Five for Friday

And just like that, it’s mid-April! Many apologies for being MIA lately, internet! I miss you! (And I fully intend to catch up on what you’re up to.) This is one of those pell-mell times of the year, where I feel like I’m being propelled down a steep hill and can barely get my feet under me. All (mostly?) good things, but this is the first Fun Writing I’ve done in… three weeks maybe? When I go to open a document in Word, NONE of my recent files are my blog document, is what that means. (Yes, I type all my posts in Word and then transfer [some of] them to WordPress.)

Seems like a good day for a quick catch-up. And then I need to find a solid week or so to go back and read ALL OF YOUR POSTS, omg, I feel so out of the loop. 

1. I am spending today as we all hope our Fridays go: waiting for the HVAC service technician to show up. Why, yes, that was sarcasm, and yes, our furnace IS dead. I’m glad it’s not, like, January, but it is currently 45 degrees F outside and the internal temperature of my house has dropped to 65. Perfect weather for walking on the treadmill while I cross two items on my to-do list off simultaneously! 

Our furnace is 23 years old, if it is a day, so it’s no spring chicken. But we did just have the HVAC people in here this February to give it a checkup, so I’m feeling a little grumpy that it’s acting up now. Back in February, I asked the HVAC guy to give me a prognosis on the lifespan on my furnace, and he said, “Well, I can’t guarantee anything – it could stop working tomorrow! But it seems like it’s in good shape and you could get another ten years out of it.” Not sure why I didn’t hear the foreboding music swell in the background of this little pronouncement.  

2. While I drank my breakfast (which was a smoothie and a mug of green tea, not, like, whiskey), I whacked away at my to-do list a bit more. It’s at that out-of-control point again, where things keep piling up until I am buried under their weight. The section I tackled today was Making Routine Doctors’ Appointments. Well, some of them were routine. Like I got Carla scheduled for her annual well visit and her annual eye exam (which we somehow skipped last year????). I also left a message on my doctor’s prescription line to follow up on a refill that I requested earlier this week. That last one took two calls because I got through three menu trees and clicked on “leave a message for Dr. X” and then had to listen to a recording that said this was the place to leave questions for the nurse, NOT the place to leave refill requests, so I had to go through all the phone menus again. And! Most exciting of all: I scheduled an ear piercing appointment for Carla! This will be her Big Birthday Present this year. She has been ramping up the requests to have her ears pierced over the past six to twelve months, and she has really made strides in Being Responsible (she has a necklace she wears daily that has so far always come home with her; she has a dental appliance she has to care for). Plus, she got a pair of nice-quality clip on earrings from her grandmother last fall, and she wears them regulary. So I think she is ready for pierced ears. I, however, am NOT ready for pierced ears. I have never had pierced ears, or any sort of piercing, and the whole thing a) squicks me out and b) makes me extremely nervous. I am squeamish and blood/body stuff makes me woozy. I am comforted by Carla’s swift and independent handling of her dental appliance; I have never had to touch it or adjust a single rubber band, and her orthodontist says she is doing great, so I am going to trust that between her and my husband, she’ll figure out how to care for HOLES in her BODY. 

Still on the list are many additional phone calls, which I will probably avoid some more. I need to call the landscaper, make an appointment to get my car serviced, call someone to come look at our oven, call the trash collection service about whether they will collect some unusual items (paint cans and gutter guards), hire a lifeguard for Carla’s birthday party, and get some estimates to get the exterior of our house painted. Also on my list: a work project, two rather major projects for my volunteering role, a message for a family member’s Big Birthday Memory Book, finding photos of Carla for a school project, making decisions about and then scheduling a couple of other healthcare-type things, and, most daunting of all: figuring out how to order breakfast for an out-of-town group event at which I will not be present, in a town I have never visited and know nothing about.

3. A phone call I already made this week? Scheduling an appointment with our new pest control service. Even though we live, like, twenty miles away from our old neighborhood, the locations are different enough that they seem to have totally different pest problems. At our old house, we had silverfish; at this house, we have ants, stinkbugs, mice, and bats. “Probably you had rats, too,” the pest control guy said helpfully. But since in twelve years I never once saw a rat, or any sign of such, I refuse to acknowledge this as a possibility.   

While he is from the same pest control company that handled our mouse problem when we first moved into this house, he is not the same person. He tells me he was injured last fall and on leave. But he used to do pest control for the previous owners, which was useful because he knew exactly where to go and what the problem areas were. He also kind of implied that the previous owners canceled a ton of their appointments, so he wasn’t surprised we had such a huge mouse infestation when we moved in. While I feel deeply uncomfortable with service people sharing qualms about their other customers, I do feel a little bit justified in my growing belief that the previous owners did not really take care of this place. Lots and lots of things have looked lovely on the surface and then turn out to be falling apart behind the scenes, and the repeated cancellation of regular home maintenance stuff helps explain that. Don’t get me wrong – they seem like lovely people, and I get the impression they are just very busy and travel a lot. And who knows! Maybe they had other stuff they were dealing with, and/or once they decided to move, they simply stopped keeping things up. I will tell you, while I am NOT EXCITED about bats or mice, I do prefer the tiny little ants and the occasional stinkbug to silverfish. 

4. Did you know you can make queso dip out of cottage cheese? Possibly you already knew this, but I only just tried it. It was marvelous. I don’t know how “healthy” it was, especially because I ate it with tortilla chips. But it was easy and much higher in protein than covering my chips in shredded cheese while being just as delicious.

5. Speaking of things I have recently tried and loved, I have FINALLY found a travel pillow that allows me to sleep on the airplane! Sleeping is really the only way I can fly, because I find the entire experience so anxiety-producing. But I am not a person who can lean back against the questionably clean headrest or use a travel pillow. My head insists on flopping forward, no matter what, and each time it falls, I snap awake. It is neither comfortable nor restful and it’s kind of embarrassing, to be honest. I have tried so many travel pillows. So many. None of them work. But then! My husband ordered a TRTL travel pillow to use on our flights to and from spring break (four-ish hours each way) and on our first flight, he let me use it… and it WORKS. My head can rest gently in a forward position but there is enough support to prevent flopping AND it doesn’t make my neck ache! I did feel like a moron, winding it around my neck like I was bracing for arctic winds, but it was well worth it! I used it on the flight home, too, and it is now mine, all mine. 

Okay, in the time since I drafted this post, I got a phone call (friend with whom I exchanged phone numbers for my phenomenal roof/siding person; being an adult is weird), made a phone call (oven repair person is scheduled!), wrapped two birthday presents, unloaded the dishwasher, tidied the kitchen, welcomed the furnace repair person into my home, threw some ice cubes into the dryer to refresh the clothes I dried last night and forgot about, discovered that my front door will BLOW OPEN unless it is locked, tossed a load of laundry in the washing machine, and agreed to pay to have a new transformer installed in my furnace. I think I hear the heater doing its thing! 

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Pestilence & Power Hour

Happy Leap Day, Internet! I am spending this extra day trying to decide whether the benefits of cold medicine (reduced headache, mild cough suppression, drying of the sinuses) outweigh the ill effects (drowsiness, zombie brain).

We had a good run of it, Internet. And by “it” I mean good health. Carla’s class has apparently been stricken by a boatload of illnesses and, after volunteering at a school event last week, I have brought one home. 

It started Sunday with a sore throat, then moved along through the normal URI progression, so I thought I was getting better. But today I woke up with no voice and a fever of 101.5. I feel like someone is trying to escape the inside of my skull by hacking at it with a pickaxe and he’s standing right on my lungs while he hammers away.

Carla was fine at first, but woke up with a fever yesterday, so she is home with me for the second day. So far it doesn’t seem to have hit her quite as hard. She’s feverish but cheerful. And sniffly. I hope her illness goes in the proper direction, though. 

I am bummed because I had weekend plans, but even if I do feel better by then, I am sure to be hacking up a lung which doesn’t sound pleasant for me or those around me. 

This post is not about me whining about being sick though. It is a celebration of productivity!

I know you are dying to know whether the internet magic of mentioning something on my blog made it happen, and it did! Via the power of public humiliation (although you made me feel understood rather than humiliated), I have made some progress on my to-do list.

While my preference would have been for Suz to come over and tackle my to-do list for me (you DID offer, Suz), I decided to take Jenny’s advice and do a Power Hour.

In my house, a Power Hour is a way to gamify a to-do list. I have heretofore only used it on my daughter, and pretty much only as a cleaning challenge. Although, to be fair, she will not do a Power Hour unless I am also doing a Power Hour – she is a competitive being – so I end up doing one alongside her. We haven’t done one in a while. But I have never really made myself do a Power Hour. 

Monday, I came home from school drop-off and took a nap until 11:00, then allowed my guilt for napping to propel me into a Power Hour. I will tell you, first, that the Power Hour is a misnomer because it took THREE HOURS.

1. First, I made a list on my new custom notepads that my husband and daughter got me for my birthday. 

2. Instead of calling the landscaper, I instead looked up an email she’d sent me in August with a recommendation for a tree trimming/removal company. I had called them, around that time; there’d been a storm that wreaked havoc on a lot of local trees, so the tree service said they would call me back and then never did. 

I called the tree company and someone is coming out to look at the tree in question and offer an estimate. Should I call someone else to come give a second estimate? Probably. 

3. Gigi said I needed to handle the rot in my siding sooner rather than later, so that was next on my list. She’d suggested calling a general contractor, so I spent some time looking at previous texts with friends whom I’d asked for contractor suggestions. None of them seemed right, and one of them mysteriously has NO Internet presence at all. Like… his name doesn’t exist on the internet. And it’s an odd name with an unusual spelling – something like Grygg – and I know the spelling I used was accurate because the friend who’d recommended him said, “Oh, I spelled his name wrong in the contact I shared; it’s Grygg instead of Gryyg.” Nonetheless, neither spelling came up with ANY hits online. 

So I turned instead to people who deal with gutters. This is what Marg had to do, at an approximate cost of $1500 for a similar issue. (THANK YOU, Marg, for the benchmark pricing!) We had our gutters cleaned regularly at our old house, and it was fairly reasonable price-wise, but the REAL price was in future phone and text spam from the company. So I didn’t want to call them. Moving has been a nice excuse to part ways with some companies I felt bad about parting ways with. I looked up some highly rated gutter service companies in our area and then called. 

The person who answered at the first place was so kind. I said that I had no idea whether she could help me, and she said, “Well, let’s just see!” and I explained my problem, and it WAS something she seemed familiar with. She even gave me an estimate for replacing that rotted wood right off the top of her head ($475 in case you are wondering). But then she told me that sometimes getting all of your gutters cleaned can help address the problem, and that adjusting the gutter would be part of the cost of that ($495 in case you are wondering). I don’t think replacing the rotted wood would necessarily have been part of the gutter cleaning cost, but then again, I’d be getting ALL the gutters cleaned, which needs to be done anyway. She was so warm and knowledgeable that I wanted to book her right then and there, but… well, I have been swayed by warm and knowledgeable people before (I’m looking at you, Guy Who Said I Needed to Replace My Garage Doors When Really They Only Needed a Small Much-Less-Costly Adjustment), so I told her I would talk it over with my husband and call her back. 

Gutter person number two was also very nice. He immediately asked if I could text him pictures of the issue and I did. But then he wanted to continue the conversation via text, which was a little less satisfying than being on the phone? I think, mainly, because a) we were discussing terms I wasn’t familiar with and b) the guy is not quite so wordy as I am (shocker) nor as wordy as I would prefer he be in responses. He said he thinks the issue is that “it” (the gutter?) just needs to be “pitched toward the downspout,” all of which are words I think I understand, but am not 100% sure I know exactly what that means? He can also replace the rotted wood and he is coming out to look more closely and give me an estimate. 

4. On to the pool service task! I had one recommendation from a friend, one company my husband had suggested, and another company the previous owners’ pool guy had suggested (note: we used the previous owners’ pool guy last year and he does not provide the cleaning/maintenance we are looking for, plus he is impossible to deal with – like, he will just show up unannounced in the backyard). I called and left messages at each company. I believe I have left messages with each of these companies before; only the friend-recommended guy ever called me back, and then said his brother would be in touch, and then the brother never got in touch. WHY IS THIS IMPOSSIBLE? 

5. There is a drip in our furnace. Plus, I got a text that said this was my LAST CHANCE to schedule the free furnace maintenance that comes with my membership to the HVAC company. I was confused, because I am SURE that we had someone come out last fall to look at the furnace; I remember very clearly because he told me that I was still eligible to get the extended warranty on the furnace, and then I called the warranty company and they needed my title within 90 days of the home sale, and the title hadn’t arrived, and I went back and forth with the title company and eventually we got the title but it was after the 90 days. So. No extended warranty on the furnace.

But I looked in my calendar, and it said the same company did an air conditioner inspection last September, so perhaps that’s what I was thinking of? So I called the HVAC company (my god this is a VERY BORING POST but somehow I cannot curb my desire to write out all the tiresome details) and the cheery gal I spoke to said yes, it had been an A/C checkup. So we scheduled a furnace inspection. Whew. 

6. Next! I first updated our family calendar with all the important dates from my daughter’s 2024-25 school calendar. Good lord, there are a lot of days off. Like, so many days off. Then I called the dentist and scheduled her next checkup. This, if you are keeping track, is the only actual task I have completed. 

7. Then I turned to the electrician, which has a very convoluted backstory. The TL;DR version is that I successfully scheduled an appointment for the electrician to come out and address multiple issues. The slightly longer version is that the company that we use has a very complex system that probably makes a lot of sense to them but is difficult to deal with. One person comes out to see what’s wrong, another person prepares an estimate for you and works with you to figure out exactly what work you want to do, then a whole other person schedules the appointment with you. On the day of the Power Hour, it took me multiple phone calls and multiple emails across multiple hours to finalize the work order and schedule a day for someone to come out. 

8. I wrote a check to the orthodontist and put it in my car. I still need to take the check to the orthodontist’s office, but that can be done at a later time.

9. I followed up on a work email (and have still not heard back siiiighhhhhh).

10. Bonus task! I talked to Carla’s teacher on the phone and then made a follow-up phone call based on our conversation.

These were the tasks I got through before it was time to pick up Carla from school. (Although I did exchange three separate phone calls, two texts, and an email with the electrician and the estimate person while in the car, so that was fun.) (The email and texts I handled while in the car line, not while driving.)

All in all, it was a productive Power Hour. But do you see, Internet? DO YOU SEE WHY I HATE THESE TASKS? 

I would like to note once again for the record that I spent THREE HOURS Power Houring my way through all these phone calls and emails and to-do lists and I accomplished one thing. Yes, yes, I got a lot of other things underway. But NOTHING ELSE is complete.         

And there are still so many, many items at which to pick away.  

One of those tasks is to call the hair salon and schedule an appointment for my husband. Since I have no voice, Carla is going to get to learn how to schedule an appointment today. Which is clearly a crucial skill every human must master. 

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Five for Friday + Mini Giveaway

1. For Valentine’s Day, I made two kinds of cookies. I had some leftover scraps of dough, so I cut out little hearts and whipped up a strawberry buttercream frosting and made little sandwiches. They were cute and tasty. Then I added a few cookies to these adorable plates I found at the grocery store of all places and gave them to a couple of local friends.

My husband and I exchanged cards and candy and we got Carla a bunch of candy and a little pink bunny. (Side note: I happened to be near a Kohl’s recently and went in, remembering the luck I’d had finding stocking stuffers there. They had one tiny Valentine’s Day display and the rest of the holiday products were related to Easter. And not just bunnies — they had a strange array of large, weary-looking pigs, which seems a little odd for Easter. I mean, I would look weary if I were a stuffed animal on display in a Kohl’s too, that’s gotta be a hard job, but they were not particularly cute or cuddly and really seemed like they were counting the hours until they could clock out. I DID find one small, pink bunny and snapped it up.) Carla also cut out a bunch of paper hearts and stuck them all over the walls of the house. It was adorable and the hearts are still up and may remain for months.

2. A recent parent interaction has me feeling cranky. And ranty, just to warn you. I was at a school event and several of us were discussing various challenges our kids are having, as one does, and the topic turned to leaving our kids at home alone. I was struck, once again, by how adamant some people are that their way is The Only Way. The comments ran the spectrum from, “Oh my gosh, I would NEVER leave a kid that age alone!” to “There is NO REASON a kid that age can’t stay at home by themselves for reasonable periods of time.” With equal emphasis and near outrage. 

I don’t know why, after nearly eleven years of being a parent, I am still surprised by people’s inability to consider the wide array of differences in our situations, upbringings, and specific children, but I guess I am. I’m guilty of it too – I still cringe, remembering how I’d mentioned to a friend that I OF COURSE make my child sit in the back seat because the American Pediatric Association says it’s best to have them sit in the backseat until age 13… and then she’d gently noted that her child is not yet 13 and sits in the passenger seat. Gah. When I KNOW that she is a wonderful, thoughtful parent and also know that MANY of my kid’s cohort sit in the front seat of their parents’ cars, for a wide variety of reasons I cannot begin to know because I am not them. (ALSO, lest you have a moment of panic about your own car-seating choices, the APA data on why age thirteen is a magical turning point for kids suddenly being safe to sit in the front seat is not super persuasive! I have read it!) 

Okay – there are obviously some parenting choices that are less safe than others; if we’re talking about an infant in the front seat, that would be different; if we’re talking about a child riding in a car without restraints, that would be different. But there are SO MANY things that have NO SINGLE RIGHT WAY and yet some people seem incapable of understanding that there are many equally fine ways to do a thing. 

This comes up every time I mention that my daughter needs melatonin to fall asleep. People have strong feelings about melatonin! As they should! And yet I have Reasons – and have carefully considered the angles and have consulted with multiple physicians and continually revisit whether it’s a good idea in our particular case for our particular child. It’s just so frustrating when someone says, “I would never give my kid melatonin” or “If she’s tired enough, she’ll fall asleep on her own” or “She clearly needs more physical activity during the day, that’ll help her sleep” as though they know. 

And this happens with everything! I have had people scold me for allowing my child to wash her own hair. Does she do a great job? Not particularly. But am I weighing Other Factors? YES. The ways we judge one another are endless! Food – frequency, type, preparation. Buying clothing at Target vs upscale department stores. Bedtime. Age-appropriate chores/responsibilities. Sleepovers. Access to devices. 

Screen time is a big one. For my particular kid, screens are a no-go on weekdays. There are REASONS for this. Do I despise screens? Not really, no. Would I love to be able to set her up with a TV show after school while I make dinner? Sure! Would it be much more convenient if I could say yes to her playing a video game after she does her homework? Definitely. BUT IT DOES NOT WORK FOR US. I have no concerns about YOUR family’s screen time choices. None! If your kid has unlimited screen time every day, I am sure that is a choice you made based on what’s best for your kid and your family. (Please note that I am aware too much screen time can have a negative impact on children. I am not advocating setting your three-year-old in front of a screen all day every day, although of course there are still probably Reasons someone might make that choice! Like if that is the only way you can work the job that allows you to feed your family or if you are so sick or pregnant you cannot do anything else or all sorts of other situations I know nothing about.) If you ask me about screen time for my kid, I am neither judging you for your own screen time limits nor inviting you to say, “Come on, an hour of Netflix after school isn’t going to hurt anyone.” 

I know I cannot SOLVE this problem, and all I can do is surround myself with people who say things like, “This is what we have found works for us,” and who don’t make black-and-white accusatory statements about what I SHOULD and SHOULD NOT be doing without having all the information I am trying to balance, but I am SO SICK OF IT. Listen. I am not saying that I am completely free of judgment. We all judge one another, to some extent, because usually we think our choices are The Right Ones. But… I try really hard to acknowledge that we all have different value systems and different priorities and that, mostly, we are all trying our very best. Also, we can all judge one another SILENTLY. It is hard enough to be a parent, turning to other parents for support about choices that you have made based on Reasons but maybe you aren’t really sure are the BEST choices, as in my case with the melatonin, you are just doing the best you can with the information you have, without having someone who is not an expert, especially on YOUR CHILD, say you are Doing It Wrong. 

Wow. I really got fired up about that. MOVING ON.

3. Accidental laundry efficiency hack? Laundry is my nemesis. I am pretty good about sorting the clothing into piles, and pretty good about putting the piles into the washing machine and washing them. I am less good about remembering to dry the freshly washed clothing, and then really terrible about folding the clothing. Yesterday, I had two loads of clean, dry laundry to fold and I was dreading it. I had a little more than twenty minutes before I needed to leave to pick up Carla from school and I just wanted to finish my book. So I made a deal with myself: I would set my timer for six minutes, and fold laundry until the timer went off. Then I would go read for fifteen minutes. Even a little progress on the laundry would make me feel better about it, I reasoned. Plus, sometimes if you get started on an onerous task, momentum will carry you through. I set my timer for six minutes, started folding… and FINISHED BOTH LOADS IN SIX MINUTES. How is that possible? In my head, folding laundry takes HOURS. But two loads took six minutes! (To be fair, I don’t fold all of Carla’s clothes, because a lot of them hang up in her closet. Also, I only put away my own laundry – my husband and Carla ostensibly move their clothes from my bed to their own drawers/hangers.) It was an astonishing and bolstering discovery. Has this new knowledge prompted me to fold the clean and dry load of laundry that is currently hanging out in the dryer? No, it has not.

4. How about a little mid-February giveaway? Amazon has issued me a refund for a product I did not return. I ordered a book and have not returned it; it’s right next to me as I type this. Nor have I returned anything else. And yet I got an email from Amazon saying they had processed my refund. I would like to pay for a product I received and kept, so I looked online at my options… and the only option I found (“cancel my return”) simply took me in a loop back to the returns page. I was able to chat with an associate, and they said I could keep the item. Seems like the perfect excuse to do a little giveaway. I have $14.40 in money that I should not have, which is the perfect amount for a paperback book that you’ve been meaning to read for a few years but haven’t gotten around to. If you want the chance to get a free paperback book, and are willing to share your address with me, let me know in the comments what backlist book you would order. I will randomly choose someone and send them the book of their choice, compliments of Amazon. Unfortunately, I will only be able to include US readers in this mini giveaway, which is a huge bummer. But if you are from outside the US, I am still interested in whatever backlist book you have been meaning to read but haven’t gotten to yet. Let’s say this giveaway is open until midnight on Monday, February 19 or until Feedly decides to say I wrote this post, whichever comes LAST.

5. I am suffering from home maintenance burnout. This past fall, when we moved to our new house, we had to do so many things, some elective, others more urgent… and I grew so very weary of all of them.  But that doesn’t mean we are DONE with the home maintenance issues. I feel like they continue to pile up. This includes things I knew about last year that I intentionally put off until the spring (getting a tree cut back, finding a pool person, getting our air ducts cleaned, looking into the carpenter bees issue with our roof) as well as things that have cropped up in the interim (some electrical issues, a leak in our furnace, also our furnace is making a weird noise, our doorbell is caput). But I am having such a mental block to doing the things. Maybe if I write about it here, the guilt and self-consciousness will spur me to schedule at least one of them? Maybe I need to apply my laundry efficiency hack to making home maintenance phone calls, somehow? (Except they always drag on so much longer than they should, and require research and multiple phone calls and visits. This is part of the problem.)

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope you have a wonderful weekend! 

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Weigh In Wednesday: Order in the Office

This is probably a better topic for the book blog, but since a) this is the first day of November, and if I am going to set myself up for the best chance of completing NaBloPoMo (which I am still on the fence about! day by day, folks!) (go check out San’s blog to see who is participating this year) I should probably post on this, the first day of the Mo for which I would be BloPoing, and b) this is both a Book Topic and a General Life Topic, as it concerns the state of my home, and c) I have already been neglecting the book blog for so very long, why not continue in the same vein, I am going to discuss it here, instead.

(You: Get to the point.) (And also use shorter sentences going forward.)

We just moved in to a new house. Me, my husband, my daughter, and our eight million books. 

In the old house, we had five bookcases, plus one in Carla’s room, plus three half-size bookcases. We organize our books into rough categories and then alphabetize the books in each category by author. 

Sob! My old office. The third bookcase is behind the door to the right.

Carla’s books are easy; they will live in her room. 

My new office, while demonstrably larger than my old office, still only holds three bookcases. (This is one of the perplexing non-problem “problems” of the new house; we have much more space but far less wall space.) Probably we could squeeze another one in there… or maybe even two additional narrow, glass-fronted bookshelves. 

We have a big, empty wall between the piano room and the living room, and the plan is to install some additional bookshelves there, as well. Maybe something like this.

We have moved the other three existing bookcases – two are black and one is brown – into the basement. Our nonfiction collection will largely live there. My office shelves and the wall unit and maybe the built-in shelves in the living room will hold our fiction collection and all my poetry books. I would also like my writing books (the non-fiction that won’t live in the basement) to live in my office. 

Some non fiction.

I have a small “tree” bookshelf in my bedroom that holds Books I (Think I) Want to Read Imminently. 

Strangely grainy photo of my old bedroom, with the tree bookshelf in action.

So we’ve figured out our rough categories and where each category will live… now all we have to do is alphabetize them and put them on the shelves. (Well, except that some of the shelves don’t yet exist.)

Except we’ve run into a quandary. 

We’ve squeezed all three of my bookshelves together into one unit. Should we treat each shelf as a separate bookcase, and alphabetize that way, so that Bookcase 1 might have authors A-C, and Bookcase 2 might have authors D-F and Bookcase 3 might have authors G-K? 

Or do we alphabetize across all three, as though they are one giant bookcase? 

This is a very fun problem to contemplate. Except that I already started shelving the books according to option 1, and am loathe to redo the work. 

Why is the lamp in the middle of the room? No idea whatsoever. Also, if you have any suggestions for new light fixtures I AM ALL EARS.

What would you do? And how do you organize the books in your house? 

Also, apropos of nothing (except that it is tangentially topical), do you think I need this customizable vase shaped like a book? I really think I need it. Maybe you need it too.

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join, check out San’s blog here.

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Halloween Is Tomorrow; Dinners This Week

Oh right, I should probably write a blog post! (My lack of recent posting is not terribly indicative of my ability to complete NaBloPoMo this year. Which I want to do. Because otherwise I will have dreadful NaBloPoMo FOMO and no one wants that. It might be a Take It Day By Day kind of thing. If you’d like to dither with me, make sure you let San know.) 

Halloween is tomorrow and I am feeling very raw right now about facing enduring celebrating our first holiday in the new house. Nicole really hit the nail on the head with her post today, about these changes feeling like small deaths. I do feel like I’m in mourning. Maybe that’s why I haven’t put out a single Halloween decoration, why I haven’t purchased a single mum or even a pumpkin, why I didn’t buy Halloween candy at all until yesterday. (Seriously. I haven’t had even a single kernel of candy corn!) Maybe if I don’t participate in this holiday, it won’t feel like I’m missing something. It won’t feel like I’ve taken something away from myself and my daughter by uprooting us all and leaving our lovely neighbors and cozy, Halloween-friendly neighborhood behind.  

Well. Tomorrow, we begin creating new holiday memories, in a new neighborhood, with new neighbors who have (luckily) been kind enough to include us in their trick-or-treating plans. Maybe I’ll even buy a last-minute pumpkin at the grocery store, or see if Home Depot has any straggly mums on sale for half-price. Or maybe I won’t, and I’ll mourn The Way It Was this year, and approach The Way It Can Be with new energy next October.

Dinners for the Week of October 30-November 5

• Sheet Pan Balsamic Chicken with Veggies: This is what happens when I buy food without a plan; I end up having to find a recipe that sort of fits what I have, but sort of doesn’t, and hoping for the best. In this case, I have chicken, parsnips, a yam, and a potato. And probably an onion. Close enough, right?

• Salad with Teriyaki Chicken: I am really in a salad mood lately. 

• Slow Cooker Chicken and Wild Rice Soup: We haven’t had this in many, many months but it is the perfect antidote to the dreary wet grey slop that has settled over us.

• Guinness Beef Stew and Fall Salad: My parents are coming over for dinner this weekend, and this is what I plan to feed them. Is stew a weird thing to serve for dinner? Turns out I overthink entertaining even when it is my own parents. 

• Pan Roasted Pork Chops and Broccoli: I haven’t really settled on the exact preparation for the pork chops or the broccoli. (I prefer steamed broccoli to roasted, although my husband is the opposite.) Game time decision. 

I am also really leaning into the soup weather, and plan make some butternut squash soup to eat for lunches. Probably, if the current weather is any indication of future performance, we will have a lot of leftover Halloween candy to deal with, too.

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Kid Bedroom Makeover

One of the few only FUN things about buying a new house is designing all the new spaces. And it has been (mainly) fun to pick out paint colors and new flooring. But what I am really excited about is making these new rooms match up to the vision in my mind.

I think my daughter’s room will be the first room to be the most finished. We are in the process of painting her walls, which is very exciting, and then we can decorate her bedroom.

Some point last spring, Carla decided that her favorite color was no longer black, it’s turquoise. Which thrills me, by the way. Not that buying all-black clothing didn’t have a lot of benefits. But I love the color turquoise and I’m really excited that she loves such a fun, vibrant color.

Since she’s on the cusp of teenagery (gulp!), I am also hoping that we can decorate her room in a way that feels fun and Age Ten Appropriate, but will easily transition into the teen years with her.

For the wall colors, we are going with black and white. Yes, I know I just said that Carla’s favorite color is no longer black. But when my husband and I were going to open houses last spring, we saw a teen bedroom that was TO DIE FOR and we immediately knew that Carla would love it. So one wall of Carla’s room will be black and the rest of the walls will be bright white. All of her existing furniture (desk, bed, dresser, and bookcase) are white. And then we’ll accent everything with turquoise.

The only problem with turquoise, I find, is that there are so many varieties of the color. Where does aqua begin and turquoise end? I do not know. So finding colors that match is tricky. Finding colors that coordinate is less tricky, but it does seem like there are opportunities for clashing.

Here’s sort of what the paint result will look like (except her room is bigger than this space, so there’s more white than in this photo):

image from home-designing.com

Now for the fun part. All the accessories that will make her room super cool and cozy!

Bedding: Getting Carla a new comforter and pillowcases is going to be the easiest way to add color to her room. I love this duvet cover: simple and vibrant.

image from amazon.com

But this duvet cover is so fun. I love how colorful it is. I wonder if Carla would think it’s too babyish?

image from amazon.com

If she prefers a solid color, I also like this option, but the color may be a little too intense.

image from macys.com

Oh wow, I am in love with the soft color and amazing texture of this quilt set.

image from pbteen.com

I also think it might be fun to have some black throw pillows (with inserts).

image from amazon.com

Oooh… or these pillow cases are furry!

image from amazon.com

This throw/blanket is super pretty. I realize none of these things work together, but… I will figure that out in time.

image from target.com

Desk: Carla’s old desk is a remnant from the pandemic. It worked great for her during Zoom School, and she has used it plenty for drawing, but now it’s time to get her a real Big Kid desk.

I like this desk a lot, but the price tag makes me want to die.

image from pbteen.com

This is a smaller version of the same desk, but it also seems WAY TOO EXPENSIVE for what it is.

image from pbteen.com

This desk is much more budget friendly, although I have no experience of buying things from Wayfair.

image from wayfair.com

Desk Chair: I love this turquoise desk chair. We will probably have to get a plastic chair mat/carpet protector to go under it though, since it has wheels.

image from amazon.com

This desk chair is cute and seems a little more pre-teen-ish than the other option. No arms though… which is good for practicing the guitar, but I’m not sure if it’s great for studying?

image from wayfair.com

Or she can use the ball chair that we got her during the remote learning days. It’s a very light turquoise (much lighter than the image leads you to believe), so it still works with the color scheme.

image from amazon.com

Lighting: I love this aqua desk lamp, although it is sadly out of stock.

image from wayfair.com

Here’s a sort of similar lamp from Bed Bath & Beyond.

image from bedbathandbeyond.com

I like the unusual shape of this lamp’s base.

image from wayfair.com

While I am mostly opposed to elaborate light fixtures because they seem like a dust-attracting nightmare, this black beaded chandelier is pretty cool.

image from amazon.com

For a less dust-magnetic option, this stained-glass style fixture is pretty and different.

image from lampsplus.com

This bedside table lamp is really fun, although I don’t know if I love the wooden base.

image from amazon.com

Comfy Seating: I think Carla would get a big kick out of this beanbag chair. I can picture her curling up in it to read.

image from amazon.com

From a practicality-meets-cute standpoint, I am loving this futon. It’s the right color, it folds up into a chair, but it can fold out into a twin bed for the inevitable future sleepovers. Or at the very least, her cousin can use it when she visits us for holidays.

image from amazon.com

I also like this armchair. Is it maybe a little too grown up?

image from amazon.com

Wall Décor: I think it will be useful to break up the white walls a bit with some pops of color.

I LOVE this backlit mirror, although there is no way it will fit our budget. (We do not yet have a budget for Carla’s room; this is just the brainstorming, anything goes, phase.) (Why are mirrors so $$$$$?)

image from pbteen.com

A full-length mirror would be more practical than a pricey wall mirror. This one is the right color (though not in stock); I will keep looking.

image from amazon.com

This clock is cool. Perhaps it would inspire Carla to be on time more often??? I can’t deal with clocks because the ticking sound overwhelms me, but a) I am probably an anomaly and b) this is supposed to be a quiet, tick-free clock.

image from amazon.com

I don’t quite know how I will feel about these wall decals in practice, but they are COOL and the exact right colors and I bet Carla would love tossing them up on one of her walls.

image from amazon.com

Here’s another thing that seems cool as an idea, but I’m not sure I’d love it in reality: a custom neon wall sign. This one has an ice blue option that seems like it would color coordinate with Carla’s room… but… what would it say? Where would it go? Would there be unsightly cords all over the place?

image from etsy.com

I am in love with these wall butterflies. But I’m betting they collect a lot of dust.

image from amazon.com

Curtains: The new house came with blinds on all the windows, so window are pretty much already covered (pun), but… It might be fun to have black blackout curtains???? I mean, how dramatic are these?!

image from amazon.com

Or oh my gosh, these ombre blackout curtains are SO FUN. Pretty and breezy and cool.

image from pbteen.com

Towels: I would also love to get Carla a set of new towels. Turquoise… but maybe also a set of purple ones? For guests? (Her bathroom will be pale purple.)

image from amazon.com

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Times I Cried Watching A League of Their Own

Carla and I have been working our way through some of the family movies you suggested. So far, we’ve done Freaky Friday, in which I think Lindsay Lohan is excellent. Bend it Like Beckham which was more relationship-heavy than I remembered (and, dare I say, sort of boring?). Newsies, which has a banging soundtrack, and to which Carla said, “Why aren’t there any girl characters?” (She’s not wrong; by my count, there are four total women in the entire movie.) 

Most recently, we dove into A League of Their Own. I started crying pretty much right away. I don’t recall it being a tearjerker, do you? The tears welled up so often that I started making a list. (Um, mild spoilers if you have somehow not yet seen this absolute masterpiece of a movie.)

• When Marla’s dad blamed her lack of femininity on himself, because he raised her alone after his wife died

• When Marla left her dad, who was so supportive of her baseball prowess, but is now all alone
• When Shirley Baker couldn’t find her name on the list, and then when another player figured out that Shirley couldn’t read and helped her find her name and they all cheered
• When all the women were so excited to be chosen as members of the All American League
• When Doris talked about how her boyfriend made her feel less-than because she can play ball
• When Mae said “they ain’t closing me down”
• When the Black woman threw a ball to one of the Peaches and nodded to the Peaches in a way that said, “Yes, I know I should be among you and it’s super shitty that I’m not simply because of the color of my skin.”
• When the stands were full of cheering crowds
• The first time the Peaches sing Evelyn’s song in the locker room 
• When the telegram guy comes into the locker room with the telegram for Betty Spaghetti
• When Dottie sobs with relief that the telegram wasn’t about Bob, and with worry for the potential that the next one might have his name on it
• When Bob shows up at Dottie’s door and she can’t believe he’s there, in person, alive
• When Dottie says “Can we just hold each other for the rest of our lives?”
• When Jimmy gives Dottie the “baseball gets inside you” speech
• The entire portion of the film devoted to the series when Dottie is up at bat against Kit, and Kit so fiercely wants to win and Dottie is so stoic and unflappable
• When Dottie drops the ball and Kit’s team wins
• When Dottie tells Kit the things she won’t miss from baseball and hugs Kit and tells her she loves her
• When Old Dottie tells Old Marla she lost her husband just that winter
• When Old Stillwell tells Old Dottie his mom died

I’m pretty teary these days. I always tend to get emotional around Carla’s birthday (although less so the past few years, which I thought was a good trend; maybe “turning ten” feels like such a big deal, it’s bringing up extra stuff?). I cannot believe she’s hitting double digits. I cannot believe I’ve known her for a full decade. I cannot believe she is about to head into her final year of elementary school. She brings me so much joy and fills my life with so much light and love and energy and glitter – literal and metaphorical – and I just want time to slow down. 

Some people try to talk me out of these feelings. It’s good that Carla is growing up. It’s what she should be doing. It’s better than the alternative. And to those people I say: yes. You are right. I am so proud and overwhelmed by happiness that I get to watch this person grow and change and become ever more herself. It is a precious gift and one that I do not take for granted. 

And yet I am unabashedly sentimental about Carla of yesterday. I want to feel unborn Carla kick against my hand pressed to my stomach. I want to cradle fresh-baked-loaf-of-bread Carla in my arms and watch her head loll, milk-drunk, against my shoulder. I want to trail toddler Carla down the sidewalk, stopping as she points out every acorn, every leaf, every ant with wonderment and glee infusing her squeaky toddler voice. I want to watch kindergarten Carla spin in her twirly skirt and second grade Carla slide down a snow-covered slide and fourth grade Carla play her guitar. I want all of these things at once, just as much as I want to see what middle school and high school and college and parent Carla will be like. I can hold both of those things – the joy and nostalgia, the excitement for what is yet to come and the grief for what no longer is – in my heart and I can give myself space to feel it all.

We also watched A League of Their Own on the day we put in an offer on a new house. I could feel it, that this was OUR new house. It has everything we could want – a mudroom! a crafting space! room for so many books! – and more. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood, with kids Carla’s age in houses on either side of the house and across the street (the one thing our wonderful current neighborhood lacks is kids her age). It has walking trails and ponds and a playground. And there are so many dogs, you guys. So many dogs. It’s pretty close to perfect, and we put in a competitive offer, and I had a good feeling we would get it, but then we had to wait. Watching A League of Their Own was as much a way to distract myself as it was exposing Carla to the great films of my youth. So I’m sure at least some of the crying was less about the characters’ situation and more about the opposing forces of wanting something so much while also being deeply afraid of letting go of the wonderful thing I already have. 

Because when we say hello to a new house – a house we want, and love – we have to say goodbye to the wonderful house we live in now.

It’s just a house. But. This house is so inextricably tied up with Carla. With Carla and the rapid passage of time. 

My husband and I decided, here, in this house, that we wanted a baby. I walked from my bathroom down the hall to my husband’s home office and announced I was pregnant. We painted our baby’s room the perfect shade of pale purple and carefully chose art for her walls. We brought baby Carla home to this house. I slept on the floor in front of her crib countless times. I sat with her on the carpet in the living room, pointing out the sliding glass doors to the wonderful goings on in the yard: the squirrels and bunnies frolicking in the grass, the sun moving over the lawn and peeking through the hedges, the leaves of the oak tree shifting overhead. She learned how to walk here, how to ride a bike, how to swing and blow bubbles and do multiplication. This home was our refuge during the lockdown of 2020. It’s housed ten thousand make-believe games, a hundred thousand art projects, countless hours of singing. How can I leave this house when it’s so full of Carla? So full of versions of Carla that exist only in memory and the molecules of these walls?

Letting go – even when it is a good thing, even when it is the way things should be – is so hard for me. Maybe it is hard for you, too. If not, I envy your ability to leap across the gap to the next thing, confident that you will find footing on the other side. 

As always with anything: Things could change, things could fall apart. As it stands now, we close on our new house in July and will likely move in August or September. This will be Carla’s last birthday in this house, the house she’s lived in her entire life. I am so excited. I am so sad. I hold both of these feelings at once in my heart.

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