Time to Play Tetris

When we last left the CrapShack, it was shaking a taunting fist at our attempts to remodel. Or at least that is what it seemed like to me. I think we have assuaged the house's demons with costly repairs and (crossing fingers) we can move on with the business of making our house a bit more livable.

That is where Tetris comes in, everyone knows the video game where you have to rotate the pieces until they fit and you can clear the board. Well we've been playing it unsuccessfully for the past two years. We've had furniture and stuff in places where they didn't belong. With the pieces in the wrong place, the board got too high and we were in danger of losing the game. In fact certain rooms looked like they needed the intervention of Niecey Nash and the Clean House crew.

The near completion of the basement (it still needs baseboards and I have to redo the bar but its 95% done) has enabled us to use it again. Which means:

We can move the love seat from the living room to the basement;

We can move the chairs still in boxes from the guest room to the living room;

We can move the majority of the toys from the living room to the basement;

We can move the craft table from the dining room to the basement;

We can move the dining room table back to its original position;

We can eat in the dining room again;

We can move the bed from the guest room to Bunny's room for her big girl bed;

We can move the dresser from the guest room to our room for more storage;

We can make the guest room into Lion's room;

We can move the glider from Bunny's room to Lion's room;

We can move the crib pieces from the office to Lion's room and set it up;

We can move Bunny's mattress to Lion's crib;

We can refinish the dresser in the office and move it into Lion's room;

We can move the various and sundry pieces of junk from storage to Goodwill;

We can put seasonal things into storage instead of in the corner and

Finally we can enjoy our house again! (Until its time to redo the bathroom. And the kitchen)

A Grim Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, there was a young couple. They were newly married and eager to start their life together. They wanted to buy a house so that they would have room for the family they wanted to start.

They searched high and low throughout the villages of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa. They looked at many houses but they could not find the right one. This one was too small. That one was too big. This one was in bad shape. That one was too expensive.

No house was just right.

They were very discouraged but they kept looking, knowing that they would find the house that was just right for them.

Finally they found it. It had the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms. It had a finished basement. It was the perfect house and there was much rejoicing.

However, the house was not perfect. It was an old house. It was a cranky house. The house was under a spell that masked its imperfections.

Once the couple moved into their dream house, the spell was broken and the imperfections were revealed. First the furnace broke in the middle of winter. Then the water heater died. The roof leaked. The electrical system needed updating.

The couple was discouraged but they persisted. This was their house and they would fix the problems. And they did. All was right with the house and there was much rejoicing.

Then the upstairs shower started leaking and could not be used. The couple had expanded their family to include a little girl. They needed to have two working bathrooms so they made plans to re-do the bathroom. And it was good.

The house, on the other hand, did not care much for the couple's plans. In fact, the house had nefarious plans of its own. It allowed water to leak into the basement, right into the area where the little girl liked to play.

The couple was sad, they could no longer use their finished basement. The house laughed at their sadness. Chaos ruled their lives for a while. The repairs took forever. First, leak was repaired. Then the walls were fixed. But it was still not done.

The couple was worried. Their family was expanding. A little boy would be joining the family very soon. They knew they had much work to do to make the house ready for him.

The basement problems were tackled once again. The ceiling tiles were replaced. The floor was torn up and redone. The couple could see the light at the end of the tunnel. They could envision their children playing in the newly remodeled basement. They were happy. There would be much rejoicing . . .

Then the furnace broke again and the couple was sad.

The house laughed at their sadness. The house mocked their hope. It shook its fist at their plans and cackled "I will never be done. I will never be fixed. You will spend your entire lives trying but just when the end is near, I will break something else. I am the CrapShack and those that live within my walls are destined to be sad."

To be continued . . .

Everything I Touch

breaks down.

Longtime readers of this blog are familiar with my ongoing struggles with my house. Basement issues - check. Bathroom not working - check. Garage falling down - check. And just when we thought we were turning a corner and getting the basement finished. It all goes to crap.

Last Friday we had torrential, horrible, crazy, oh my goodness the world is ending, 100 year flood type rains. We got somewhere between 3 and 4 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. Not good. Ironically we had those same types of rains last year (so I guess its not 100 year, more like 1 year) when our basement leaked.

And what do you know? Our basement leaked again. Not on the fixed side that we were about to finish by laying the floor. No it leaked on the other side and then trickled over and pooled on the fixed side. So that's a big problem. Huge problem really, we need to do something about the leak before we can lay the floor. We'll try regrading first and then who knows. We were out of the basement for over a year and we were so close to going back there I could taste it. And now we'll be out for a while longer.

And after the Ark floating rains, we had a good old fashioned August style heat wave of 90+ temps. Of course the CrapShack does not have central air. Don't be silly, why would it have central air. So we lugged out all of the fans and tried in vain to cool it down. We also got out our window air conditioner and put it in our window. Or should I say tried to put it in our window.

You see as we were adjusting it, it fell out of the window. From the second story. Bubs and I just turned to eachother and started laughing. Of course, with our luck, the air conditioner would fall out the window. It was bound to happen.

We did, however, have a bit of luck. We have these big ugly evergreen bushes out in front of our house. I hate them and have wanted to get rid of them for years, but we haven't. Well those big, ugly bushes managed to serve as a cushion of sorts. The air conditioner hit the bushes and didn't make it to the ground and didn't break. Thank goodness for that. Bubs went downstairs, managed to remove the unit from the bushes and bring it (and a few branches) back up stairs. We finally got it in the window, plugged it in and held our breath. It worked! We would be cool(ish) after all.

So to make a long story short(ish), our house keeps falling down around us. We cannot finish our remodeling project at this time due to the leaks. We still only have one functioning bathroom. We are hoping the garage falls down due to some act of nature. Oh yeah, the lawn mower and the vacuum cleaner also decided to stop working. And I'm about one leaky faucet away from a breakdown. Fun times.

Room For Improvement

Of the home, personal, family and bloggy variety.

On the blog front, I'm going to try actually blogging more than once a week. I know its a radical idea but it just might work. And thanks to a brilliant idea by Kate from The Big Piece of Cake I'm going to be making some changes over at Juniper and Coffee.

On the family front, we have started our homestudy process for our second adoption. There is so much paperwork to do and hoops to jump through but I am thrilled that we are making progress to bring our little baby home.

And where do I begin on personal improvement. I'm going to be 40 soon. I thought it would be a good idea to enter my 40s in good shape, a shape I'm proud to be in. Right now my shape is a bit too round, a bit too muffin topish for my liking. So I'm doing something about it. You know exercise more than twice a month, eat right etc.

I've set a goal to lose 30 pound by my birthday in September. Its kind of a huge goal but that was the weight I was 5 years ago and that is the weight I'd like to be again. If I reach my goal I am going to buy myself some ridiculously expensive rock star jeans. So far I've lost 1.5 pounds in a week and 1/2 so that's not too bad. We'll see if I can stick with it.

And finally home improvement. This is the biggie. Our house, as you know, is a CrapShack. But we've started making it better one room at a time, starting with the basement rec room. The sump pump has been installed. The dry wall is up.

And now . . . we've started painting!



The walls used to be a dark burgandy color which was perfect for the previous incarnation of the basement as Scottowatomi Bingo, Casino and Dancehall. But now with one child and another one on the way, we need to make it a bit more family friendly so we chose a warm taupe color. I think it will be much nicer and much lighter down there.



Now we just need to work on the floor. The floor has tile on it but it was ugly and stained so we put carpet down. Big mistake (what with the water and all). We are going to put new tiles down but we need to get up all of the wood and glue they used for the carpeting. I'm afraid this might take a while. But baby steps, right?

Hallelujah Part 2

The work on the basement is done! Hallelujah!

Well before I get ahead of myself, the drywall work is done. But that is the first step in reclaiming our basement.

It took a little over two weeks to go from bare stone and studs, to this:




And finally to this:



Now we have to put down new flooring, re-do the bookcases, re-do the bar, paint the walls, move the furniture, move all the toys and tv from the living room and then we'll be back in business. Which should take about another 2(or 6) months.

Hallelujah!

I didn't want to jinx it. I was afraid if I said it aloud it wouldn't happen. But it did and now I can shout from the rooftops.

They have started the work on our basement!

For those of you who've been following for a while, you know I live in a stupid old CrapShack which keeps breaking down and may in fact kill me. So the fact that they have started drywalling the basement means that we may actually get back down there in 2009. Which means that my living room and dining room can go back to being used for their original purposes instead of being a complete and total disaster area.

I'm so happy I could jump for joy. You know what I think I will actually do that.

Broken Down

The other day I cried in front of my daughter. And I don't just mean that there were tears running down my face. No I sat down on the ground, head in my hands and sobbed in front of her.

I've always been an easy crier. I cry at the drop of the hat. I cry during comercials. I cry during movies. I cry when I'm happy or sad, glad or angry. I just cry.

But I try to maintain control over my emotions when I deal with Bunny. I don't want her to see me to angry or upset. I am the adult, I need to show her how to deal with things calmly and rationally.

Everyone has a breaking point, however, and on Friday I met mine. Our house, our stupid Crapshack of a house, continues to break down. This time its the toilets. The upstairs one hadn't been working right for a while and we couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. We didn't call a plumber, figuring we could fix it ourselves. But we didn't. And on Friday the same problem happened with the downstairs toilet. We had no functional toilets.

I was mad, mad at myself, mad at my husband, mad at the stupid Crapshack, mad that I had to call a plumber. I was also exhausted. I had not been sleeping well due to all the things running through my head. I was worried about fixing the basement, fixing this stupid house, worried about our second adoption, worried about Bunny, worried about everything.

My emotions were rising to the surface when it came to nap time. Bunny looked at me and promised she would nap or play in her room quietly. I needed this one thing from her. I needed some time to compose myself before the plumber came.

But like so many times before and I am sure so many more times to come, what I wanted and what I needed did not matter. The only thing that mattered to her was what she wanted. And at that time, what she wanted to do ended up breaking me down. I could hear her running around, pulling every toy off the shelf, opening the door and running into my room. I could hear her calling for me "Momma, momma, momma. I'm not going to sleep. I don't want to play up here."

I went upstairs 4 times explaining to her that she needed to have some quiet time. "I don't wanna, momma." "Please." "No!" The fifth time finally did it. As I was walking up the stairs she was running back and forth between her room and mine. I asked her to listen to me and she refused.

Right at that moment all of the frustration and exhaustion broke through the little cracks in my resolve and came rushing out in a torrent of tears. I could not plug up the cracks any more. I had to let the tears flow or I would be swept away. I sat down at the top of the stairs and let the emotion overcome me, my body shuddering with the weight of everything I was feeling.

Finally I regained some measure of control and looked for Bunny. My display did not seem to affect her as I thought it would have. I thought her seeing me like this would have scared her, as it had scared me. But it did not. In fact, she continued to run from room to room, slamming and opening doors, laughing the entire time.

I knew that she could not possibly understand what it was like to have the weight of the world crushing in on you. No, I would protect her from that for as long as I could. I wanted her to stay that happy, carefree little girl. But I also wanted her to play quietly in her room.

Luckily for me and my sanity, we managed to come to an agreement. She played in her room the entire time the plumber was here, not fixing anything (but that is a story for another day).

My House Is Slowly Killing Me

Seriously. If you read about my untimely demise you can be assured that the underlying cause will be the stupid Crap Shack I am living in.

In the past 24 hours the upstairs toilet has broken, I've seen a mouse and the boy cat peed in the office.

So now we need to call a plumber. Luckily our neighbor across the street is a plumber, hopefully he can comeover today and fix it. Our house has two full bathrooms, unforunately the upstairs one is currently down to a sink. That is just not right.

And, yes more cat pee. But at least he is not peeing on the furniture anymore. He has decided to pee on the wood floor which is much easier to clean. So I guess I have that going for me.

And finally, a mouse. Yikes! Luckily he was in the dark scary basement. Now we have to search out all the holes in the foundation and plug them with steel wool so no more little guys get in. Then we find all the holes in the house and plug them too. Traps, check.

But I would like to send a little message to the boy cat if he's reading: If you're going to pee in the house, you better start catching any mice that show up. Its the least you can do.

Home Improvement

Not that the CrapShack needs it or anything, but today they are finally starting work on our basement.

Its been about 4 months since we first noticed water in our basement. The basement was finished, it was our family room and Bunny's playroom. We moved everything we could into the living room and have been living in cramped quarters ever since.

At first we thought we could get the work done in May or June. But now its mid-August and its just starting. And once they finish the waterproofing work, we still have to re-do the basement, fixing dry wall and installing new flooring. We'd like to make some improvements as well. Its no telling how long that will take.

I'll be happy to get back in the basement by Christmas.

You Always Want What You Don't Have

As many of you know I live in a CrapShack which I hate for all of its brokeness. Its a curse I have to bear until I can get enough money to fix all of its problems. But by that time I will probably be dead or living in Del Boca Vista. So it will always be the CrapShack to me.

Because of this, I have developed a bad habit. I am addicted to glossy shelter magazines and design shows on television, what I like to call House Porn. I get so excited when my copy of Elle Decor arrives in my mail box. If I'm at the drug store or book store, I'll often pick up a copy of Archetectural Digest or Metropolitan Home.

Then when I have some free time, I run to my room to peruse its contents. I stare loveingly at its pages. Oohing and ahhing over the Viking Ranges, non-peed upon couches and working bathrooms. I save the magazines to read over and over again. Its truly a sickness. Then when I'm finally ready to part with them, I will tear out pictures of the kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms and frankly the houses I want to live in. Someday.

The design shows do it for me too. I love to see the transformation of the home from plain (or plain ugly) to beautiful. And I dream that someday it will happen to me. But it won't because all of the shows seem to take place in California or "Big City". They won't take place in the heartland. But they could.

See I have an idea for a new show. You take some big time, fancy scmancy interior designer and architect away from their champagne and caviar clients and have them redo a house on a beer and brats budget. Its genius. Its got everything you need for good TV. Drama, could Kelly Wearstler or Katie Ridder handle the challenge? Tears from the homeowners and possibly the designers. And the first challenge? You guessed it fixing up the CrapShack.

So hopefully you'll be seeing this show on HGTV or Bravo sometime soon. And I'll be raking in the dough with my Executive Producer credit.

Anti-Icky Poo

Yesterday afternoon I thought today's blog post would be about my adventures as Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. You see I was felled by about 3700 plastic dinos who then proceeded to climb all over me for the better part of an hour. It was awesome.

But then I discovered that the cat had peed on the sofa again. And not just on the bottom part but all along the top of the sofa where you rest your head. Don't ask how I found out, I just did and it wasn't pretty. So now I have a pee ridden sofa. Part of me is pissed off yet another part is glad because I hate that ugly sofa. But all things being equal we can't afford another sofa so we have to clean it.

We busted out the Anti-Icky Poo we purchased from the Vet. They swear by it and I assume they have lots of cats peeing everywhere. It smells better than the other stuff and seems to be working. So we'll see if it happens again. I don't want to have to change the cat's name from Tabasco Kitty Pants to Sir Pees-A-Lot.

Right after we had sprayed the couch with the Anti-Icky Poo (and yes I'll probably type that a few more times because its fun to say), the power went out. It was kind of a stormy warm night so I wasn't surprised. But Bunny had just gone down in her crib when the power flashed a few times and went out. She was totally freaked out. Bubs went in to calm her down, while I looked for alternative lighting sources.

This is where I'm lucky my friend Beth sells Partylite and I buy way more candles then I need. I was able to put candles in all the rooms that needed them, so thanks Beth. But I discovered that none of our flashlights work. I had to go to the store for more or else we would have been carrying candles around like old timey folk.

When I went to the store I was again reminded that we are not on the same power grid as our neighbors across the street. They, of course, had full power. Their lights were on. Their fans and air conditioners worked. Their big screen TVs taunting me as I looked at their houses. I hated them.

Bubs and I had to sit by candlelight. We thought we were going to have to read or God forbid talk to eachother when I remembered we had a portable DVD player. We were saved. I popped in Raiders of the Lost Ark* and we marvled at the general bad-assedness of Harrison Ford until the lights went on two hours later.

So that is why I am not waxing rhapsodic about my capture by the dinos.

*I have not seen the 4th Indiana Jones movie. I love me some Indiana Jones and I want my image of him ruined by a crappy movie. If you think its worth seeing, let me know.

The Impossible Dream

I'm going to tell you about my fondest wish. Its what I dream about, constantly.

Sometimes when I go to sleep, I dream that I have a cleaning lady. I dream that my house is sparkling clean, free of cat hair and cat puke, the laundry and dishes are done. My lovely cleaning lady, lets call her NotMe, does her work with a smile in her heart and a song upon her lips. NotMe loves cleaning our house so much, she will often make dinner just to "help out".

Bunny and I head off to our outings and playdates in crisp clean sundresses. We can enjoy ourselves knowing that there is no work waiting, only play. Our house is a beautiful place, where not even a door hinge squeaks. Our lawn is freshly manicured and our garden has beautiful flowers. We truly enjoy being home.

And then I wake up, in the CrapShack. NotMe,where are you? We really, really need you.