he comes home tonight. 🙂
Today I’m working on a picture album for last year. Yeah, I know, I should have had that done before my trip to California, but some things just take longer to get to than others. Oh well.
Have a great day!
Lisa Holcomb 