Today

I worked my booty off today around the house. You know, there are some days when you get a lot accomplished, and at the end of the day you can sit back and feel proud of everything you did. It's not been that sort of day at all.

I started by pulling out the washer and dryer and cleaning all the junk that seems to accumulate there. It's amazing what you can find behind your appliances! Besides the regular fuzzies and household gunk, I also found three name tags, a pack of batteries, and a large plank of wood. (?) As if things like that just migrate on their own. No idea how the wood got there. To my knowledge we haven't had anything even remotely lumberish in the laundry in the past 8 years. Go figure. But I took the opportunity to change the dryer vent while I was back there. The old one was, well, old, and crushed to the point that I questioned it's usefulness.

That done, I moved to the far end of the house and began cleaning my way out. Showers, toilets, mirrors, floors, all got the scrub-down. From the newly, not quite finished master bath, into the bedroom, out to the livingroom, the kitchen, the hall bath, J's room, it all got dusted, wiped, organized, de-cluttered. I even scrubbed down the front porch and moved a few of J's outdoor toys there.

Once the general cleaning was done, I decided that wasn't enough, and besides, earlier in the day, I realized that we had purchased the wrong hardware for the bathroom. Instead of just the handle and vanity plate parts, we had picked up an entire assembly, and it seemed silly to pay almost $70 for the inside guts when all we needed was the outside stuff, so I went to the store to exchange it.

I got the parts I needed, plus a few extra pieces, just in case. And I also picked up a new toilet seat for the hall bathroom, a new lamp for the office/livingroom, one of those over-the-toilet bathroom organizer things for the finished master, and some drawer organizers for the kitchen. All that for under $100- not bad.

As a side note- you CANNOT find a beige toilet seat in this town. We've looked in three different stores over the past couple of weeks, and while the display shows that they cary them, they're out of stock. Everyone must have beige crappers with broken seats around here. So, when I came across one... yes, one and only one, at Wal-Mart, I didn't think twice about picking it up. Sure, it's one of those soft squishy ones that I can't stand, but hey, it's beige, and it ain't broken.

So I get home with my purchases, and I go about setting them to use. First order of business- the lamp. Easy enough. Screw together, add lightbulb, plug in, and voila! Light over the desk. I'm feeling rather accomplished. Next is the kitchen drawers which receive a de-cluttering in the way of weeding out a set of silverware and replacing of the dividers. Much better!

Then I go and install the toilet seat. I'm on a roll here! I get the old seat off, the broken, wrong color seat, and cerimoniously chuck it in the trash outside, get the new one screwed on, drop the top, and realize that the genius stock boy used a box cutter to open the crate, leaving a three inch long gash on the top of my seat. Great... so I can dig the broken one out of the trash and re-attach it, or I can have a new, damaged one that won't leave you kiltering dangerously to the left. Or I can take the new one back to the store and get another one that's the wrong color. And suddenly I realize why there happened to be ONE in stock. All the other savvy Wal-Mart shoppers must have actually inspected their toilet seats before purchasing them! Stupid me.

So the new torn seat stays, at least until there are more in stock. And no, I'm not cheap enough to use this seat and then return it. It will join it's broken mate in the trash. Funny how something so small can ruin your entire day.

After the toilet seat incident, I moved on to assembling the organizer thingy. It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it'll do, and it gives us the storage that we need in there. Ok, so it's butt-ugly, but again, it's functional, and wasn't very expensive, so I don't feel too bad about it. It's certainly an improvement over the one that was in there before.

So after finishing all of that, I went and got my son, only to be told that he just woke up from his nap at 5:30. ARG! Why do grandparents let kids take naps that late?! I needed to finish up the bathroom, so I was counting on J to fall asleep at his usual time.

As a side note: My sister was supposed to come over with her drill to help install the shower handle, but did a no call, no show on me. I could sit here and rant about how unreliable she is, etc. It's just her nature to be this way. Honestly, I knew better than to count on her, and it's my fault for not just doing it myself.

Wil came home from work around 8, no hello, no "Wow! The house looks great!" None of that. Just came in, said hi to Jonas, sulked at the fact that there wasn't any dinner, and then flopped down in his chair. I'm used to it, I guess. It's not that I was looking for the home-maker of the year award or anything, just acknowledge the fact that I've done so much work.

So J and I cuddled up on the couch with a book, and Wil sat at the computer, and we ignored each other like we're so good at, until he started picking cat hair off th eback of the couch. Ok, no big deal really, but for some reason it really irked me- as if he were silently saying, "You missed a spot!"

I barked at him about how I'd spent two hours on the floors today, and if he insisted on brushing off cat hair, the least he could do was make an effort to throw it away. He mumbled something and scurried off to the bedroom.

Jonas finally crashed at 11:30- I went to work on the bathroom, finished installing the hardware just a moment ago, and now it looks all pretty and finished and all- but the water won't turn on. I can't figure it out! Sure, I'm no plumber, but I can properly install a shower handle, I think. It swivels, goes up and down, left and right, does all the things a good shower knob is supposed to do, and yet, no water. Not even a trickle. I give up.

My inspection is in 8 hours, and I guess I'll just have to hope that he doesn't actually test it's functionality. I'm probably getting myself all worked up over nothing, though. I mean, the last guy that did an inspection just sort of wandered around with a measuring tape, wrote a few things down, acted afraid of the dog, and left. So why am I stressing out about this one so much? We're not even looking to get full value at re-fi. We just want to take out a little equity to pay some debts and do some repairs. Frankly, even in the condition the house is in, it's well worth more than we're looking to mortgage. Heck, just the lot the house sits on is worth more than the original mortgage. I guess I just need to take a couple of deep breaths and stop worrying, eh?

My head is throbbing. One of those killer, light-sensitive, hurts into your teeth sort of headaches. Probably just a side-effect of all the cleaners I've used today. At least, that's my good excuse.

And through all of this, I'm nervously and anxiously awaiting news from Erin. I'm going by the whole "no news is good news" cliche and assuming that everything went well and that little Nova is in recovery and doing as good as a baby can do after major surgery. My prayers are with them tonight, as they have been since his birth.

With that, I'm done rambling, and I'm off to bed for the time that I can get. Goodnight y'all.