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!

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).

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.

Letting Go

I am a bit of a pack rat. I hang on to things longer than I should. Its a problem that I am trying to work on. With the explosion of toddler stuff in the house, I'm trying to let go of the stuff I don't need anymore. I think it will help with my feelings about the CrapShack. If I can get rid of some of the clutter it will look better.

The problem areas in the house are limited to two rooms really. Our room, more specifically our closet, and the office. Since those are two rooms I spend a fair amount of time in (sleeping and banging away on the computer) I should do something about it.

So a few weeks ago, I went through my closet. I took out all of the stuff that doesn't fit, which unfortunately was a lot. I also gave up all of my work clothes. I haven't worked in six months and I am not going to for the rest of the year. Its highly unlikely I'll go back to work before Bunny goes to school. I don't need the work clothes anymore. So out they went.

I even got rid of some shoes. Well more like 30 pairs (and I even kept 25 pairs). Just call me Imelda. I love shoes. You see when I was in high school I was 5'10" and had size 10 feet. Its not a big deal now but it was back then. They didn't make cute shoes in a size 10. For homecoming freshman year I had to buy these ugly grannyish shoes. And I hated that. So when they started making cute shoes in my size, I started buying them.

I know I could get rid of more. But I'm taking baby steps. I hope to become more minimal, more streamlined, eventually.

The next project is to tackle the office. I have way too much paper. I hang on to stuff in case I'll need it. And I never need it. So inspired by managermom's call to show where we work, I'm going to clean out this dump. On July 13th I'll show where it started and where it ended up. Now momma's gonna go buy a shredder.

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.

Test Run

So we've been working up to potty training Bunny. I'm not quite sure she's ready but I've been giving it the hard sell. We've been talking about the potty and she's even picked out a pair of big girl undies. We are getting there and I hope to start within the next month or so.

Part of the training process is just going cold turkey from the diapers. Well of course that leads to lots of accidents. Accidents means lots and lots of cleaning which of course is my favorite thing to do. I've gotten some good advice from bloggers like any mommy (I may have to steal her messter map). But nothing can prepare you for the real thing, except cleaning cat pee out of your carpet and couch.

It went down like this. We had just gotten home from my parents house. Bubs and Bunny were sitting on the couch taking off her shoes when Tabasco started to spray the very couch they were sitting on. Cat pee was everywhere, the couch, the carpet but luckily not on them. Tabasco has done this before when we first brought Bunny home and we thought we had dealt with it. But apparently not.

So I sent them off to bed, cracked a beer and commenced cat pee clean up. I got out every cleanser I could find. I rubbed, I scrubbed and I sprayed the sh*t out of the couch and carpet. I had bought this product called Urine Gone which is supposed to remove all smell and stain from pet and human "accidents". I followed the directions to the letter and hoped that it worked. Because the last thing I need in this here CrapShack is to have an unusable couch. We've already been displaced from the basement, we need the living room.

I went downstairs this morning and found . . . a chemical smell. Well chemicals are better than pee so that's good. So then I sprayed the heck out of the "affected area" with Febreeze and it smells better.

Cross your fingers with me that this clean up works and the vet can help us with Tabasco's issues. Because I don't need to be cleaning up after both Bunny and Tabasco or else I might lose my ever-lovin mind (or what's left of it.)

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.

Little Pink Houses

I've been thinking about houses a lot lately.

Primarily because I would like to move out of the CrapShack we are currently living in. Lets just say that 9+ inches of rain in June and a leaky basement do not mix. But fingers crossed we will have that repaired by July (hopefully).

But also because Bunny has reached the stage where she is ready for a playhouse. She has an imaginary house which lives behind the curtains in our bedroom, in her room or well behind any curtain. I also built her a house out of cardboard blocks which is large enough for her to sit in. It also has windows for the animals from the Little People Zoo and Farm to look out of. She loves this house. And she also loves knocking it down with her hands, shopping cart, bus etc. and asking me to rebuild.

I'm kind of getting tired of constantly remodeling her house (when I'd rather be remodling the CrapShack). So I am considering two more permanent options for her. The first is a curtain house in her room. Her room has a cubby (large enough for a desk later) which has a lower ceiling than the rest of the room. I plan to hang a curtain across it, put some blankets and pillows down and let it be her little house. I think she'd love it.

I am also considering buying her an outdoor playhouse. I'd love to buy one of these beauties. But I really can't justify anything nicer than the CrapShack because she may never want to come inside. So most likely it will be one of those molded plastic type things that can survive a nuculear bomb. So I'll be on the lookout for one at yard sales this summer.

But maybe we could solve all our problems and just move the whole family into this. What? It could work.