November 2013 – jesser

November 21, 2013

The Struggle

I’ll confess. I’m struggling a bit.

It’s not dire. I’m not in the depths of despair. I doubt anyone who meets me on a daily basis would even know that I’m different from “normal.”

But I am. I’m more “tired.” I don’t feel like running, even though I enjoy it when I go.

Work is OK, but best when things are really busy. When it isn’t really busy, I stare off into space for longer than I mean to.

Our manic schedule is both a help and a hindrance. I go so so much and then when I stop, I really stop.

I think what I’m truly suffering from is inertia. Or lack there of, really. Once I get going, I go, almost manically. But when I stop, it’s really hard to get me going again.

Last weekend we cleaned out Mom’s closet. The closet she shares with Dad to be exact. I won’t pretend I enjoyed it, but there were funny silly moments here and there. Like when we found an entire gallon-sized ziploc bag of freebie toothbrushes from the dentist. Mom had a sonic toothbrush and never would have used these, but there they were in her bathroom (we cleaned that too). Of course we cried off and on.

I cried when I pulled out the dress she wore to the last company Christmas party. I have awesome photos of her dancing in it with our coworkers, the ones she loved so much. We cried when we saw the last few clothes she bought, never knowing she wouldn’t even get to take the tags off some of them.

I inherited some kickass red platform peep-toe suede pumps. I love and hate wearing them all at the same time.

We didn’t even touch her jewelry or bags or scarves. I look forward to going through those even less. They’re so essentially Mom.

I’m trying not to struggle. Trying to beat this funk I’m in. Some days I do better than others.

November 12, 2013November 11, 2013

About Those Houses

So about the house(es).

11 days ago, Matt and I decided to take Friday off. We’d had a busy week, culminating in our Halloween festivities, and we wanted some time to relax and work around the house. And that’s mostly what we did. A few weeks before I’d seen a flyer from the same builder who built our house, advertising some new models in a neighborhood a few minutes from our house. So knowing that we both enjoy checking out real estate like this (kind of a real live HGTV), I suggested we maybe go see them sometime during the day. But it was pretty far down the list.

We ran errands, had lunch, did Good Will drop off, elementary school pickup and then preschool pickup. As we were on the way to Ben’s school, the idea revived itself as we saw the signs pointing us to the ‘hood. Both kids in tow, we went to check it out.

Now here’s the thing … we have been toying with the idea of moving for a long time. But we love our house and our neighborhood. We once even went so far as to bring in a real estate agent and start putting our house on the market, but everytime we started down that path, we stopped short and went home. Whatever we moved for had to be near PERFECT, fulfilling a pretty substantial wishlist:

more square footage
but with a vastly better layout
better “daily” storage
larger garage
same school matriculation area
proper pantry
good neighborhood feel
good outdoor space

And when we went into these models, we just started checking things off one by one.

So we’ve gone forward. We’ve done research. We’ve started planning and scheming and writing checks and it all seems to be falling into place. We’re putting the house on the market in February. We hope to close by March. Our friends bought a rental place this past summer and we are planning to rent it from them until our house is finished.

In between all of this, we have to get our house ready to sell, including some painting, new carpet upstairs and a reasonably long list of (mostly small) repairs. We have to get our house ready to stage, which means we have to remove almost all of the “stuff” in it. We have to make decisions about our new house, which, while fun, is a bit stressful. And we have to keep working, going to school, turning in homework, celebrating holidays and on and on.

It’s going to be a crazy ride.

November 11, 2013

The Great Purge

I won’t go into gorey details until we’re a bit closer to goal, but long story short, I think we’ve decided to sell our house and build a new one just west of us. It’s exciting but also still really abstract for me.

What isn’t abstract, however, is the fact that whether we move or not, we need to purge. It seems no matter how much I try to avoid bringing new stuff in, stuff builds up. Toys from the kids birthdays, magazines a neighbor drops off, outgrown clothes, CDs from the 90s that probably should have been dumped YEARS AGO and on and on. We regularly take stuff to Good Will, but there are other things that get hidden away and only thought about when you delve deeper.

This past week, we’ve been delving deep.Very deep. Truthfully we started this before we made the decision to move. We took the beautiful but no longer functionally appropriate cabinet and bookshelf that Matt built for Tabby out of her room. It and the matching nightstand went to a friend of ours who will love them. We pared her stuff down and reorganized it and her room feels so much better for it.

We tackled the playroom as well, getting rid of baby toys and some oversized pieces the kids just aren’t using anymore. Some went to our neighbor’s grandkids others to our friend’s little one, now in the stage obsessed with dolls and dress-up. We worked on the main floor closet where we keep a few DVDs and the art supplies and puzzles that don’t live in the playroom.

Wenesday night we attacked Matt’s office, going through a ridiculous amount of old PC games and CDs and magazines as well as papers and office supplies. Thursday night it was my office. Both offices have had full trashbags of crap taken out of them. Some is stuff I intended to do something with, saved for scrap-booking and never got around to actually doing it, other stuff should have been dealt with years ago.

This weekend we took somewhat of a break to work on other things, namely sorting the housing situation out and of course, having some fun with family and friends and the inevitable laundry and grocery shopping. But this week we will be hitting it hard again, tackling our master closets and bathroom, the laundry closet and the garage. Eek.

I do truly enjoy the catharsis of getting rid of junk. I love organizing things better and, assuming everything goes forward, it totally whets my appetite for making the new house as functional as possible. I’ve been making a list of all the things in our house that don’t really have a place: the few paper shopping bags we like to keep around, the recycle bins, the mounds of produce we buy each week, magazines, kids luggage, etc. so that I can make sure it does have a place in the new house.

It’s all a bit overwhelming right now, so I’m eating the organizing and purging part of the elephant for now.

November 6, 2013

Halloween

Halloween was fun. I got up in the weeee smalls and went into work early (partially because I couldn’t sleep and partially because I had a ton to do). The beginning of the week was manic, but it ended well because I took off by 11:30 on Thursday and took ALL OF FRIDAY off. YAY. My first stop was Tabby’s school to be room mommy. We spent some time decorating and then I got to do T’s makeup, which was fun. I improved my game from the first go-around and added blue eyeshadow which was a fun touch.

I’m room mom along with Tabby’s best friend’s mom. I didn’t really know her (new best friend) until we started all of this and it’s been fun. Neither of us are over the top and we’re pretty much on the same chill wavelength. We just did a few games … math, madlibs and mummy and a bookmark craft. Food was decidedly. I made rice krispie treat pumpkins with tootsie roll stems. I initially balked at the idea of sculpting the rice krispie treat and was just going to cut it out with a cookie cutter, but I really hate smashing the krispies into the pan and I think in the end this was easier. There were NONE left, so I guess the kids liked them OK. Other parents brought fruit and veggies and crackers and cheese and juiceboxes and water. Tabby’s teacher was very appreciative of our work. He’s made it into a very nice class and we had fun.

After the school party, we picked up Ben and got to work carving pumpkins (totally procrastinated on that!) and prepping for having people over. We were set for a group of 24 (!!) and we had to haul to get it all done. Matt had his robots in full force. They now number three: silly-string-shooting spider, eerie floating ghost and swooping bat. The bat was this year’s project and unfortunately still needs a little work. It was fun though.

The kids were a quivering ball of over-sugared craziness by the time guests started arriving. Our friend who was bringing toppings for the carnitas I’d made was late and we had to start eating without her … or the toppings. But it was really no big deal because another friend had brought seven layer dip and we just used that as toppings. It was surprisingly good. The last family showed up shortly after dinner and then my dad and sister after that. They stayed to eat and hand out candy in peace while the rest of us braved the ‘hood.

The kids were crazy, running all over the place and having too much fun and sugar. Matt bought LED gloves for us on Amazon and they were a big hit and it also made it easy for the kids to find us. We only did two blocks since it was windy and cold, but the kids filled their buckets. Back at Casa de Nichols, the kids sorted and ate their candy and the adults had another adult beverage. A short while later, we bid our friends adieu.

My kids got their jimjams on and brushed their teeth extra carefully and closed out the evening with Grammy Stories … read by Papa.