Love, Housework, and Marriage

I guess I was pretty spoiled the first seven years of our marriage. The first year, when I was working, Chris got up every morning to make my lunch. He even tried to cook dinner a few times. After we had moved into and renovated our house in Nashville and I was home with the babies, Chris did the dishes every night. Every night. He said it was the least he could do since I was fixing supper every night. At least once a week, he got down on his hands and knees and wiped down the hardwood floors, and every once in a while he would turn into a virtual cleaning machine and dust the entire house. I didn't even have to ask him to do these things.

Well, things have changed. I can't remember the last time he washed the dishes. And I can't say I blame him, really. We moved- into a trailer- an hour or more from where he works every day- and he's got a lot on his plate these days.  After a day at work, he no longer has a mere 10 minute drive home, and there is something about driving that hour from Nashville that makes you want a nap in a bad way, so I get why the dishes go undone. Why in the world should he care about wiping down the laminate flooring of an old, dumpy trailer? And since he isn't here most of the day, the clutter and dust doesn't wear on his nerves like it does mine. So, for the most part, I try to understand and be the best stay-at-home mom-wife I can be.

But one day, Chris took the day off.

He spent the day piddling with this and that, with nothing too important on his agenda. He watched the news in the morning while I got the kids ready for school and news in the evening while I cooked supper, and, instead of washing the dishes like I hoped he would to give me a break for once, he put on his jammies and went to watch more TV.

There's nothing more depressing than waking up to a messy kitchen in the morning, so I channeled my frustration into some energy and went to the kitchen to wash the dishes. As I sloshed the soapy water around with my dish cloth, I started daydreaming:

Chris is the only one that uses these big bowls and spoons. What if I washed everything but those? I could let them pile up all dry and crusty on this side of the sink until every single one of them was dirty. That would show him.

Wouldn't it be great if when he forgets to put his boxers in the hamper I let them pile up until he didn't have any clean ones and then he'd have to wear those dreaded whitey tighties?

And God forbid he pick up a toilet brush and help clean bathrooms. If we had double sinks, I'd never clean his. I bet all the hair and dried toothpaste spit would cake the whole sink. His mirror would be so spotty, he wouldn't be able to see his face.

And although he promises to help me clean the trailer, he never gets around to it. I wish I had a dust machine. I'd point it right at his blasted TV until the dust piled up so thick, he couldn't watch TV until he cleaned it.

Yes. That would show him.

But that sort of passive aggression only leads to dysfunction and a bad marriage.

(sigh)

Having finished the dishes, I walked into the room where he was laid back in the comfort of pillows.

"Thanks for helping me with the dishes." I hurled my sarcasm at him like a stone.

"Are you mad at me?" he asked, startled.

"Why should I be mad?"

I told him how frustrated I was and why, then proceeded to tell him all the things I wished I could do to get my point across.

And he laughed. Then apologized.

And I remembered that I married a good man that can't read my mind. All I needed to do was ask.

The Trouble With Imaginative Kids

When we told the kids we were going to let them pick a color for their rooms, I don't think they understood what we meant.

Joe wanted to paint his room black, then plaster the whole thing in glow-in-the-dark stars so that his room looked like space.

Finley wanted brown, so that she could paint it to look like the inside of a horse's stall.

Zivah wanted blue and yellow (ignoring the single color restriction) so that she could have the sky with a yellow sun.

Dear children, as cool as I think your ideas are, this is not Extreme Makeover: Homeowner's Edition. Unfortunately, your parents are more practical than that. Until you can pay for and have acquired the skill set to do the work on your own, we must come to a compromise. Zivah can have blue walls, and we can make a yellow sun out of something or other. Finley's brown accent wall can be plastered with as much horse paraphernalia as her heart desires. (Well, maybe.) Joe? I would be willing to paint a small portion of your room in black and plaster it with stars, but somehow we would have to convince your dad to let us do it. I hope you will happy with your secondary choice of green.

Finishing is Finished

The drywall finishers completed the second sanding today and are done. We are very happy with the job they did.

Chris is in the house now, attempting to clean up a bit of the dust. 

I am still trying to decide on colors as the perfect shades for some rooms still elude me.

Might need to go back to Home Depot this week and get some more samples.

We've got mud on our walls...

It took four guys twelve hours to fill cracks, tape, put up corner-bead, and put a coat of mud on everything.

The crew left their beast of a heater here to keep the temperature warm while the mud dries, and we've got our dehumidifier running to try to help suck the moisture from the air.

I didn't think all our crazy, crooked angles would looks so good, but the lead guy took his time with it, and everything looks amazing. There is no way Chris could have made it look this good.

(Not Really About) Color

It's mid January.

The sun has been peeking through the clouds off and on this morning. I may need to go stand outside and let some sun hit my face for 15 minutes or so.

Chris found a guy he is hiring to finish the drywall. The guy wants to get on it as soon as there are enough days in a row that we can keep the house temperature above 50 degrees. But he pointed out that there were quite a few screws that weren't sunk deep enough. He doesn't mind if the are one or two here or there, but there were just too many, so it is our job to check every single one, which wouldn't be so terrible expect that some one (who shall remained nameless) was a little over-zealous with the drill. Mom came over to help for an hour yesterday, and I counted eight screws in one stud in one of piece of drywall. I didn't count how many there were in the whole sheet.

I also finished framing the upstairs windows in drywall. We are going to be lazy and not bother to put wood trim around them (at least for now).

Anyway, that has me thinking that it won't be so long before the drywall is finished, and then I will have to make decisions about paint color. Why that seems overwhelming at the moment, I can't say.

 In other news, yesterday, when we were out for a walk to see the neighbor's horses, Finley found a deer leg. All the muscle and skin had been removed somehow, but the ligaments were still attached, so Finley had fun 'walking' the leg home to show the rest of the family.

Christmas Break

It's been a while. The kids have been out of school on winter break, and Chris has been home most of that time, too, so there hasn't been the quiet atmosphere here that is conducive to writing.

Every day, Zivah has been asking me if it is a school day. She is excited to get back to class, a testament to how fun kindergarten must be and how awesome her teacher is. I didn't spend much time teaching Zivah letters and sounds, although she managed to have the basics down by the time school started. Now she is sounding out small words like a pro, and I caught her the other night reading Green Eggs and Ham to herself.

Zivah might not get her wish to go back to school Monday, however, as a winter storm is supposed to blow through Sunday night bringing sleet and snow. Temperatures are to drop to the single digits at night, a rarity here. In spite of my new, favorite pair of long johns, I am dreading it. The low last night was 13 degrees, and I woke up to a 60 degree trailer. Who knows how cold it will get in here on Monday with its predicted low of 4 and high of 12. I have to remind myself how good we have it these days. At least I am not going to wake up to freezing indoor temps and have to stoke the fires of a wood-burning stove for warmth.

A few days before Christmas, we had a thunderstorm come through, complete with straight-line winds. At some point, a gust blew our leaning pine tree over onto the run of our little chicken coop. We are sad to lose the tree, but it is apparent it wasn't in the best of health, the root system was pathetic, and it didn't take much for the tractor to push the stump apart from the few remaining roots.

The two chickens we had in the coop survived the crash, though I wouldn't have cried if the rooster had been taken out. He has always been a bit of a spaz, and has taken to jumping at my arm when I bring them food and water. I have no patience for mean chickens, so am already plotting his demise.

The kids and I decorated gingerbread cookies again this year. Next year, we should be in the new house by Christmas, and I think we should upgrade the baking as well to include a gingerbread house.

Christmas morning was spent with my family, and the afternoon with Chris's. By the time the festivities were over the kids were exhausted. Joe and Z fell asleep head to head in van.

When we got home Christmas evening, there was a bit of a stink in our bedroom. At first, we blamed it on Chris's immediate trip to the bathroom, but when a candle and several minutes did nothing to dispel the odor, we concluded that there was a dead animal somewhere in the vicinity. We couldn't find anything that night, and since I couldn't handle the stench, slept at the other end of the trailer in Reanna's room.

The next morning, Chris crawled under the trailer to see if anything was under there. Not finding any carcasses, he figured something might have gotten into the duct work. He pulled the air handler out of the HVAC located right outside our bedroom door, and, sure enough, right beneath the fan was a freshly-rotting mouse.

In the mean time, work is progressing on the house. I helped Chris finish hanging the drywall on the ceiling and upper walls upstairs last week, and while I've been fighting a cold the past few days, he has almost finished the rest. This picture was taken in the upstairs rec room looking toward Finley and Joe's rooms. It won't be long now! (Or so I tell myself.)