Category Archives: Apartment

Under the sea…

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Last Saturday, I was given the gift of oversleeping. This meant that I was wide awake and able to hear the leak when it started around 9:00 AM.

At first, I thought the faucet was left on, or maybe that something weird was going on with the dishwasher. I went into the kitchen to see what was going on. When I saw the stream of water, my immediate reaction was to wake my poor husband, who had only just started to take a nap (sorry, Adam), set down some bowls, and lay out some towels. Surely, for the two skinny streams of water coming from the light fixtures, that would be enough. Maintenance would be called and we’d soon be able to go about our lazy Saturday.

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Oh, how naive I was.

To his credit, our on-call maintenance guy was there in a flash, but there was just nothing he could do alone. Our upstairs neighbor, who was at work and didn’t even know about the situation, had an inch of water on her floor due to a burst pipe. By the time the water was shut off, about an hour after the leaking started, we were soaked and had dumped gallons of dirty water out. Ethan, who had slept through all this commotion, woke to find that we had created a makeshift barricade out of his larger toys in order to section off part of the living room to allow him to play without wandering into squishy, wet carpeting. Impressively Southern men from the restoration company came in and out all morning, greeting us with a lot of “Pardon me, ma’am” and “we’ll keep you apprised of the goings-on”.

Despite it all being a huge, stressful mess, I couldn’t help enjoying it a little bit. I ran around the apartment singing “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid while we emptied bowls, we joked about Ethan needing his first water wings, and I used the whole situation as an excuse to gorge myself on the rest of the Christmas candy. All in all, it was a decent day. But then…we heard the news. From the awesomely-named Rock.

“I’m so sorry that I must be the bearer of unhappy news, but y’all will have to vacate while we are fixing things up. Especially since y’all have the little one.”

If you ever have to be told anything like that, make sure Rock tells you. You won’t even care, you’ll just want to make some sweet tea and sit on a porch with him.

We packed up a few things and made our way to the apartment our company provided, which happened to be right behind ours. We didn’t bring much – why bother? We (again, naively) thought we’d only be here for a day or two. But now we’re on day five of being away from home and I find myself getting weary of it.

I know we’re very fortunate. If we had still been out of town or if, I shudder to think about this, the leaks had started in Ethan’s room, who knows how bad it could have been? And I feel just awful for our upstairs neighbor. I was so scared that something was wrong when I knocked on her door and she didn’t answer. The relief I felt when we found out she was just at work was incredible. I can’t imagine coming home to such a mess, and I hope nothing too important was damaged. I haven’t had the chance to see her since Saturday, but I’ve been thinking about her a lot and wishing we could do something to help her out. We really did get off easy – none of our stuff was even damaged. Just the floor, walls, and ceiling, all of which are being replaced right now. We were beyond lucky.

Even so, it’s rough being away from home again. We had a great time in Florida, but traveling with an infant is as exhausting as it is fun. We were still in recovery mode when the leaks happened, and I was just starting to get the house back in order after our initial post-vacation, throw-that-crap-down-and-wherever-it-lands-is-where-it-lives decompressing session. Now, we’re…well, pretty much doing the same thing, only not at home. We’re sleeping on the floor, I’m cooking a lot of slapped-together meals since most of my cookware was used to catch water and I haven’t cleaned it all yet (I couldn’t actually get into the kitchen to retrieve it until today anyway), and we only just got our internet signal back. Basically…I’ve been bored. I’ve been doing some reading, and we brought some DVDs with us. It just isn’t the same. I actually miss cleaning my own house, cooking in my own kitchen, taking care of our own things. I miss walls with decorations on them and having a sofa.

Hopefully, we’ll be back in our own place after this weekend. I’m anxious for things to go back to “normal”, and I am looking forward to getting my little family back where we belong! Until then…I think I might build a blanket fort in here. The temptation is just too great to resist.

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Commercial break cleaning

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I should start a cleaning service where this is exactly what I do. Because I’m really getting good at it.

Lately, when Ethan is napping, I have been taking the opportunity to catch up on some TV. In the interest of not being too sedentary or falling behind on housework, I have been using the commercial breaks to speed-clean. It’s amazing what can be accomplished over the course of about eight or nine non-consecutive minutes.

For example, I watched an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” the other night. Don’t judge. That show is hilarious(ly ridiculous). In the space of the commercial breaks, I managed to unload the dishwasher, change out the laundry, stuff diapers, and do general tidying. By the end of the show, though I hadn’t put forth much effort, the place looked really good and I didn’t feel that nagging “I really should be doing something productive right now” tug in my brain. Which was quite lovely, since that tug has been more like a choke chain lately. If the house is already clean enough, I use the time to do some exercise. It’s a lot better than what I’ve been trying lately, which has been attempting to tone up with a vigorous regimen of drinking coffee on the sofa. 

Obviously, this doesn’t exactly help me accomplish the big stuff. Things like vacuuming, organizational projects, etc. require more time and concentration than I can give during a commercial break. But what this does do is allow me to take care of the smaller things without feeling frazzled or like I’m not getting any time to myself. It has been a very simple, effective way to get the best of both worlds.

And now Miley freakin’ Cyrus is singing in my head. Damn it.

MBFPCP: Day two

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Hoo boy.

Today was…well, it sure was a day.

Ethan is going through a Daddy phase right now. He finds comfort in Adam more than me, and while I know he is a baby and therefore isn’t doing it to be difficult, it sure feels difficult when I’m alone with him all day and can’t make him stop crying. He pretty much cried all day unless he was asleep, so I couldn’t get around to doing the second day of my 10 Bags in 10 Days, based on this pin, until about 7:00! I put Ethan to bed and cleaned as quickly (and quietly) as I could.

Before, the bathroom looked like this:

Pay no attention to the lady in her husband’s pajama pants.

And my brother’s bathroom wasn’t much better (though in the interest of his privacy, I didn’t take pictures of his). However, about ten minutes and one grocery bag full of junk later, it looked like this:


I ended up rearranging the medicine cabinets so that medicine and first aid was on top (a habit I want to get into now, before Ethan’s old enough to reach), then moved my makeup and our other grooming items into the middle and bottom shelves. Since I don’t wear makeup every day, it made sense to get it out of the way to free up the counter. Under the sink still looks a little messy, but it is loads better than it was and I can actually see what everything is!

In my brother’s bathroom, I found something I had forgotten about…six boxes of that Nads hair removal stuff. When I was pregnant, I had this idea to stock up since waxing at home would be so much cheaper and easier than shaving my legs every couple of days! What a genius idea! Until I used it once and thought I was dying. Y’all, that stuff hurts. I am not tough enough to deal with it. And then there was a leak that damaged the other boxes of it. And I still have no idea why they were in Jonathan’s bathroom. So, yes, a total waste of money, but it’s a great (somewhat embarrassing) story for me to share on my blog.

Tomorrow, I’m planning to attempt cleaning out the pantry. Yikes.

My Big Fat Pinterest Challenge Project: Day One

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Yay, I did it! I actually started my project like a big girl. I decided that it would be easiest to focus on household organization for the month of July. That’s usually my #1 most frustrating thing – I’ve grown to really dislike clutter and I get aggravated when things are out of place. I know for a fact it’s Mommy Instinct (yes, it’s capitalized, because it is a Thing) because clutter never used to bother me that much. I always wanted my place to be clean, but never exactly organized. Not anymore.

Pinterest has lots of great ideas and tutorials for getting your place to be as organized as possible. One pin that struck me was called “40 Bags in 40 Days“, in which the pinner got rid of a bag of junk every day for over a month. I am doing a modified version of that and committing to 10 bags in 10 days. Today, I focused on my nightstand.

You might not think that something as small as a nightstand would hold a bag’s worth of junk. You would think wrong. My nightstand ended up being additional storage in the move (which, if you recall, was pretty hit-the-ground-running, so we were stuffing belongings into anything that would hold them). Which means it looked like this:

I know. It’s awful. I seriously don’t know why half of those things were in there. I found a bag that goes around a bottle of Crown Royal and a plastic cucumber that was apparently a cast gift from one of the productions of As You Like It that Adam was in. Why was plastic vegetation given as a gift? I don’t know. I’m sure it made sense in context, but I had no context, so I just put the plastic cucumber on Adam’s nightstand, realizing the weirdness of placing a fake, green, phallic vegetable where everyone could potentially see it and do a double-take. And then I started plotting many, many practical jokes. Bwahaha.

Anyway, I cleared out most of what was in the drawer, did some re-arranging, designated some junk, and put a few things back where they actually belonged. The end result?

Yaaaaay, it’s a big-girl drawer! I’ve got my girly stuff like lotions, tea lights, and a lavender infuser oil burner thingy that I got for Christmas and forgot about (sorry and also thanks, Lindsey, I promise I’ll use it now that it has been re-found!), as well as our Comcast information because I haven’t figured out a safer place for it just yet.

I’m feeling really good about this. It took all of five minutes and I significantly de-cluttered a problem area of my home. Now I have a lot more space in that drawer if I need, several unnecessary items are gone for good, and I, you know, followed through on something I said I would do. I’ll be accepting my medal any time now.

Tomorrow: the Great Decluttering continues when I tackle…THE BATHROOMS!!! Dun dun dunnnnnn.

And now for something completely different…

I had what I can only describe as a relapse in my depression and anxiety last night. I was up until 3:00 cleaning the apartment and doing some meal and grocery planning, but I was sobbing the entire time. Hence why it took me until 3:00 AM. I’ve been feeling those emotions threatening to bubble to the surface for a while now, but I figured it was just normal motherhood-related stuff, not PPA/PPD.

Now I’m almost ready to admit defeat and that I’m not able to deal with this entirely on my own. I’m going to give it just a little more time – in case it really was just a particularly bad day, which happens – and then I’m going to start looking into talking to my doctor. As hesitant as I am about the notion of being unable to cope on my own, naturally, I also know that I can’t keep doing this. It’s affecting every aspect of my life and I can’t let that continue much longer. So I’m hoping to get a grip on myself (and, TMI alert, but I’m also sort of hoping that it’s at least partially PMS-related, because my body has decided to freak out once a month now…which wasn’t so much the case pre-baby. Thanks, hormones!), but I’m also willing to go to a professional if that doesn’t work.

Oy.

My dumb, self-indulgent Pinterest project that I’m totally going to do no matter what.

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So, I’m a little obsessed with Pinterest. I’m almost angry at the friend who introduced me to it, because for everything sketchy and potentially wrong with it, there are some neat aspects to the site. Sure, there is a lot of beige, twee, Deschanel-style generic cuteness going on, but I have found some fun/interesting/smart ideas on there.

Normally, I’m not one of those “I’m gonna do a 365 Project!” people (well, except for my 365 Days of Shakespeare blog, which apparently people are still reading. Go figure. I put almost no effort into that thing…perhaps it’s about time I revamped it and, you know, tried). I generally find them kind of dumb, because no one ever seems to follow through and finish them, and they usually just fizzle out with a bunch of lazy excuses about why they weren’t completed. Or they’re 365 photo projects – the type that makes anyone with a decent digital camera think they’re a photographer.

So…why am I doing a silly, self-indulgent, Pinterest-inspired project that will most likely end in me giving up halfway through?

I dunno. Because it might be fun.

I’m not a crafty person. This surprises people for some reason. I think I must give off a crafty vibe, because whenever I admit that my gift-wrapping skills are akin to a drunk, blind kindergartner who has never touched gift wrap before, people seem confused. I really don’t know why. The last time I crafted something, it was a scarf. And it didn’t even have fringe on it. I don’t even know how to purl. I used to cross-stitch a lot, but I wasn’t particularly talented at that, either. For some reason, though, when I see all those cutesy-clever crafts on Pinterest, I kid myself that I could pull them off. So that’s part of why I’m doing it. I think it would be nice to be better at doing things by hand, rather than buying them.

Also, quite frankly, I think it would validate me in some way. I think I’ll feel some sense of accomplishment. I have this notion in my head that SAHMs are all crafty and organized. I know that’s not necessarily true, but I feel like becoming better at prettying up the house on my own and creating nice things from scratch will make me feel more like a mom. I know that probably doesn’t make much sense, but I want to at least try.

So, starting at some point in the near-ish future (probably September), I’m going to come up with 365 projects, recipes, and crafts that I found on Pinterest to try out. There will be a range of topics – I’ll focus mainly on beauty, fitness, food, and home decor/cleaning. There will probably be a few randoms throughout, but nothing’s set in stone just yet.

My hope is that this project will A) Be completed, lest the Mayans were right and B) Teach me something. I don’t know what. I just want to legitimately learn something so I can call it good.

So thus begins the Great Gathering of Ideas on Pinterest. God help you if you’re friends with me on there – you’ll be flooded.

Apartment therapy?

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Sorry I’ve been MIA for a few days – my sleep schedule has gotten all out of whack and I’ve been distracted by just about anything even remotely shiny.

I’ve been looking around at our apartment lately and have been trying to come up with more ways to make it feel like home. In our old place, we got really lazy and only hung up a few things, didn’t really try to decorate beyond “yeah, that fits pretty well in that spot”, and just generally didn’t try too hard. Now that we’re in this new place – Ethan’s first home – I feel this pressure to make it homey. My mom has been really helpful with this…she came over and helped me (read: did it for me). She hung up almost all of our paintings, posters, and photos, helped me figure out a better way to arrange the furniture, and gave me a few more pictures for Mother’s Day.

Our place has a nice, open floor plan, which I love. It feels a lot more connected than our old apartment, with the added bonus of it not trying to kill us. There’s a slight “1950′s tract house” feel to the layout, which just makes me goofy-happy since some of our furniture is midcentury. The tricky thing about apartment living, though, is that you generally are not allowed to paint rentals. I think we technically could do some painting if we really wanted to, but we’d have to paint it back if we moved out. While we’re tentatively planning to be here for at least two or three years, if all goes according to plan, that still seems like a little more trouble than it’s worth. That’s my laziness speaking, I know, but I just don’t really see the point of taking the time, money, and energy required for painting a room if it can’t be a permanent thing.

So for those who are fellow renters or who are just more creative than I am (not hard to be these days – my brain is fried): any suggestions? How do you dress up the plain white walls and beige floors of your average apartment?