March 31, 2007

the cabinet at the end of the tunnel

What I did today:

bought $125.00 worth of cleaning supplies, including a special cloth to mop the hardwood floors

spent two hours meticulously arranging the dishes in the cabinets

scraped paint off the hardwood floors

mopped the kitchen floor with the new cloth (which rocks, by the way)

mopped the hallway

washed all the crystal

carefully arranged the crystal in its own cabinet

mopped the kitchen floor AGAIN

rearranged the pantry

cleaned out the cabinet in the master bath

artfully arranged some beautiful towels we never use because they don’t absorb water in the cabinet in the master bath

cleaned out the linen closet, which is full of boxes of stuff that have nothing to do with linens

put the printer away in the linen closet to make the desk look less cluttered

made an offer on a house

March 29, 2007

what kind of wine goes with Spam?

Do you know what’s even BETTER than having contractors in my house making a giant mess and moving all my furniture around? DO YOU KNOW?!?

Having the tornado sirens go off today while the painters were here! Right after they painted the trim in the bathroom we use as our shelter!

Hot damn! It was like a party! But without the booze!

I was chatting with Chris this afternoon when the weather started to turn, and I told her that I would liveblog the tornado just for her. I would have, too, except that my router was temporarily knocked out by a lightening strike, and there was no actual tornado, at least not at my house. But I had every intention of keeping her in the loop while my house was being demolished. Last night, I regaled her with stories about how I took my contacts out and left them on the sofa (Chris: why would you DO that? me: because my eyes hurt and I am laaaazy) and how Wade was making me watch a show about the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders (Chris: why would he DO that? me: because his penis is in charge of the remote). She really wants to be my next door neighbor now.

When the sirens started going off, I shuffled the boys into the bathroom (me: GET IN THE BATHROOM NOW! GO GO GO! Charlie: But we don’t have our shoes! me: I DON’T CARE! GO GO GO!) and told them that if they touched the wet paint, I would kill them (oh, I didn’t say that EXACTLY, but that was the idea). I left them huddling next to the toilet trying not to touch the baseboards while I went to watch the news and find out how long we all had to live.

Chris said, Where were the painters?

Out in the yard, I told her, looking for the funnel cloud. Because that’s what we do in Oklahoma. Well, I don’t, I cower in the bathroom with my cell phone and a bicycle helmet. Whatever.

I also told Chris that we’re supposed to have Spam in our tornado emergency kits and we decided that we would both rather die in the tornado than eat the Spam. Because you have to make choices.

So I have the kids in the bathroom and I’ve taken down the 400 pound Pottery Barn mirror over the sink and I realize that not only can I NOT close the laundry room door (wet paint) but that the garage doors, all of them–interior AND exterior–are wide open, as is the BACK door. If the tornado comes, my children will be sucked right out of their Safe Place and hurled across the neighborhood.

About then I started to need a drink.

The tornado missed us, the paint was undinged, and I waited until after the painters left to open my wine, because that seemed like the right thing to do. And now Chris is pinging me on the IM again, probably to find out what thrilling thing I’m up to tonight. Stay tuned–maybe I will liveblog THAT for you all later.

March 28, 2007

you say improvement, I say insanity (let’s call the whole thing off)

For the past seven years (give or take two weeks) my kitchen has looked . . . fine. Ish. Sort of.

Funny what a difference paint can make.

SO. MUCH. BETTER.

The cost of all this pristine beauty, however, is my sanity. My house is in complete chaos. COMPLETE! CHAOS!!!

Oh, you’re saying, that’s not so bad. Really? REALLY?!?

I want my family room back. RIGHT NOW.

I greeted Wade at the door last night by announcing “Remember how I said, oh, I could live through a remodel? I WAS WRONG.” This week of extra people in my house and furniture in all the wrong places and dirt EVERYWHERE is significantly more stressful than I imagined it would be. The painters are terrific–hard working and polite and really good at what they do–but my house is a gigantic mess and I can’t stand it.

Today was both the high and the low point. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it is pristine and white and beautiful, but I can’t find anything in the house and I don’t know how I’m going to get the boys breakfast in the morning or make their lunches or NOT GO INSANE IN THE NEXT TWO DAYS.

The only thing keeping me going is this:

Yeah baby. Game on.

March 27, 2007

like a damn Dickens novel

My house is a total wreck today; I can’t even bring myself to take pictures of the disaster. The furniture in the family room is all pushed into a heap, the kitchen and bathroom and linen closet doors are all piled willy-nilly around the house, the painters have tracked mud all through the house, and there is sawdust everywhere. But! Everything is sanded and caulked and prepped, and the men are painting the kitchen cabinets and I think the master bathroom is painted.

If I were doing this myself, we would still be in the Drink Coffee and Bitch About How Much Work There Is To Do stage. Or maybe the Drink Gin and Bitch phase. Hard to tell. Instead, I am languishing on the sofa with my iPod and laptop, ignoring the gigantic mess and the men in my kitchen. I suppose this was what the Victorians did, wasn’t it? But without the iPod, which kind of sucked for them.

I painted the bathroom in the dark the other night, with a table lamp perched on the counter. Wade was hoping I would slop paint on the lamp because it’s part of a set that we bought fifteen years ago and hate now but can’t justify getting rid of because they work just fine. But I didn’t spill a drop.

We’re still getting rid of the lamps, though, as soon as we move. Because after fifteen years, it’s time.

I’m feeling a little lightheaded right now, from the paint fumes, but it’s totally worthwhile because after seven years of staring at the kitchen cabinets and thinking MY GOD THEY ARE SO UGLY I am days away from clean, pristine white cabinets. And I kind of figure that once I really love them, the house will sell right away, because that’s how things go.

The painters are nice; they work and chat and leave me alone. Yesterday, they had this interesting conversation:

Older painter guy: I can’t shake this cough. I’ve been coughing stuff up for days.

Younger painter guy: Think you might have TB?

Older painter guy: What?

Younger painter guy: Tuberculosis. Think you might have that?

Older painter guy: I don’t know.

Younger painter guy: People are getting it again, you know.

Older painter guy: Damn, I hope that’s not what this is.

March 26, 2007

by 9:00 am, I was completely frazzled

The last bit of ugly.

My alarm clock went off at 5:00 am this morning, because when I turned it on last night, I forgot to reset it to a decent hour of the morning (say, 5:45) instead of the ass crack of dawn, which was when we got up last week to take my mom to the airport. It was too early to get up and shower but too late to really go back to sleep. And I really wanted a cup or three of coffee.

While Henry ate his breakfast, I filled out his school enrollment forms (due today!) and wrote a check. When he realized what I was doing, he started to cry, insisting that he wants to go to a DIFFERENT school next year. His school has had some administrative upheaval recently (the headmaster resigned under duress a couple of weeks ago) but we had been feeling like everything was fine! dandy! just great! for the kids. Suddenly, at 6:45, I was wondering if some horrible thing was going on at school that I didn’t know about.

It seems that the answer is no; it seems that Henry just assumed that he would change schools AGAIN this year, like he’s done EVERY OTHER YEAR. Yesterday we drove by the Catholic school that Wade went to, and today Henry said, “I want to go where Dad went to school!” I tried to explain that he would have to sit at a desk and only have one recess each day at that school, but he cried and said, “Daddy went there! Why can’t I go there?” When I dropped him at school, he said, “I’ll go here next year, but I’m not going here forever.” Okay, I said, deal.

Charlie got up late, after insisting that he was NOT GOING TO SCHOOL, at sat at the table eating his waffles and singing. When I told him that the men were coming today to paint the kitchen cabinets, he said, very sadly, “But then our house is going to look completely DIFFERENT.” Not different! I promised, just BETTER! He was still sad about it, though, and told me that he wants to live in this house FOREVER. When he was brushing his teeth, he said, “I like my new blue bathroom. Let’s not move! Let’s stay here, where the blue bathroom is.”

Last night, I got a call from Charlie’s school, about subbing today. I’ve talked to this particular woman before, and it’s always an unusual experience, mostly because I’m not entirely sure who she is or what she wants; she’s always a little vague. Last night, after she told me that she had gotten my number from Charlie’s teacher, she said, “Do you work?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh! Well, do you work outside the home?”

I had the same conversation with her the last time she called, but this time it really irritated me. Because if I worked OUTSIDE THE HOME it would be okay for me to say no, I can’t sub, but since I work at home, I should say yes? And I was already feeling bad because Charlie’s teacher had called earlier, to say that she has a family emergency and could I possibly sub today? But I had no idea when the painters were coming, so I had to say no, not today, but maybe Tuesday.

And then I felt bad because when I list the Things I Must Get Done this week (writing, cleaning closets, looking at houses) it sounds so frivolous. But dammit I’m busy this week, and some of my busy is stuff that I’ll get paid for. Plus, I really didn’t know when the painters were coming, and I needed to let them in.

There is a complete stranger in my kitchen RIGHT NOW, taking all the doors off my cabinets. You would think that would make me happy, wouldn’t you? But what I really want is another cup of coffee, and I can’t get to the coffee pot. I’m also uneasy about leaving these guys alone in my house tomorrow, while I sub, because they don’t seem to really know what they’re doing. I’m sure they are fine painters, but if I hear them ask one more time exactly WHAT they’re painting, I may scream.

All of my dishes are piled in the laundry room, and in the guest bedroom. I’m sitting on the sofa, trying to work in here, because I usually sit at the kitchen table or the desk, but it’s too weird to be lurking while the men are disassembling my kitchen. And dammit I need some more coffee.

March 25, 2007

what would you do with the rest of your life?

Bathroom, finished.

I’ve been thinking all weekend about Elizabeth Edwards. On Friday, in the Dallas airport, I picked up an abandoned USA Today and read that she had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer, that it had metastasized, working its way into her bones. I read that women with this type of cancer have about a one in four chance of surviving the five years after diagnosis. I read that Mrs. Edwards’ children are 25 and 8 and 6.

And I read that she wants her husband to keep campaigning for the White House.

Over the weekend, I read the criticisms of John and Elizabeth Edwards, the claims that he is selfish and ego-driven, the worries that he would be unable to function as President with a sick or dying wife, the gloomy pronouncements that the death of a First Lady is not what the country needs right now. I read about how Elizabeth Edwards is in denial, about the seriousness of her illness and the difficulty of being the First Lady and the abandonment her children will feel if she leaves them to go stump for her husband and then dies.

And I thought, yes, that’s all probably true or accurate or right, to some extent.

But when I try to imagine myself in Elizabeth Edwards’ shoes, when I try to think about having a terminal illness and small children and a husband who has dedicated himself to public service, I understand why she has chosen the road she has, why it is so important to her that the campaign go on. If John Edwards gives up the White House right now, it is an acknowledgment that the cancer has won, and if they admit that defeat, then what is left?

This winter, for the second time in three years, I was diagnosed with an ovarian cyst. I went for an ultrasound, without telling anyone but Wade, and then waited to hear if it was something or nothing. It was nothing, again, and my doctor said, as she has before, that we will continue to keep an eye on it, but that she’s not worried. But in that two weeks, between the first appointment and the test results, I thought about what it would mean to have cancer, how it would change my life. And more than anything, what I wanted was for it NOT to change my life.

Elizabeth Edwards’ story is staying with me for a lot of reasons, but mostly I think because her son Jack and Henry are about the same age. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have terminal cancer or to have a husband who believes that he is qualified to run our country, but I know what it’s like to have a six year old, right now, today. I know what it’s like to wonder how that boy would grow up if he were to lose his mother.

“I think the best thing you can give your children is wings,” Mrs. Edwards said, to teach them to “stand by themselves in a stiff wind.” I hope that I can do that, with the rest of my life. I hope Elizabeth Edwards will be doing that for a long long time to come.