Suck it, stupid Saturday

Since I went back to work full time last February, my husband's schedule has come to include almost one whole precious week-end day off (he's off Fridays and Saturdays, so we have Friday eve together, but on Saturday, he has to nap after dinner in prep for his overnight shift, which is 11pm Sat-7am Sunday). Combined with the recent addition of a standing a.m. coffee date with my friend Allison, Saturdays have regained some of their long-lost luster. Granted, I still don't like that the Monday-Friday grind means that instead of having the day to ourselves on Saturday, I have to try and administrate the rest of our lives (banking, groceries, and various errands much better suited to weekday mornings), but at least, sometimes, it feels like I get a partial weekend.

Sundays are a bit different - while I do get to spend lots of time with Sam, it rarely includes Tim because he's sleeping. We don't do church, and even if we did, we wouldn't ever make it because Tim needs to sleep, period, and there's no way around that. I wouldn't take Sam on my own because I don't do organized religion unless I have to...I pledged to Tim years ago that if he wanted us to go to a church (one we agreed on)I'd be supportive, but his schedule has always precluded the possibility. I catch up on laundry. I play with Sam and focus on him all morning, and I feel more love, power, grace, and warmth from being with him than I ever have in church or from anything associated with religion. Not even close. Not even the same ballfield.

By early afternoon, however, I start getting anxious about Monday, and by the time Tim wakes up, I'm ready to climb the walls because the truth is, we've done everything there is to do around here at least twice, winter is coming, and I start feeling trapped and isolated. I start to miss my family, resent where we live, blah, blah, blah. That story hasn't really changed very much. This past summer wasn't too bad because I had lots of days off, we spent time outside everyday in the yard, and often, we'd just hop in the car and drive somewhere to go for a walk (lol - drive to walk...you know how I feel about that...it's one of the biggest downsides to living outside of town, but on a busy road). As the weather and the darkness comes though, Sundays just seem to get lost in the shadow of Monday.

This brings me back to today - Saturday. It's Halloween, and Sam was supposed to be a tiger. We planned to take him trick-or-treating locally (remember: drive first, then walk), but last night, around 11, he woke up with a fever, about 101. It took a while for the ibuprofen to kick in, and he was up with me, chatty even, until 2am, when it finally broke. I was exhausted. Tim, who would normally be home on Friday night, had to work overtime and didn't get in until 3am. Sam only slept until about 7am, and by then he was such a little furnace again, he'd heated up the whole bed! He and I got up and had breakfast, and lounged around until Tim woke up at 10:30, when I was finally able to shower and go to the bank, drug store, return an item, get groceries...administrate. In the meantime, Sam improved, but after his nap, the fever was back. At this point, we decided that trick-or-treating was out of the question. We explained it to him, and he didn't complain one bit...the little guy actually seemed relieved!

I made pizza for dinner (I have a new, crisper crust recipe to share), and soon after, Tim went off to nap. I let Sam stay up a little past his bedtime because he's just such a little munchkin and I love to just look at him, constantly. He's been asleep for a bit now, but I'm going to assess his condition around 10, and hope for an uneventful night.

Tomorrow will be a rinse and repeat of the generic Sunday I described - with Sam under the weather, the probability of the two of us getting out is smaller than usual. Maybe we'll build the biggest lego creation yet.

I'm trying to be more emotionally prepared for winter this year, but I'm afraid that my preparation is starting to feel more like very 'conscious dreading', if that makes any sense. The holidays, family and friends, parties and cheer do provide some flashes of light, but after Christmas, the winter just feels like a big, dark, silent, cold ocean that surrounds and tries to swallow me, and I have to tread water until Spring.

Buttercup and baseball

I need to finish the Before and After tour, but I'm bored with it at the moment. Distraction:

Powerpuff Girls. That's right. It was this little 90s thing I'd almost forgotten until I came across it on Boomerang. It was totally stylized and fun, and I was all about Buttercup - clearly because she was brunette. And as evidenced in this picture, the crankiest and probably most cynical. These days I have to point out the total lack of diversity, and the fact that they're created and owned by a stiff white male Professor (and seriously - why o why was he trying to create little girls in his lab before he accidentally added Chemical X which inadvertently gave them superpowers?), but still, Powerpuff Girls were kind of awesomely freakin cute...and Emmy Award winning. I don't know about all that, but there it is. Adorable. And it's funny when they argue because they are literally 6 year olds.

The Yankees made it to the world series - I'm happy because Tim is a fan, so I'm a fan by association - not because I actually care much about any professional sport. And while a certain bloggy friend may not like this, I have to point out that if all else was neutral, and I had to choose between the Yankees and the Mets as my fave NY team...I'd go with Yankees out of sheer style. The blue, grey and white is so classic, and so is the logo. What is up with that orange and blue mess the Mets have going on? No, no, all wrong.

Since I have completely dug myself into a gender stereotype hole of massive depth, I'll just keep going...

I'm having a particularly dramatic cycle this month, and it's finally breaking. The past few days have really showcased my capacity for crank. After I yelled at Tim for 3 dumb things in a row, which I don't remember, but were kind of funny, I smirked and asked him, "Do you think I suffer from PMS?" He opened his eyes really wide and said, "No - I suffer from PMS."

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Before and after tour: Part 3

The office - before we moved in, it was a bedroom that belonged to 2 little girls. I thought about the fact that I am posting pictures from before the house was ours...this was taken with the former owner's permission while we were considering putting in an offer...but it's our room now, and my camera and my jpeg. So there. Here it was in 2003.

In Feb 2004 I went out of town on a conference for work, and when I got home, Tim had a surprise for me:

He did good.

Before and after tour: Part 2

Dining room before - wallpaper and carpet. In my opinion, it was the least offensive wallpaper in the house:

Dining room in progress:

Don't have a good current shot of the whole dining room, so here's another cute picture. Sam is about 20 months here:

Before and after tour: Part 1

This was the way the master bedroom looked before we moved in (above). It was one of the first rooms we changed.


We painted it a muted blue and replaced the carpet, switched out the old-fashioned sconces, and changed the layout.


I may be off on the order in which we renovated the rest of the rooms, but does it really matter? Next up we have the kitchen and family room area, which is one large space with two different levels. This is how it looked shortly after we moved in:

We painted, mostly, and added better lighting in the kitchen, but it made a huge difference:


A couple years later we fixed more stuff in the kitchen - namely, we replaced the crappy counter top and backsplash, which was a big project - the one below is before Tim got cracking on the tiling. I can't find a good shot of the whole thing, so I'm using a crowd-pleasing little baby Sam having a bath, and you can see the counter top, with molded sink, and cool tiles:


That's all for Part 1. Part 2 will include the living room and dining room, which have both changed dramatically. I'm actually having fun posting these - it's often easy to forget how much we've done in such a short time, and hard to not focus on everything that still needs to be done. I'm also incredibly thankful and proud to have such a smart and handy husband who, despite the never-ending setbacks that come with having a 150 year old house, always figures it out and always makes it look good. I can't even begin to count the money we've saved by doing so much ourselves, and even if it's not all perfect, it doesn't matter because it's really 'ours' and I just love it. Now if I could just pick up the house and move it a few miles...

Bathroom affairs

We have two bathrooms in the house. Our upstairs bath generally gets the most use because we shower and get all pretty/handsome in there. When we moved in (January 2004), both baths needed serious remodeling, and we got them done pretty quickly.
Because the downstairs bath would see the most 'guests' we logically spent more money and effort to spruce that one up. I still love it - here's a picture:


Unfortunately, we didn't think to take a before picture (we started doing so for subsequent renovations). It had a rose pink tub and surround, matching rose sink in a big country-fied vanity, fake grey wall tiles, and was really, really ugly.

The upstairs bath had flowery granny wallpaper, stick-on vinyl tiles, and one of those mirrors with the row of 'ball' light bulbs on top. I don't know what they are called, but they remind me of backstage dressing room mirrors. We spent much less money and effort on this renovation, but it still made a big improvement.
We replaced the floor with a solid piece of vinyl, stripped the wallpaper, and added a new mirror and lights. Here's a picture of it right after. You may not be able to tell (unless, of course, you know because you've been here), but this bathroom has 2 doors - one to the hallway and one into the guest room, which is where this shot was taken from:

Now, you might think that color is wild. It kind of is. It's called Pottery Red, and was not originally one of my choices - in fact, we were heading toward a more earth tone palette, when Tim came home with this chip. I resisted at first, but then I didn't care because we had a lot of other things going on at the time.

Fast forward 5 years - the toilet hasn't been working properly (beyond fixing), the paint is tired and chipped, the floor has seen better days, and, oh, did I mention? That door there on the right? It hits the toilet when you open it - it always has, and it has always been annoying. And classy. We finally decided that we needed to step up our renovation efforts a little more with this room.

Tim took out the door between the guestroom and the bath and sealed it up. This increases the visual space a lot. He also moved that other toilet door down about 6 inches and reversed the hinges, so now the door doesn't hit the toilet when you open it.

We got a new toilet. One that works. Thoroughly. And with much less noise and general scariness. This gave us the opportunity to sneak in a new floor, and clearly, we had to paint. We still have much to do, but so far, the floor and the toilet are both in. Tim painted behind the toilet area before he put the new one in (wow that makes things easy!)

First up, the new floor. We went with vinyl again, because down the road, we plan to 'gut' this bathroom and do tile and so on, but for now, we just wanted instant improvement on the cheap. There's a great remnants flooring place in town, and we got this piece of Armstrong (in the highest gauge they make) for a fraction of its retail cost. $65 for a generous piece that Tim was able to cut perfectly:

Here's a close up - the leaves are embossed. It's very simple and neutral.
And of course, the piece de resistance:

The lighting in this shot does nothing for it, but the paint we chose is a really soft grey which complements (but does not 'match') the floor. I know, grey is brave, but we definitely don't fear color. I think it's going to give the bathroom a more modern and fresh feel.

Of course, I want a new vanity, a new tub, new hardware and all that jazz, but we'll have to live with this for a while. As you can see, we have to finish painting and add the trims and cosmetics back.

Though it hasn't been long enough for us to forget it was back there, it was still fun to see our' mark' from 2004 behind the mirror - and look at that, exactly 5 years ago - aren't we adorable:

So tonight I started to shop around a bit for a new shower curtain and accessories. With a neutral/khaki/light greyish floor, dove grey walls, and bone fixtures, I think I want to go in a black/white or cream/black direction but nothing busy. There's a lot of options out there, and then there's Tim, of course, the great Style Blocker. It's going to be a compromise.

This entry makes me want to do a big Before and After entry of each room we've redone since we moved in. It will be fun. Stay tuned!