EscarGo!

So I just walked into the kitchen to find Madeline and her three friends racing the snails they brought home from school across my kitchen counter.

(I suggested they find a better location for the race).

But it reminded me of this classic Madeline story. We were at our friends' house when Madeline was about 3 years old. She came in from outside and said she needed to wash her hands, which if you knew Maddie at 3 years old, could only mean she was up to something. I looked at her hands and they were coated in something thick that looked a little like vaseline. We went into the bathroom to wash her hands, and the substance wouldn't come off. We tried scrubbing with soap and water, wiping with a towel, even scraping with our fingernails and it would not come off. At this point we were in a bit of a panic about what she could have gotten into--maybe it was a chemical and it was eating away at her skin? None of the kids saw her getting into anything.

Finally one of the kids suggested that maybe she had smushed one of the slugs they'd seen her playing with. And guess what? That was exactly what she'd done. Smushed it up and rubbed it all over her hands.

As disgusting as that was, at least we knew what to use to get the slime off her hands. A large supply of table salt. Which is what is now needed to clean my kitchen counter.

Help Save Our Marriage

Yes, our marriage is so fragile, it's future rests solely on whether we can come to some sort of agreement on where to put the television in the new house.

I won't bore you with all the reasons why neither of us can bear to have the television in the actual family room. Just know that that is something we can both agree on. I can tell you it has something to do with a certain porous fella who lives in a pineapple under the sea. So the TV is going in the "formal" living room, similar to how we have it in our current house.

But we are unable to agree on the layout for the room, and since we can't get the cable outlet installed until we figure this out, and heaven forbid we live without television for a few days, I'm asking for your input.

Which layout? That big behemoth on the wall on the right is a fireplace. Not really that big in person, but it has a long raised hearth, so that wall is pretty much taken. The upper right corner is the kitchen, the upper left is the dining room. The left wall is the floor to ceiling windows, so no furniture can go against that wall.

Option #1:

Option #2

A couple of photo reminders from the MLS listing, if that helps. (This is the seller's furniture. And the realtor's fake plants. Our furniture is size/shape as shown in layout above. And our houseplants are less dusty, but much more brown than that.)

And no pressure, but if you choose Kolby's layout (and in fairness I can't tell you which is his), I will no longer respect you or call you my friend. Just so you know.

Getting there

So you've seen the before photos. Here's a few photos of the "during."

And this is the master bedroom--the first room to have all the staples from the carpet pad removed. It's all prepped and ready to be sanded and finished! We also removed all the mirrored closet doors. And no, we will not be mounting them to the ceiling. You thought you were being original with that little joke, didn't you?

I think this job has turned into MUCH more work than the hardwood guy expected. He thought it might take him 1.5 days to remove the carpet, vinyl, staples, etc. He just finished up the third day and has plenty more staples to go. But he does think he'll get the hardwood installed in the kitchen and living room tomorrow!

Snowball

I forgot about the home improvement snowball effect.

We decided refinishing/adding hardwoods was a good idea before we move in. And I'm pleased with that decision.

But so far doing the hardwoods has snowballed into the need to:

• replace all the baseboards
• replace the door trim
• replace closet systems
• build a built-in bookshelf where a coat closet used to be
• call in a plumber to replumb for the dishwasher (DIY gone wrong--not my DIY)
• call an electrician to decommission some terrifying DIY electrical work. (I know nothing about electrical work, but I'm taking a wild guess that extension cords should not be hard-wired into the home's electrical system.)

I've of course been moaning about the financial aspect of the snowball effect. But my nice hardwood floor guy just pointed out the flip-side---the cosmetic snowball: how much better everything is going to look once those unexpected improvements are done. New baseboards, new bookshelves to complement the spiffy new floors. That's all fun. I just don't like the plumbing and electrical part. Nobody cares if I have sexy new copper pipes behind my dishwasher, although they might appreciate not getting shocked by those live wires hanging around behind the new bookshelf.

John Hancock

So we signed and signed and signed this morning and we are officially homeowners once again. I have very mixed feelings about it until I take a look at my nasty rental seafoam green carpet, and then I'm giddy with excitement. I think the (lack of) carpet, and having a cat door again are the two things I'm most excited about.

Don't ask me what the move-in date is. I don't know. I have two more exams to get thru before I can wrap my brain around packing boxes or wielding a paintbrush. Sometime after March 15th we'll be moving.

We will be celebrating tomorrow night by eating pizza on the floor in the new place.

Time for me to Fly

A few weeks ago my friend Nikol sent me an email that said "Should we take a trapeze class?" and my response was something like, "I think we must."

So today was the day. And I remembered two important things when I woke up. #1 I'm afraid of heights. #2 I have terrible motion sickness, and back and forth motion is the worst instigator. Too late.

I'm not sure what I was expecting--I think I pictured a room full of swinging monkey bars about 5 feet off the ground, and something more like a fitness class. I was not picturing a huge warehouse with a 3 story high trapeze bar and a big ol' net underneath. And even when we got there and saw the set-up, I figured first timers probably just played on the demo bar.

No. No, they don't.

The demo went something like this: "So you put your knees up on the bar and hang upside down, and then when it's time to dismount you make your legs go back and forth and then you tuck into a back flip. Got that? Okay, who's first?"

My first time up the ladder, with my motion sickness bracelet firmly in place, I was shaking like a leaf and pretty sure I would be coming right back down that ladder in a few minutes time. And then once I was up there I was even more sure of it. Even typing this now my heart is beating 1000 times a minute.

But then I jumped.

And HELL YEAH!!! Why was flying trapeze not on the career aptitude test in high school???? Because living in a warehouse making curry with a bunch of housemates at night and doing flying trapeze every day sounds like soooo much more fun than nursing school.

So besides learning that I'd been cheated out of a very rewarding career, the most important lesson I learned during flying trapeze? When your instructor tells you to do something, you do it, and you do it when they say to do it, and you don't think about it even for a second. So maybe when your friends tell you to jump off the cliff, you can use your best judgment, ponder it for a few minutes, and choose not to. But when your trapeze instructor says, "Hang upside down by your knees and then let go!" You do it, even if it is the most ludicrous thing you've ever heard and is compeletely NOT what you would usually do.

But when you do it exactly like they say, then the blond guy from This is Spinal Tap swings along to catch you.

I will definitely be going back. And Nikol can continue to email me with her crazy suggestions.

A 2 Diet Coke day

I'm peaking my head out of the hole I've been in for the last week, but only for a quick breather before I go back down.

Clinicals are great because we get to actually see patients and pretend to be their nurses. But they are also hard because when I come home from my 8 hour shifts at the hospital, I have another 8 hours of clinical paperwork to complete. And then the same thing again the next day.

We also had a big exam today, which meant I had to start studying for that as soon as I finished my clinical paperwork last week....and I studied right thru the weekend until I went to bed last night. So I've been a lot of fun lately.

I took my exam this morning, sat thru a 5 hour lecture, and then went directly to the hospital to get my patient assignment for the week. And you know what that means--as soon as I finish making dinner, I'll be starting it all again. Clinical paperwork tonight, clinicals tomorrow, clinical paperwork tomorrow night, clinicals the next day, rinse and repeat.

I'm so tired thinking about it.