– i suck at getting pictures off the camera.

– i suck at house cleaning.

– actually, i don’t really suck at house cleaning. i suck at keeping the house clean.

– how DO you keep a house clean, anyhow?

– i feel like i’m being a parental hardass to ethan way too often.

– but that kid thinks that he can argue and debate his way out of anything! for once i just wish he would accept a ‘no’ and move on without all the conniving!

– i think i am guilty for letting him get this way.

– i’m not sure i know how to parent older children. toddlers are so much simpler.

– oh my god just think when they’re teenagers.

– can i change my mind about having children? it’s not too late, right??

– i’ve just had a coronary thinking about the teenager thing.

– MOVING ON… think of something else think of soemthing else think of something else..

– i wish i had the design sense to know what to do with my annoying cavernous spaces over my fireplace. and to the side of my fireplace.

– see, wouldn’t a PICTURE of said space be beneficial, for you, the reader, in seeing what i’m talking about?

– once again.. i suck at getting pictures off the camera.

– i do have my phone on me. which i can then email to myself.

– EUREKA!!

– there, now you can see. you can also see that it’s where stuff gets piled up. Maybe some pretty white bulbous vases. Those lower cavernouse spaces though… I’m clueless.

– that’s enough about that..

– next phone i get i’m making sure the camera part is super mac daddy.

– i need some gum.

– i could also use a drink.

– i think i’ll go get one of those. I’ll let you guess which.

– i haven’t done any brain dumping posts in a long while. i think my posting has become kind of boring this summer. i’ll try to remedy that.

– is this any better? maybe a little bit.

– it’s another thing i suck at though, so don’t hold your breath.

– if i could just take some decent pictures and then post them regularly, then it wouldn’t be boring.

– see point….. well, i’d say “a” or whatever, but I haven’t been numbering.. errr.. lettering these do-dads.

– ahh well.

– bye!

You thought I was kidding about turning this spot into a design blog.

Well I wasn’t! I’m all a-flurry with ideas and I must get them out somewhere!

Here is the basic dimensions of our big room in the basement. I’ve dropped some furniture in there too, but it’s all up for grabs at this point.

Created with EQ3’s Room Planner:

There are 3 basic areas this room will have. TV viewing/seating area, kids play/toy area, and my sewing area. Right now I think I want 2 to be the toy area, and 3 to be the sewing area.

I’ve been collecting ideas on all three of these areas, but I’m going to try to consolidate all those thoughts right here over the next few weeks.

Starting with the kids’ play area! First off, I’ll be so glad to get their toy/play area out of our front room and downstairs. Of course, after that happens, I’ll need some furniture to GO in that front room, but let’s take this one step at a time, shall we? 🙂

So.. take a look at the #2 area. The door goes into what will someday be the bathroom, but is now just part of the concrete-floored utility room. We also plan on moving that door to the other wall at some point.. but that is in the distant future and I’m not figuring it into our current plans.
The kids need to good bit of toy storage, and what we currently have going is assorted plastic bins of various sizes and colors filled, and sitting on the lower shelves of a normal sized bookshelf. It works, but the bins stick out a bit and it’s just generally not pretty.

I’d like to get a white expedite bookcase, 2×4 cube size, laid on it’s side, with white or colored boxes/bins in each cube for toy storage.

I’d love to do something like this for the surface of the bookcase for the kids to draw and play:

Need to make sure the bookcase on it’s side would be tall enough for them. Could I attach some short legs to it? Interesting idea.

Above the bookcase, I’d like to hang some of the ikea kitchen caddy’s for storing smaller items (crayons, markers, miscelaneous lego dudes, etc.)

And then further up on the wall, some floating white shelves that would be parent-only reachable.

I love these two chairs from Ikea and know the kids would LOVE them:

2 svinga ikea chairs $60/each

OR

2 egg chairs, blue $70/each

I’m not sure how these will work. I would love to incorporate them, but I’m not sure it’s possible in that space… the door is problematic and I wouldn’t want to hang them in front of the back wall.. If you look at the floor plan, you can see how I tried to place them (i used the dimensions for the hanging chairs) on either side of the door. Of course, if I used the egg chairs, the kids could move them all over as needed. I wish that door was gone already. Anyway. Need to think on it.

RUG

Little knees on hard floor does not a happy camper make!

3×4 FLOR puzzle rug tiles (would equal approx 5′ x 6.5′ in size)
undecided on color, but probably blue or green
cost: $15.99 / tile = $192

Less fancy FLOR:

I could buy two of these prepackaged dealios from Target ($60/each for a total of $120) for the same size rug (12 tiles). I will miss the puzzle pieces though – I just LOVE THEM!

other rug ideas (cheaper)
sew 2 or 3 of these together:

Barnslig Rand, $20/each ($60 for 3)

And this just struck me… we already have a road playmat rug currently residing right in our front entry, andwhile it is on the small side, we could just put that down there in lieu of something new.. It definitely will need to go somewhere, as it is used heavily! I guess in my head, I figured that it would stay on the main level with a bin of cars. Hmmm.

I’m referencing Ikea a lot aren’t I? What can I say. It’s because it’s cheap. And easy to link. And for kids… Ikea just makes sense. Moving on…

On the back wall, I’d like to paint the bottom half(ish, maybe bottom 1/3) with magnetic black chalkboard paint

Inspiration:

and the top half a bright color. I thought at first gray would be cool, but since it’s the toy area, I’m thinking a blue or green. will depend on the other main color of the room.

Oooh, I almost forgot.. I also would like to put ceiling to floor curtains on that back wall – the one with the window (which is one of those tiny, up high basement windows, by the way). They will likely be pulled back at all times, but I think it will make a storybook sort of feel, especially to whatever the kids are drawing on the chalkboard wall. What sort of fabric for that however, I’m clueless on. I love so many fabrics, but at the same time, fabric kind of scares me. More on that later when I expound on my ideas for my crafty sewing corner.

So those are my thoughts for the toy area! Any thoughts? Would love some more ideas. In my mind, it all works together wonderuflly, but working with that floor plan was kind of a eye-opener.. Not sure it would actually work in that space, but I guess we will see. This whole thing is going to be a big work in progress for a while, since it will be put together bit by bit rather than all in one fell swoop.. For example, I think the chairs would be a good christmas present for the kids.

THOUGHTS ON WALL COLOR FOR THE ENTIRE ROOM:

Probably a brown. Not too dark, as this is a basement we’re talking about. Although if I keep the furniture light, a dark espresso might look stunning. Oh decisions! I figure that the main color will go everywhere, with 2 accent walls – The kids chalkboard wall, and the small little wall in my sewing nook. the rest will be the main color.

How beautiful is this gray featured in domino magazine???

I like this light brown – and how cool is that ceiling? I think it works so well here because of those super tall ceilings. I wonder how it would work with normal ceilings. Could use that color for the upper half of the chalkboard wall in the kid’s nook..

Also quite fancy these colors as well:

Mmmmmmm. Yes. I like that. I definitely like that.

I also need to keep in mind the green color that is through the door into james’ office.

And I also need to remember that the color will have to carry up the staircase onto the main level too. Ooooh that gray is looking better and better! I think I need to resist.

Isn’t this fun? I think so. I’m having a ball. Since I’m a decorating clueless person, any thoughts anyone wants to offer me is VERY welcome 🙂

– amy can’t figure out what her style is.

1. James finished laying the flooring in our basement. THIS IS HUGE. This project has been lingering all summer. Maybe even back into spring. There is still lots to do, like emptying out the closet and laying the flooring in there too, laying down quarter round (the trim that goes along the floor) and then of course PAINTING and picking out furniture… Notice how that one step about the furniture is the very LAST thing.. and yet when I awoke this morning, I was dreaming about where to put the kids toy nook and where to put my craft nook and what kind of rug would look best… Yeah. Me = jumping the gun a bit. Very exciting. We are going to have a few boxes of flooring left over, and I said, “It’s costco, they’ll take them back.” And James said, “Or we could do another room!” Which is tempting, and while I’m always surprised at how nice the floor looks whenever I go downstairs, I think for the rest of the house I would like to go dark. I’d love to get chocolate wood floors. (Yum!) I foresee this blog turning very design oriented in the upcoming months! Here’s the same flooring in James’ office:

   

   this is the same stage that our basement room is in now

   

   This is james’ office, looking through the door into the big basement room that now is also laid with laminate! This is the “done” picture of the office, the quarter round trim all put up. Please note, that laying floor on a diagonal like this is, in a word, INSANE. It takes SO MUCH MORE WORK. We didn’t do this for the big room. I don’t suggest you do it either.

2. Jocelyn dairy watch: She confirmed that she ate ice cream on the ride home on Friday. Saturday went ok. Sunday she woke up with a little scratchy voice and an occasional cough and sniff. I wrote it off to typical morning congestion. Her voice improved after she was up for a while, but by the end of the day her voice was getting seriously hoarse. No real coughing though, but still, I took it as a sign that she’s got some post nasal drip irritating her throat. This morning, still pretty hoarse and some minimal sniffing and coughing. I am still looking on the bright side because there is no visible snot leaking out of her nose. I hope that’s not waiting for tomorrow.

   So to sum up, I think the milk intolerance is still there, but if this is the worst it’s going to do, then it has improved quite a bit. It could still take a turn for the worse however, and I will lift my phone every time it rings the next few days with trepidation that it’s school calling because she has a fever.

3. My mixing bowl did arrive a week or so ago, and I decided to christen it in a variety of ways, one of which was making cinnamon rolls last weekend. Yum. The other of which was to make chocolate zucchini cake yesterday. Except I couldn’t find a recipe for chocolate zucchini cake so decided I’d just use the recipe for zucchini bread and toss some chocolate chips in there except that after cake bread was completely mixed and just waiting for the last minute addition of chocolate chips, I was shocked to find that there were none in the house. So now we have zucchini bread in a cake pan that tastes nothing like cake. It’s still pretty good. And now I don’t have a gargantuan zucchini on my counter anymore. yay!
4. Since I’ve been carting my mixer in and out of the cupboard above the microwave periodically lately, I’ve taken note of several items that I have and never use and therefore must go. In fact, I’ve been taking note all over the damn house. Our garage has slowly pushed our cars out of being able to park inside, and I’ve taken note of stuff there that must also go. And since our toy collection grows and I always say stuff is GOING already and then neglect to actually get rid of it and then the kids find it and it gets put back into the toy mix, that’s out of control as well. And lastly, our son has outgrown his britax Marathon carseat(!!) and I purchased him a booster this past weekend, so there’s another thing that can go. My point is, I foresee a post about how dumb people are on craigslist in the near future. Possibly more for my own benefit than yours (although if you’re in the dc metro/no va area and are interested, feel free to contact me, as the friend price is always better than the craigslist price), here is what needs to go:
   • pampered chef cheese grater
   • pampered chef apple slicer corer
   • diaper genie (hardly used, therefore no stink)
   • Britax Marathon (close to 5 years old – probably shouldn’t be used after 1 more year, freecycle?)
   • old dresser from kids’ rooms (possibly freecycle)
   • little tikes work bench
   • ball popper
   • should we get rid of one of the slides?
   • weeble wobble village
5. My son. My tiny baby boy. He is going to be in KINDERGARTEN. He has outgrown the seat we bought him when he was too big to fit in the infant carrier anymore (at FOUR MONTHS). He is going to continue at his school in their private kindergarten program, and they have a certain dress code they must adhere to. Khaki or navy pants, white, red or navy shirt. Red or navy sweatpants for PE, with red, white, or navy t-shirt to go with it. For some reason I just hate this dress code, because it seems like kindergarten is a little young to alleviate the problems dress codes/uniforms are supposed to alleviate (designer jeans and clothes envy and what not). I guess I can understand though, there is probably still envy about what another kid is wearing at that age, but still, I am somewhat irked by it, probably mostly because he has a MOUNTAIN of clothes that he’ll now not wear much and grow out of before next year.

   BUt oh well, right? I’ve tried to get behind the dress code and the school has even asked parents of past kindergarteners to donate what they dont need anymore, and offered those donations at $1 a piece. I spent a whopping $12 dollars and walked home with a pile of stuff. I finally sat down with Ethan this weekend and made him try everything on. Surprisingly, he was very adamant that nothing go back to the school to be exchanged – there were only 2 questionable items, a shirt that was too big for him, (“I’LL GROW INTO IT!”) and a pair of pants that were not only too small, but were girl’s pants (had the bootcut bottoms that you can’t avoid in girl pants nowadays) (“WELL THEY’RE MINE NOW SO THAT MAKES THEM BOYS!”)

   He was so enamored of a pair of red sweatpants and a longsleeved red polo shirt that he insisted on wearing it all weekend. “Look at me, mommy! I’m ALL RED! I’m wearing my KINDERGARTEN CLOTHES!” Cute, but annoying when we wanted to go out into the very hot and humid world and do anything. That boy loves his long sleeves and pants, he will be so happy when fall comes and he can wear them every day.

   I just can’t beleive this boy is so grown up. It’s shocking, really.

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Probably more than enough for one monday. Ethan also ran around the house taking pictures of everything with our old camera yesterday (and this morning), so I’ll try to get those downloaded and post them for tomorrow. And FLOOR PICTURES! WAHOO!!

Hope you all had a good weekend!

I really want to make our home beautiful and I know we need some basic things (like color on the walls, and the 1/4 done flooring in the basement finished already) but a VERY basic thing I can do without the fuss and bother of previously mentioned basic things, is artwork.

My wallpaper square arrived by the way, and is hanging, not in the guest room as I originally planned, but is the first thing you see when you walk in the front door. I figured it can live there for a bit because I love it and I’ll never see it in the guest room! The reds aren’t as red as the picture (or my monitor?) showed, it was more of an orangey red, which is fine, but I would have rather had the true christmasy red that I thought it had. Still, very happy.

So today, I decided to get another piece, and popped up my favorites list on etsy. Many of the ones I had previously marked had been sold, but this beauty hadn’t already, and after a check to make sure James liked it, it is now going to be mine! (err, ok, ours.)

Some other items seller redheather has in his shop:

I especially like that middle one. Maybe because it has a hint of Hokusai’s “Great Wave of Kanagawa”, which I adore:

Now the waiting begins! And contemplating what kind of frame it should get!

-amy

I’m hoping that this square of wallpaper I purchased last week arrives today:

It is going to hang in our guest room, whose walls, painted a medium brown shade (I call it, ‘Melted Chocolate Ice Cream’) I’m totally digging on more and more.

I am going to keep my eye out for a light blue vase to go on the bedside table.

This is all part of my decorating plan of “getting a clue BEFORE buying shit.” I often see things that I like or think I like and subsequently purchase, all to get it home and realize that I’ve no idea where to put it or if it even goes with what’s in the room already. I end up sticking it somewhere that doesn’t really fit it and pondering on what my style IS EXACTLY ANYWAY and wondering how other people manage to do this so easily. As such, I’m starting to build quite the design/ house/ decorating blog list. It’s my new obsession.

As such, I think colors are the place to start. I’ve been thinking a lot about colors to go on the walls of our main level. It’s all very open and connected, so I think 1 main color with some accent walls will work best. I currently in love with the brown/blue, brown/red, brown/pink, brown/green combinations (although I don’t want a pink wall, I just don’t have that kind of chutzpuh).

I’m pretty content to just mull it over for a good long while and make sure it’s what I want. The blue and brown of that newly purchased artwork however — I’m leaning toward it for our living room, except with maybe a deeper brown.

Seriously, how could you not love brown?

-amy

James and I have been kind of toying with the idea of moving sometime next year. I think we both had it lurking in our subconscious and then as soon as one of us brought it out into the open, it’s taken off. Now whenever something about the house irks us, we turn to the other and say, “Let’s make sure we have a decent sized kitchen in our next house!” these occurences are becoming more and more regular.

So with the toying, has been the browsing around at real estate. And almost immediately, I’ve been discouraged by the lack of variety in the architecture in the area. EVERYTHING IS TRADITIONAL/COLONIAL.

OK. Not everything. But 95% of the houses in our area is colonial. Doesn’t ANYONE ELSE in the DC metro area just get sick of seeing the same style house everywhere you look? Whenever I’m browsing through listings, if anything modern pops up (and I think it’s only happened once..) I’m instantly in love. Never mind the fact that it either is a) further away from work than we are currently or b) costs over a million dollars…. I’m in love.

So I spent the last hour and a half coaxing Google with the most romantic moderny real estatey search terms possible and thought I’d share my findings with others who may also be eye-gougingly sick of Colonial real estate.

First off… This is fascinating. Current listings of Frank Lloyd Wright homes on the market. There’s one in Bountiful, UT that I would totally move there for (if someone wouldn’t mind giving me a cool 3.8+ million bucks) and another in Washington state that actually made my heart hurt, it was so beautiful.

Modern Capital is a blog based in the Washington DC metro area for mid-century modern real estate, design and events – he’s listed a few houses that have come on the market recently, and in his side bar he lists communities of modern architecture. OH HALLELUJAH! We’re not totally alone in the sea of Colonials! He started up last October, and I’m looking forward to poking through his archives.

Not necessarily modern, but a real estate blog based in Seattle. I’m a Seattle girl at heart, so I’ve been following along wistfully for half a year, what can I say.

GO MOD is a great jumping off place for several modern real estate sites, as well as bunches of other cool stuff.

I wish I had the time to road trip it down to the Virginia Center for Architecture in Richmond, VA for the exhibit on Contemporary Prefabricated Houses – ooohhhh how delicious it would be to go check that out.

Also, did you know about CB2?? When did this happen? And why only in Chicago, you lucky dogs! (Well, NY will be getting one soon too, I see.) I ran across it a while ago and promptly ordered a catalog. Not that I have any spare money for furniture, but how dare Crate and Barrel go and open a whole new modern thingee and not tell me! FOR SHAME. Go check it out and drool along with me. And if you knew about it.. then shame on you for not telling me.

Are you a real estate junkie? Do you keep your eye on the listings just to peek inside houses for sale even though you’re not necessarily moving in the near future? If so…. I’d love to hear any of your favorite sites or real estate blogs. It’s like heroin. I’m hooked, baby. Design blogs too. Other favorites of mine include design*sponge and Apartment Therapy.

So what are you hooked on? Come on, gimme a hit! Just one hit!

Oh boy, where to begin? What a fantastic weekend it was.

EVERYONE’S FINE

The weekend actually started for the kids, on Thursday. Jocelyn was up all night coughing and fiddling around Wednesday night, so much that I thought she must be really sick. So James took the kids in to school and let both teachers know that I would be picking them up around noon to take Jocelyn to the doctor. Well, it turned out our pediatrician was only open until 11am, which meant I needed to get Jocelyn there by 10.30, which meant I needed to pick them up by 10. The only reason we sent them in anyway was because Jocelyn had her Easter party and we didn’t want her to miss it. So I took them to the doctor, Jocelyn got examined and she’s fine, just a cold. Their school was closed on Good Friday (James stayed home with them then), so they had a very long weekend!

SINGING

Friday night performance was fantastic. Oh, can I tell you how much I love the music we sang? So beautiful! It’s sooooo good. I’m so sad that it’s over and now we won’t be working on it in rehearsal anymore. We had a pretty good turnout, and it went really well.

SATURDAY CRAFTINESS

Saturday Jocelyn and I went and did some errands in the morning, and James took Ethan to the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum (it’s near Dulles airport in VA instead of downtown DC). All accounts given pointed to them having a fabulous time, with a stop at an ice cream shop before getting back home to top it off. Jocelyn and I did some boring things. Bank. Pick up pictures. Stop at grocery store. I made the mistake of commenting to her earlier that morning, that her dress-up dress was getting too small, and we’d have to get a bigger one. One should never say this until one is ready to go out THAT MOMENT to get a new dress, because everywhere half hour, she said, “Will they have a bigger dress here?” “Are we going to get me a bigger dress now?” etc. I decided that if I waited until after Easter, then all those fancy easter dresses would be on sale, I could get her one that is too big (perfect for dressup) and I should wait until then. Plus, I bought a little girl dress pattern with a gift certificate that Anna gave me for my birthday (ain’t she sweet??) and I thought I should get busy on that as well.

So we got back home (sans new bigger dress) and put up some Jocelyn photographs in her room. I had some up long ago, took them down when we painted it, and then the pictures got carried off, taken out of the frames, and otherwise mangled, so it was time to get those back up. Jocelyn loves to look up at the photos and say, “That’s me, JOCELYN!”

Then I started on another project I’ve had in the back of my mind for a long time. I’ve wanted to try freezer stenciling, and even had bought blank tshirts for the kids in preparation for it. So today was the day. I traced the stencil onto freezer paper, cut it out with a kitchen knife (oh exacto! where art thou?) ironed it on to her shirt, and then we both sat down and painted it in. I reread all the directions later, and found that I actually did the painting wrong – you’re supposed to DAB, not STROKE, and Jocelyn and I stroked. You’re also supposed to use very thin layers, and well, we just globbed it on. It turned out fantasticly though, and I set it in the dryer the next morning, and then Jocelyn wore it all morning until she spilled water all down the front. It is just the cutest little shirt ever, in my opinion. I may make one for me. I don’t have a picture of her wearing it yet, but here is the stencil:

When Ethan was home, I asked him what he wanted on a shirt for him, and he kind of gave me a blank look.

“boys rock?” I asked.
more blank looks.
Jocelyn has a shirt that says, ‘My daddy loves me,’ so then I suggested, “How about ‘I love my Daddy?”
Finally, an opinion, “NO, I love TRUCKS!”

So an “I love trucks” shirt is in the works next. I have the stencil all cut out ready to be ironed on, but I need to get a blank shirt for him. The one I had was deemed unacceptable, because it is yellow. “BLANK MEANS WHITE MOMMY!”

Sunday was more crazy project fun. On a much bigger scale. Earlier that week, Ethan verbalized some thought processes to me, while we were in Jocelyn’s room.

ROOM SWAPPEROO

Ethan: “I slept in this room with Jocelyn before.”
Mommy: “You mean when Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Larry visited?”
E: “Yeah. In a SLEEPING BAG!” (they didn’t visit in a sleeping bag. he slept in a sleeping bag. because uncle larry was in his bed)
M: “Ahhh, yup.”
E: “And this room used to be mine.”
M: “Yes, it was, when you were a little little boy.”
E: “I could sleep in here with Jocelyn again. We could share it.”
M: “You mean move your bed in here?”
E: “YEAH! Like CHARLIE AND LOLA!”
m: “Then what would we do in your room?”
e thought about this a minute.
e: “We could make it a toy room!”
m: “You know, I could really go for this idea.”

I mentioned it a few more times to both Jocelyn and Ethan, told them maybe we could try it out for a while and see how it goes, brought up other “problems” as I thought of them, just to see what solution Ethan would think of (“What about naptime?” “I can be very quiet mommy, I can sleep during naptime”). Sunday morning, I thought, “Why not?” and so me and the kids got to work re-arrancing Jocelyn’s room to accomodate Ethan’s bed. We left his dresser in his room, cleared out 2 drawers in Jocelyn’s dresser, moved in his bed and his clothes. They were SO excited and pleased to have both their beds in the same room, and they had a blast in the new “toy room.” Jocelyn brought her dress up clothes, and we put them in the closet, and said, “Now it’s your dress up closet!” Ethan hauled his geotrax train stuff up the stairs all by himself (and let me tell you, it’s a lot, and it’s heavy) and got straight to work making a train layout. James and I got a bunch of laundry folded in relative peace while they played to their hearts content.

It reminded me of when I was younger and my sister and I rearranged our rooms on a weekly basis, sometimes even switching rooms with each other for a few weeks and then switching back. Of course, I was 14 and my sister Susan was 10, not the toddlers my kids are, but it was fun, and why not? 🙂

CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN

Sunday night we had some frantic house cleaning on the main level and I’m happy to say my sanity is saved for yet another week becuase it’s all relatively clean. If we get it clean Sunday night, then it usually stays pretty clean all week. On the other hand, if we DON’T get it clean, it’s a disaster, and it stays a disaster all week, and it really makes me pretty depressed.

Today Jocelyn starts in a new classroom. She moves up from the 2 year old class to the 3 year old class, which means not only a new teacher, new friends, etc. but she gets to go play on the BIG playground! She is very excited about this, and Ethan is too. He has already told her how he will show her all around the playground and play with her. It’s very sweet. Sunday evening, she came over to me and said, “I want to go to school,” and was somewhat distraught that she would have to wait all the way until MORNING to go to her new class.

Ahhhh.. it was a lovely weekend. The lovliest I’ve had in a long time.

-amy: established 1873, natural spring amy.

It’s not in-store, which would ROCK! because then I could check it out. But FLOR! At TARGET!

So awesome! The awesomeness is overwhelming!

CHECK IT OUT!

i’m feeling pretty busy. it’s the not good kind of busy.

it’s the too much stuff to do in the allotted space of time kind of busy. i feel like i need to take a day off from work just to do the laundry and clean the kitchen kind of busy. there’s so much stuff that i want to do and just not enough time to do it in.

could someone please give me some extra time? i’d appreciate it.

i worked at home yesterday, using the dusting of snow we got as the perfect excuse.

i’m working at home today, except this time it’s because of a kink in my neck that sends me into agonizing pain every time i rotate my head anywhere outside of a safe 40 degree window. i’m going to the doctor’s office this morning to hopefully get some muscle relaxers. please cross your fingers that i don’t hit someone. the last time i had this neck thingee… i hit someone (shoosh, it was really just a scratch, the insurance company didn’t need to jack up our rates THAT much).

i hurt.

and there’s a mountain of laundry to do.

and i still haven’t sent out our swap package or the postcard swap i signed us up for. (or even OBTAINED the postcards.)

let’s see, i also need to go get some groceries, pay bills, pay the piano teacher, finish up ethan’s jammies that grandma sent, do some laundry, fold some laundry, put some laundry away, clean the kitchen, make a valentines day mailbox for ethan to take to school (by tomorrow), make/buy some valentines for the kids, download the pictures off the camera, fiddle with wordpress for non-blog purposes, call and get someone to come fix our microwave, call and get someone to come investigate the pipes of dhoom that thunder ominously nearly everytime the toilet is flushed, sign up to bring something for the kids’ valentines day parties, get/make whatever i sign them up for (bags of candy is looking good at this point), oh, and bill 8 hours, get to the doctor get to the pharmacy (hopefully) and back home again without crashing my vehicle into anyone else’s vehicle… oh such lofty lofty dreams of accident free days…

it’s lists like that that make me want to bill 8 hours to sick leave, sit on the couch with a blankie and play ms pacman all day.

it’s sounding really good.

i won’t though. because i am a responsible adult. RESPONSIBLE.

yeah, i didn’t fool me either. i still won’t, but i’m not very responsible or adultish. because if i did bill 8 hours to sick leave, i would still do laundry and try to clean with my limited mobility, because at the end of the day, having a nice clean house with some things checked off my massive list would make my feel much better than looking around and knowing i COULD have done something but chose instead to piss away time i had (and have been lamenting for*) doing diddly squat.

so maybe i am a little responsible after all.

*lamenting for? did you raise your eyebrows too? is that right? what’s the other word that would have worked there? WAS THAT ALLOWED AM I GOING TO BE ARRESTED BY THE GRAMMAR POLICE? oh well. maybe the’ll have ms. pacman in the grammar clink.

that’s all. pity party for amy today. that’s the agenda. just wanted to fill you in.

-amy has no witty retorts.

our power went out friday evening. I was on my way home, and James called me to tell me. He was halfway through nuking some hot dogs in the microwave for the kids when it went out. He requested I stop by BK for some dinner.

The power came back on about 5 minutes before I got home.

However, now, mysteriously.. our microwave does not heat food. It sounds like it’s working. It LOOKS like it’s working. The light is on, the turn table is spinning, but the food does not get hot.

This is a little inconvenient but no big deal.

Big Deal: Our heat on the main level is not working. We have tried peering intelligently at the furnace in the basement. I flipped the switch for it on, and off, and it seemed to start up and make noise. But warm air does not blow out of our vents. James went outside and peered intelligently at the blower units sitting next to the house. He informed me that one unit has a green flashy light, and the other unit has no light. This seemed to be pretty definitive information, until suddenly the unit lacking any blinking light turned on and made noise.

We kerflommuxed.

And chilly.

I laid down for 20 minutes in front of our gas fireplace, which we never ran again after seeing the gas bill the month after we moved in, and got the pilot light started. The entire thing even light up briefly when the switch was turned on, but then faded back down to solely pilot light.

We are continually thwarted in efforts to heat our home.

We’ll be upstairs.. until the service people get here.

-amy is CHILLY.