I took a break — from here, from the gym, from feeling like a useful member of society.
In all honesty, I needed it. The morning after my last entry, I packed the kids in the car and took off for my parents house about two hours away. We only stayed a couple days, but it was enough to make me realize things weren't going as planned around here. I was truly beginning to feel overwhelmed again. If you've been keeping up with me and my stories, you know this feeling started a while ago and I've been trying to get back on track. Bad weather and bad attitudes (mine and Josie's, which has likely been caused by mine) have been blamed.
So has the furniture, the dog, the car, the money ... You get the picture.
I decided earlier this week to nip it in the bud. We've been talking about what we need to do to fix the house up and potentially sell it and that has put me in full on "show ready" homeowner mode. I sent an unused television stand home with my parents on a recent visit and then took the baker's rack down — we used it to hold bath towels and toiletries in the bathroom — and repurposed a basket already in the bathroom for the newly homeless towels.
Those two things made a huge difference in my general disposition. There is still a lot to be done, a lot that needs to be moved out of here — furniture that technically doesn't belong to us or isn't being use and could be stored somewhere to give us more room while we continue with our slight home improvements.
Considering Boy Wonder and I have openly discussed our home and the possibility of finding something more suitable for our growing family (read: our kids are pretty damn spoiled and have too many freaking toys), Josie has become acutely aware of what we're looking for in a potential home. Last night after the Boy got home from a late evening at the office, she wrapped her arm around his leg, looked up at him and said, "I want a new big house" with a million dollar smile on her face.
Keep in mind, she also believes our current home is huge.
My husband didn't catch it right away, but I laughed. Every day she amazes me with how intelligent she is, such a bright young child who has the ability to reach into your soul and comfort you even in the midst of breaking down. She's been that way for forever, and I'd love to know who she was before she was my Josephine.
I wonder if whoever she was, before she was given to us, was defiant the way Josie is. Or if she was a "go with the flow" kind of person. Was she kind and loving, or all about doing things only to benefit herself?
Yes, these are the things that go through my head, the things I wonder and ponder, particularly when she's having a fit over something ridiculous like there being no more fruit snacks in the cupboard or her sister touched the chair she was sitting in.
Like a lot of other homes that are the domestic prisons for those under the age of 5, it wouldn't be a normal day if my house wasn't used as a gigantic ant trap.
Popcorn, fruit snacks (no wonder there are none in the cupboard; they're in the toybox and couch), Goldfish, milk dripping out of ironically named spill-proof sippy cups or random bits of banana. It doesn't matter what I give my kids or what kind of container I put it in ... it ends up on the floor. Between the dog shedding and the crumbs on the floor, I vacuum four or more times some weeks. It's horrible.
Want to know what makes it so horrible? Some asshole owned our house at one point and instead of redoing the dining room floor properly, they carpeted it with fairly cheap carpet. They carpeted the entire house in this stuff, with the exception of the kitchen and bathroom. Yup. I'm painting a beautiful picture of my home for you, I can just tell.
It's OK. That dining room carpet is going to the road. It's part of my plan. The plan that has been four years in the making. The plan that I hoped was the plan to turn this fairly outdated house, built c.1900, into our forever home despite people constantly calling it our "starter" home. I actually despise that phrase now because some people referred to my home as just that a bit too often.
Sure, we bought a house that prior to the woman we purchased from was owned by someone who flipped it for a quick profit. If we had the capital, we would be tearing out walls and floors and essentially rebuilding our house from the inside.
I've spent almost my entire marriage planning in my head how we would get it all done and do it cost effectively, but the honest truth is, we simply can't afford to get it done safely with the kids here and I've come to terms with the fact our time here is limited. I'll do what I can to make it less work for the next owner, though. I'll try to make it more of a home for the next person instead of just a house.
And this is where I'm at. Trying to get organized, but now with a goal.
I just hope if we do move, it's not until the growing season is over since I have about 35 tomato plants popping up in peat pellets in my too-small-kitchen.
No comments:
Post a Comment