Stuff

No more grumping (at least for now, I always reserve the right), as I am actually in what could be termed a good mood today. I don't know if it is the fact that spring has FINALLY arrived, with temps in the 70s today, or the good 80s tunes on the radio on the way in, or what.

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I have survived 3.5 days of being a single mom to two under the age of three. I don't think that I'll get any points for grace or perfect parenting, but I've managed to achieve the basic thresholds: they are both still alive, have been fed on a regular basis (with only one trip to Wendy's at Son's request), bathed, have clean clothes, and have been put to bed at a semi-decent hour. They have even been on a walk or two, and spent one afternoon listing to MPR and playing by themselves. I'm hoping the MPR and PBS will cancel out some of the other stuff.

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While I was getting ready this morning, Son climbed up on the bed and was doing his best yellow lab impersonation-panting, and, ewww, licking me. Often. I moved to get away from the little goon, and somehow he managed to head butt me (in his defense, completely unintentionally) squarely on my rather large and previously beat up nose. I heard that god awful noise of something moving in my nose, and boy, did it hurt. After my eyes stopped watering, my cursory inspection revealed nothing broken, but good lord, that kid has a hard head! Assuming that since my nose was throbbing, Son may have hurt himself too, I asked him if his head hurt. He looked at me with a rather confused look and said "no" and continued to look at me like I was an idiot. I banned him from the bed and sent him out to finish watching Clifford (see, use of PBS!)

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Husband came home last night. Hooray. Sort of. He was stressed out about what he will find at work after being gone for five days (the short answer? A mess of a remodeling project), and tired and just plain grumpy. Oh, and did I mention that we are going to be driving almost five hours on Saturday down to Iowa? Good times I tell you, good times.

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Son never ceases to amaze us in smart he is. In this instance, a little scarily so. Husband was home last night, and we were watching a slideshow of his pictures on the HDTV (it has this cool feature where you put in the memory card of your digital camera and it will pop up a slide show in 52 glorious inches). Son walked up to Husband, asked to be picked up, and says very earnestly, "I really love you." Hold off on the awwwws. He then proceeds, in the next breath, to say "I have a poopy diaper." Stinker.
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Oh, I love my real estate website that updates me on listings that I have been following! Husband and looked (as in peered in the windows while standing out in the rain) at a huge house that is bank owned, and has been gutted back to the studs. Apparently, the bank didn't believe in winterizing (duh, winter, Minnesota) and a pipe burst, and the first floor and previously finished basement had to be stripped of everything except the framing. ANYWAY, it was originally listed at $379,900 (it's over 5,000 sq. feet) but they reduced it today by $64,000. If it drops a bit more, we may seriously consider it. It would need about $100k of work to make the first floor and the second livable, and we could leave the basement until we were ready (pending of course, the bank's approval). The yard isn't that great, but the space...oh my God the space. It has a three car garage, and then a tuckunder four car attached to the basement. Oh, the things that we could do.

Of course, there is the small matter of selling our house, which in this crap market may be tougher than even I can imagine, but still, it's really worth thinking about. I've got a list an arm long on the things that we would need to do to make ours ready-minor stuff like repainting the upstairs and stairs walls, finishing the landscaping on the one side, etc. Of course, I get my usual anxiety whenever I think about taking on a bigger mortgage, and losing my big yard. But then again, losing our big yard but gaining some much-needed space would be good. The biggest perk to this? Husband is more than 50% on board with this. After all the fights about this, he is finally figuring out that we are getting space constrained, no matter what we do. How much clutter I throw, there just isn't what we need. And BabyA is only eight months!
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So, there's my week. How was yours?