...
After my earlier post, I finally found the ibuprofen after rummaging through two cabinets, and popped a couple... then I finally vaccuumed my disgusting family room and kitchen floors.. they were so gross, it was getting on my last nerve.
Then I put the coffee table back where it was supposed to be... DH had moved the sofa back after we put away the Christmas tree (I think that was just a week ago! OMG, I can't believe it was just last week!), but the coffee table was still off to the side, and the living room looked odd. So I got out the "magic sliders" and moved that sucker myself. It is huge and heavy, esp with all the books on the shelf it has! Magic sliders rule.
Then I went upstairs and tackled the study. I did not want to spend all weekend on it, and I made amazing progress. I have a huge pile of stuff to donate to charity. I suppose I could have a garage sale but I am just not into that, it is not my thing. If I know anyone who can use the stuff I no longer need or use, I'm always happy to give it to them. I wish I knew someone that could really use a crib and a pack-and-play, because now we really need to get rid of them because the boys will be sharing a room, so the crib has to go! But I don't know anyone, so I will call BirthRight and see if they can tell me who to give them to... other stuff, like clothes and books, will just go to Goodwill.
I always feel simply glorious after I do a "purge" like this, it's so wonderfully freeing to disentangle from the material goods that weigh me down. If I were single, I'd have a tiny studio apartment with a kick-ass kitchen with a breakfast bar, one wall of bookcases for my treasured volumes, DVDs, and CDs, a computer with high-speed internet access, a comfortable chair, a TV (with TiVO of course), and big four-poster bed with curtains I could draw to shut out the rest of the room. I would probably have one box of Christmas decorations, too. But that's it... somehow, I don't think I'll ever attain that nirvanic state!
So, the room is empty now except for one small bookcase still full of books, and the paintings on the walls. Not sure what I'm going to do with those. I have this huge oil painting that I love but everyone else in the family hates... maybe I'll sell it on ebay? Hmmm. Packing and shipping the thing would be an enormous expense in and of itself. In a previous life I had a lot of modern art, which is just not DH's thing. He's into watercolors and seascapes, landscapes. Since I love those things too, this is not a problem, except that I have to figure out how (or if) to store the art that is now up in what used to be my office.
The service center called about the vibration the van was getting at highway speeds. They checked the alignment and everything they could think of, and came to the conclusion that there is "interior tread separation" on one of the tires, and that's what's causing the vibration. So I had to pick up DH, go get the van at the Honda Service Center, then take it over to Big O for the guys there to check out the tires. Now, these tires are not too old. The back tires I got last May, the front tires in either August or September. I also bought a special warranty from them, so I'm pretty sure we're looking at two new tires, hopefully for little or no money. It kind of freaked me out because the Honda guys said it was not safe to drive the way it is now, and of course I have been driving around with that vibration for months now. Seriously. I even brought it back to Big O in the fall, and they rebalanced the wheels which seemed to help, but did not eliminate the vibration. Hopefully we'll get it back early tomorrow so the whole day is not disrupted... it is such a PITA having to drop DH off at work, and pick him up, I feel like I am spending my life behind the wheel.
Had at least 3 run-ins with DD today, wherein she totally wigged out over something inconsequential. She wanted to play a particular computer game and couldn't find it; I was upstairs, changing bed linens. I told her she could keep looking, play another game, or wait for me to finish my chores. Instead, she came upstairs, followed me around, berated me for not helping her, burst into tears because she couldn't find even though she looked really, really hard, and in general totally over-reacted. It was ridiculous.
Later, after I'd finished the vaccuuming and she had thrown pillows and things all over, I told her to pick that stuff up and put it away. This house is arranged to make it easy to put stuff and keep it neat; there is a place for everything, and nothing is hard to get to. I told her, "If you leave stuff on the floor, I'll just put it in the trash," to which she replied (this is a verbatim quote) "The only thing in this house that should be trashed is YOU!"
I told her she was being mean and disrespectful. I asked her how she would feel if I said that to her, and she said, "Happy!" So stubborn. I'm still trying to think of a good consequence for her disrespect.
Oh, and of course, for about the 19th straight day, she didn't want to eat what I made for dinner. The rest of us had leftover Chinese food from yesterday, but since she didn't eat it yesterday, I just made her some plain turkey cutlet and bread and butter. She still made a huge fuss about it. It's really infuriating, too, because she says "my stomach hurts" and gets all teary-eyed. As soon as she's excused from the table, she's miraculously cured. I don't want to dismiss the idea that she really is sick, but it's getting harder and harder for me to accept this act, night after night. I have decided to ban afternoon snacks for her entirely until she stops this behavior. It's ridiculous, she never eats a vegetable because "I'm too full" or "my tummy hurts" or something. She's so skinny that I do worry about her eating enough, but of course all she wants to eat is sweets!
At least, today, she didn't make me lose my temper with her, which has happened so many times in the past. I keep praying she'll get out of this phase, soon...
In more pleasant news, DH is scheduling a fancy dinner out for us and his business partner and his partner. This may be horridly stereotyped, but I have to say, partying with gay men is a blast. We always have so much fun with them (even though we have to avoid politics completely!), and one nice dinner written off as "corporate entertainment" is certainly reasonable.
I have too many column ideas running through my head, I have to just pick one! Off to see if I can bang another one out...
No comments:
Post a Comment