be careful what you ask for

Guess who woke up with a 102* fever this morning? No, not me...

The Kitchen Project

Last Saturday morning, with a couple of my coworkers' assistance, Alex managed to dismantle the kitchen cabinets in a matter of hours.

The original kitchen, circa 1949, was small and sparse.

Original cabinets





The first piece coming down...





And how we've been surviving for the past week:





Tomorrow we will lose the sink for a few days, since the plumber will come to cap the lines and get it moved out for the new cabinet install on Tuesday. Alex has been scraping the glue from where the old laminate backsplash was mounted, and we have tile samples that we'll decide on later this week.

We had a $500 trip to Lowe's yesterday (haven't done that in a long, long time!), where we came away with an acrylic sink, a new faucet, a garbage disposal, and other miscellaneous necessities.

We're not doing anything with our floor right now - it's in good shape; it's a laminate that looks like stone (actually, it looks a lot like the tile samples we picked up yesterday).

So that's our current status. More photos to come, hopefully this week!

Sunday afternoon

Once again, Sunday afternoon rolls around. It's been a lazy day for the most part, doing laundry and trying to stay cool. We've had electricians here this afternoon working on the kitchen, so staying out of their way has also been key.

As I'm sitting here watching Peter Pan with Reed, I'm beginning the dread of going back to work tomorrow. This is a struggle I have every weekend - I will have such a great time with Reed all weekend long, and it's always bittersweet to see it come to an end.

Going to work is just part of my life. It's something I've known that I would do for the majority of my life. It never occurred to me that I might have the opportunity *not* to go to work every day. I'm not a teacher like my parents were or my sister is, so I don't get the luxury of two or three months straight off during the summer. If I did, I might find it even harder to get back in the groove after an extended break.

Logically, I know that going to work makes me a better mom. It's not just the money, though it provides us with a lifestyle we wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. It stretches my mind. It gives me adult conversation and interaction. Most of the time, it's fun. Emotionally, it's hard to remember that there are very good reasons that I go to work. I try to remind myself that I don't have the patience to stay home with Reed full-time, but I think I feel that way because I've never had the opportunity to do so and establish a network of SAHM happenings. I only get to be with him on sick days, and they're no fun anyway so it's not like we'd be going out and doing things under those circumstances.

And daycare - or "school" as we call it - is so good for him. He is learning so many games and songs and just factoids - like "there are volcanos in Hawaii" - that it would never occur to me to teach him or introduce to him. He loves his friends, and his friends - especially the girls - love him. He's been walking around here for the past week singing "little bunny foo-foo, I don't want to catch you, picking up the field mice and boppin' 'em on the head." He's having fun, and I have to remind myself of that almost every morning when I'm trying to walk out the door.

With logic and emotion battling, I have to keep reminding myself that there are multiple reasons, and overthinking them is not the way to go. It just makes it harder to let him go on Monday mornings.

Thursday

Reed was acting up in daycare on Thursday - it was time to clean up and he didn't want to. Dee, his teacher, said "Reed, if you don't help clean up, you won't get your snack. If you don't get your snack, your tummy will be hungry." She said he looked down at his belly and said "Are ya hungry?" He looked back up at Dee and she said "Well...what did you decide?" to which he responded "we're hungry." He proceeded to clean up the toys and went on with his day.

So today sucked.

It started out okay - I slept decent last night, and Reed was in a relatively good mood this morning. It's Thursday and I'm taking tomorrow afternoon off to be home for the new refrigerator delivery and the service technician for the stove. I drove to the cities this morning with my friend and coworker Denise, so we could look at a piece of equipment that our management is looking at bringing to our plant. From there we went to lunch at a good Chinese restaurant (as opposed to the mediocre joints we have in our small town). As we left the restaurant and headed back towards Hutch, I thought to myself what a nice day it had been thus far.

We get about halfway back to Hutch when Denise's cell phone beeped, indicating that she had a voicemail. Why the phone didn't actually ring, I have no idea. She called to listen to the message, and that's when she learned that one of our employees was seriously injured today when she was performing a task that isn't normally done. This employee is very fortunate that her only injuries are broken bones - I'm not yet sure how many bones are broken, but her arm will be bothering her for quite a while. I keep running through the scenario in my head and comparing it to similar scenarios that I've heard about but never experienced firsthand - situations where employees are fatally injured performing similar tasks.

We are all very fortunate today.

Even though Reed is rapidly approaching his fourth birthday, I forget that he's not a baby anymore and find some of the things he says and does so amusing. He's so profound sometimes, and so silly others. I'm sure that these are not nearly as entertaining to anyone else as they are to me; I'm mostly trying to document them for later, when he will see how funny it must have been to hear his little voice saying these words.

Today, I asked him if he wanted to paint with his watercolors. He responded with "no thanks (no panks), I'm busy today."

He went to the grocery with me earlier today and was really well-behaved; he actually introduced himself to everyone we met. "Hi, my name is Reed."

He has also told me that he doesn't want to start using the potty because the toilet is too big. I'm not sure if there are smaller toilets available that he thinks we should buy or what, but the last I checked, our toilets are pretty much one-size-fits-all.

Three year old creativity.

I came downstairs this morning (it was my morning to sleep in, yay!) and Reed greeted me with what he called a maraca. It was, in all actuality, a plastic Easter egg with, you guessed it, dry Lucky Charms inside.

Gotta give him points for creativity.

I also figured out this weekend that I should probably get him in Sunday School or at least find him a book of bible stories. He has decided that his Little People Noah's Ark is actually a pirate ship, and Noah is the pirate. In response to that, Alex rented Peter Pan for us to watch Friday night, and Reed *loved* it. He sat glued to the TV for the entire movie (which is rare for him).

Hating on Ebay.

I'm done with Ebay. Well, with selling on Ebay, anyway.

If you recall my sewing machine saga from a few months ago, I ended up emailing Singer to tell them that I was not impressed with their machine and that I thought it was silly to make a machine that breaks easily and can't be repaired. They offered to replace the machine, so I let them. I got the new machine (the Singer; I'd already purchased and used and loved the Brother machine) and promptly listed it on Ebay. I figured I could recoup some of the costs associated with crappy sewing machines.

I sold the machine to a dude in Nebraska. My first warning sign that this might not be a good deal was that he had zero feedback. As in, this was his first attempt to purchase anything on Ebay. That made me pause, but just for a moment because I figured that everyone needs someone to take a chance on them to help raise their feedback scores. We all start at zero, you know?

I shipped it out on June 19. He wanted it by July 4, but didn't tell me this prior to me shipping it. He did not buy insurance, he said that shipping parcel post would be fine, and now he's bitching and moaning and filing disputes with Ebay. He's also gone so far as to say that he doesn't believe that I even shipped the damn thing.

He keeps checking the Delivery Confirmation page on the USPS website, and telling me that because it doesn't show an update, that must mean I didn't ship it. I've tried to explain that the DC website is only updated UPON DELIVERY. He continues to say that he's sure I didn't even ship it. I talked to PayPal yesterday, and they also believe that it's a tracking website and not DC. I then went to the post office to see if I was the one misunderstanding the purpose of the delivery confirmation webpage, and the supervisor said that it would only be updated upon delivery; that I was interpreting the message correctly and PayPal and the buyer were both wrong. The only way that the USPS offers package tracking is through Express Mail or Registered Mail.

Now Mr. Nebraska has escalated his dispute with PayPal to a claim. I have offered to refund his money. I have offered my left arm to make him happy and try to protect my feedback score. After being mouthy, annoying and accusing me of not shipping the sewing machine, he's now ignoring my emails and offers. I'm not sure what his point is; the freaking machine is somewhere between here and Nebraska. It has not been delivered yet; I don't know why but I did ship it on the day that I said I would.

Anyway, I'm done. I buy other stuff on Ebay - usually using Buy It Now - which should be okay even if he wanks my feedback score with negative feedback. As for selling, I'm just done.

Random

Facebook Bingo is highly addicting. I got an invitation for it last night, and can't stop playing. I keep spamming my friends list to earn more cards. I feel like a drug addict, anticipating my next fix.

I tried so hard to take a nap today and couldn't. Too much noise. Levi (the doxie next door) was so yappy, and then when Alex returned from his lunch outing in St. Cloud, he decided to skip out on work and come home to scrape paint off the garage (yep, we're leading exciting lives here, folks...). I closed one bedroom window to block out Levi, and I could hear his scraping through the other window. I closed that window too, and it just got too hot in the bedroom. I went down to the basement (the best napping place in the house), but the dehumidifier kept kicking on and off. Every time I'd doze off, it would kick on.

Long weekends are so challenging. I feel like we need to do something - anything - that we wouldn't normally do on a regular two-day weekend. We have a few options this weekend, but I'm still struggling. Will we be able to manage it all and a nap for Reed? Will it be the day from hell if he misses a nap? Will we all kill each other?

Strawberries are ready in Minnesota. This is so awesome. We have had berries every day for the last week. I have strawberry syrup in the fridge that is awesome on top of vanilla frozen yogurt.

I miss my family. I'm just really homesick right now. I haven't seen my sister since Christmas. I haven't seen my parents since early February when we were the House of Sick and they came to help us out for a few days. They were planning on coming to visit before now, but my dad ended up with shingles. He is still not very comfortable, but is starting to feel better (with the help of epidurals and oxycodone). He and my mom are leaving later this month to go to Alaska for about two weeks. I guess they will try to come visit when they get home from Alaska. I know they miss Reed (they seldom miss me), but I miss them.

I learned yesterday that sorority reunion has been moved to Murray. This is an interesting turn of events, and I need to do some thinking on this. If it's in Murray, it seems like it would just be wrong for me to go to Murray, driving right through Paducah to get there, and not stop to see my folks. But my folks don't want to see me without Reed. So do we turn this into a family trip? If we end up driving to Kentucky in November, there is no way we will do it again in December for Christmas (which is fine - I have prepared my parents and sister for the chance that we won't be coming home for Christmas this year because it's just too hectic and painful). Alex and I need to talk about this, for sure.

Alex and his coworkers went to Chipotle for lunch today. We don't have Chipotle here. He drove almost 50 miles to have lunch in St. Cloud. Yes, that's right. I really have no other words for my thoughts on this; I will say that my thoughts on it were softened by the fact that he brought a burrito back for me.