Disaster area

...

We had the upstairs carpets cleaned this afternoon, in preparation for moving the kids into their new room arrangement. Consequently, there is stuff everywhere. We have been going through stuff and figuring out what to keep and what to give away. We have a ton of baby stuff -- crib, portable playpen, safety gates -- plus the usual clothes, shoes, assorted long-ignored toys, electronics, etc.

All that stuff is piled up in the living room and dining room. It's very hard to be around all that clutter. I have to inventory everything (there's still more upstairs), consolidate it all, and either get someone to come and get it or just bite the bullet and take it over to Salvation Army myself. I could easily spend all day Saturday on just that task. I know I would feel better if I did!

But, I would like to spend Saturday working on DD's furniture project, which I haven't even started yet. The difference in attitude between now and when I conceived and shopped for that project is amazing. As in, when I thought of it, it didn't seem like a big deal at all. Now, it just seems as if I'll never be able to get it done!

Upstairs, things are not in a total uproar only because all the non-bed furniture has been stacked up in the 2 bathrooms. That only works because our bathroom is the size of a small bedroom itself, not to mention our walk-in closet which is lot larger than the bedroom I had when I was a kid (to be fair, that was just a nursery, and we called it "the little room". It was a little room!).

So, the four (yes! four!) bedrooms have nothing in them now but clean carpets and beds. Tomorrow we will move the boys in together, and DD into her own room, and we will move all the toys into the big room which will now be the playroom. That will mean moving a lot of stuff out of the family room downstairs, 2 things, mainly: the Little Tykes climber (and all the toys in it, the stuffed animals live there), and the 3-shelf bookcase that houses an inordinate amount of toys.

Then we will take our old kitchen table and put it over where the climber and bookcase were, and that will give us another space for dry crafts, playing games, doing homework, or whatever.

I saw a nice bookcase in CostPlus yesterday that I'm going to pick up for the kitchen. It's not just nice, it's perfect. A place for my cookbooks! Yay. If the kids weren't so grumpy about going out again today, I'd have gone to get it already. Maybe I'll go get it this evening, without them...

They've actually been great today. I took them all out to get their haircuts. Even DD likes to go to the barbershop because 1) they give out tootsie pops and 2) they don't often use a hair dryer. She hates hair dryers, and therefore never wants to go to a salon with me. The two boys look adorable with their summer-short hair, and DD is even more sweet and beautiful looking with her new bob. I had the barber cut it to just below chin length, and it really suits her. The ends had gotten very straggly-looking and it was impossible to keep it neat. At this length, I can still pull it off her face in a pony tail if I have to, but it is adorable even whlie it's down.

I would've made an appointment for a family portrait for this weekend, except that DD was having a pillow fight with her brothers last night and got whacked too hard, and fell and banged her eye on the windowsill. She asked for ice to put on it right away, and so the swelling is minor but there is a bruise under it. She has a mark as if someone drew a line from the middle of her brow down to the corner of the eye. I doubt anyone else would ever notice it, but I would, so we're back to waiting another week or so for that to heal. It's always one thing after another with her!

I hate being in a disarranged house.

Oh -- had Vioxx last night, and put my rings on before bed as a test to see how bad the swelling was. Again, this morning, it was so bad I had to take off the rings. However, my feet and ankles and hips were a lot better. Weather-wise, it's holding fair and hot, so I don't think that's a factor. It's hard to tell.

I realized today that I was doing really well after the gallbladder surgery when I was on both the Vioxx and the Keflex anti-biotic. That always happens to me, anti-biotics really do work better than anything else. Maybe what I'm having now is a bounce-back reaction after having been on it for 14 days?

Over at the forum I've been PMing with people who encourage me to try the Atkins KISS (Keep It Simple Sweetie [how kind!]) regimen, which basically says: meat and vegetables. No grains, dairy, nuts, artificial sweeteners. The lack of dairy would be very difficult for me. Grains I can live without, usually do. Nuts would be another big problem for me to give up, as I snack on pecans and cook with nut flours all the time. Fake sugars? I don't use too much anyway, just in the baking...

My main thing is, if I went on such an eating regimen, I would lose weight. I don't want to lose weight. Well, I would like to lose this approximately 5 lbs of bloat and inflammation I've been dealing with, but that's not weight. If I couldn't have dairy or nuts, how would I possibly get enough calories? And, post-gall-bladder surgery, I think a meat & vegetables only diet would be really, really hard on me (as in, I'd need to be no farther than 10 feet away from a bathroom at all times).

Or, those are just convenient excuses as to why I'm not going to do it. Heh.

I'm in the midst of 4, possibly 5 loads of laundry as I stripped all the beds, including the guest room, since we're sleeping down here tonight... I'll just have to turn around and wash them again, too, as my father-in-law is coming on Thursday and will go to the NCAA games with DH next weekend. It's going to be interesting, trying to get this place in shape before he gets here! I'm off to fold more sheets...