My Life as a Novel

This week in the life of Rita Polk has been a bit chaotic. I am a person who loves to at least think she's in control of her stuff. The family calendar stays current. The house is never _too_ messy. The A/C filters are changed and the dogs are given their medicine on the same day each month so that I remember to do them both. (There's a term for that: Anal Retentive. And yes, I am. Thank you very much.)

This week, Andrew moved out and our two new roommates moved in. (Did I say "Chaos"?) To their credit, they each kinda did their own thing with little help from us. So, in that sense, it hasn't been a bad transition for any one. But my house? Oy, it has definitely seen better days. For some reason I felt like, with all this other stuff going on, this week would be the perfect time to start a "sort and purge" maneuver on my entire house.

All said and done, I have taken four large bags of clothes to Goodwill, and I dropped off a broken laundry sorter and a small bag of stuff at the recycling place on Monday afternoon. Big steps in returning my house to "order". But there are several big steps left! (Like a bookshelf. I need one of those badly. But where to put it? Ah! I don' t know!)

But the point of this post is this:

1. New Roommates! Yay!
2. My house is going to be clean soon! And, like I always say, it'll stay that way this time!
   

Labels: home, Roommate

Somehow when I went to blog a few pictures from Valentine's Day, this is the only one that I had uploaded. Oh well. The rest didn't do it justice. Let me just tell you how terrific my Valentine's Day was!


First off, I had to run errands in Charleston all afternoon, trying to finish up a wedding invitation project. So, after a quick trip to the grocery store, I was more than a little haggard when I got home. It was a terrific surprise when I walked in the door and the living room and kitchen were SPOTLESS!! "Clean" doesn't do it justice. The kitchen may not have been this clean since we moved in! And on top of that, the table was set, candles were in place, music was playing, and Kyle and Andrew were waiting for the groceries so they could prepare dinner.

April came over and a little while later, the four of us enjoyed a great meal together. The boys made this excellent soup and fettuccine alfredo. And Andrew made those chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. (Technically I think they were for April, but he let me have a couple too!) (Also of note: did you see that cute heart he drew on one of them?!)

Labels: holidays, Roommate, The Hubby

This holiday season went by entirely too quickly. In list format, here's what all happened that I didn't blog about:

• Andrew moved in at the beginning of December. So now we have a roommate.
• We participated in the First (Annual?) Charleston Unsilent Night. It was fun. The music was interesting to me, enjoyable to my husband. We bowed out early, as we passed the Mellow Mushroom, where we were to meet our dinner companions.
  
• I was able to see The Santaland Diaries (for free!) at the American Theater downtown. I love David Sedaris and this play "read" exactly like his books. It was pretty hilarious. But, like his books, had a few moments where your mouth falls open and after the lights dim, you sit back and all you can say is, "Wow. He's got that right." (I should also mention the part was played near-perfectly by Matthew Bivins, of Jump, Little Children fame.)
  
• My office was closed for two weeks, wherein the entire place was remodeled: new carpet, new paint, and an office that is all mine and no longer shared with a coworker as it has been for the four years I've been at this job. I don't know what to do with all this space, but I'm sure I'll adjust.
• Kyle and I catered my office Christmas party again this year. It went very well. Kyle is an excellent cook, and I think we're finally figuring out our roles in this catering thing. We work well together.
• Puppy deliveries: They've all been made. We do have one puppy left at our house, but Bill & Julia are coming over to adopt him tonight. (I meant think about adopting him, but let's be realistic ... they're taking that baby home with them.)
  

Labels: dogs, holidays, photo, Roommate

I'm a planner. I work with checklists a lot. I work best when given a cut-off date. I cannot be trusted to finish a project unless I'm given a definite, unmoving due date. It's the way I work... sad as it is. I'm only at my best when a Date of Accountability is set.

Take my house as an example. It is basically a roof over a building full of unfinished projects. We've lived there for two years and haven't ever completely finished some kitchen projects. Our bathroom has remained unfinished and untouched for almost a year. One of our bedrooms has been untrimmed and crappily painted for two years, with a ceiling fan that is literally on its last leg.

Well it was high time we put our heads together to develop a plan for getting these things taken care of. So my husband, the paint store clerk, went to work with a list of supplies to bring home last week. He brought the supplies home and we set to work over the weekend.

The biggest of the three projects we aim to complete over the next two or three weeks is painting what's become known as The Orange Room ... for obvious reasons.

There are three bedrooms in our house and when we bought it, we said one room could be used for my things and the other was for Kyle's. Both are guest bedrooms, but his has some of his art things in it while mine has my grandmother's sewing machine and all my crafting supplies in it.

When we first moved in, Kyle said he wanted to paint his room orange. So being the nice wife that I am, when he was out of town the weekend of his birthday, I invited a friend over and we painted. It was raining all weekend. My friend forgot to mention that this was her first experience painting. Ever. This is what we call A Very Bad Idea. That was the weekend of June 25, 2005.

And still, as of October 12, 2007, the walls resembled this:



And on Saturday, after a coat of primer, they looked like this:


And after last night, they look like this:

Oh so pleasing to my eyes. I make a point of peeking in the door to make sure it's still really finished whenever I pass by the room.

Now we just have to decide what color we're going to paint the trim. In a general sense, I despise painting trim. Especially when said trim is natural wood which matches the hardwood floors. But that can hardly be said of most of the trim in this particular room. I think the people who we bought our house from let their 8 year old paint his own room before they moved out. The trim, now against a solid wall, really stands out.



Bad.

So ... that to go and the room is done. Room 1 / 3 to be finished before November.

Can it be done? It's a race to the finish!



"And why," you may be thinking, "are you in a rush to get things done before November?"

We're getting a Roommate! :)

Labels: home, Roommate, The Hubby