Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is, really, the first time since moving day that I've been able to sit still long enough to post anything. We only just got our cable/phone/internet back Monday, so my only internet access was at work and, well, that's work, so at last, I've got a minute to myself.

My parents got to town last Wendesday night and it's been a whirlwind of unpacking-moving stuff-unpacking more stuff- moving more stuff- etc. Today the newly re-cushioned and reupholstered living room furniture was delivered, and with that, we are completely and totally moved back into the house. We even have a new (used) set of patio furniture that I can't wait to sit on one warm sunny day.

And as I write, my parents are out hiking, e-baby is napping, SNG's parents are working on jobs at Dianaverse's house, SNG is at work, and I am cooking veggies and pumpkins for pumpkin soup tomorrow. Between SNG's mom, Dianaverse, my mom and me, we will have a massive feast with a turkey, a ham, stuffing, pumpkin soup, salad, green beans, broccoli, bread, 3 kinds of pie, and coffee and tea to help digest it all. Perhaps we should add a shot of pepto to the menu, too? What this really ensures is that we won't have to waste valuable shopping time cooking or getting groceries this weekend. Not that I can afford to buy anything now after the renovation and associated costs. But I can look. I can wake up at 5am and wander the aisles of Sam's or Kohl's and think of all the places I'd put a 52" flat screen TV, or some cute home furnishings.

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

Monday, November 17, 2008

HAPPY-HAPPY-JOY-JOY

The house is finished!! We moved home again last weekend!!

Well, there's a little more stuff to do outside, but nothing that will require adjusting our lifestyles. Friday night we had "a picnic" in the house. SNG moved stuff from storage rooms to other places and I started the process of cleaning every single dish in the kitchen, and every single piece of exposed fabric in the house since everything-- cabinets or no-- was covered in a layer of sheetrock dust. E-baby kept herself busy with emptying out the cabinets, and we all had a good time staying up too late and eating on the newly finished floors.

Saturday morning I dropped e-baby at Season's house, where she played and played and wore herself out for a whopping afternoon nap. I met the housecleaners at the house at 8:30am, and we cleaned in tandem-- the whole house, top-to-bottom, twice-- while SNG continued moving things from storage rooms to their final resting places. No, we are nowhere near finished with that. There's still dust, and there's still stuff being stored in wierd places. In the afternoon I packed the apartment, we ate out Saturday night (and ordered a houseful of new cellular blinds) and tried to sleep.

At 5:30 Sunday morning, E-baby was too excited to sleep. So were SNG and I. We started working on the house again, and then I took e-baby to spend the day with her cousin C-baby. PIC is a total mommy ninja, and managed to get both girls to take a nap-- at the same time-- in the same room!! I am not worthy. Peace, Fuzzy, Dianaverse, and 2 friends from church came to help move everything (Peace and I are as useless with heavy lifting as a couple of waddling pregnant ladies can be, but we're great at lifting with our index fingers), and SNG and I spent all afternoon making the upstairs a safe place for loose toddlers who escape from their bedrooms in the middle of the night. Because, you know, we have one of those now.

Last night we slept in our "new" house. E-baby slept as well as she's slept since August. Maybe because she had so much fun at c-baby's, maybe because she's back in a room that isn't adjacent to a road with giant pickup trucks barreling over speedbumps with super-loud music blaring all night long. That would help me sleep, too.

I actually slept very poorly, because the paint/varnish/carpet/sheetrock fumes are killing me. I think the varnish is what's getting me, although it's hard to say.

I don't know what we'd have done with e-baby underfoot-- we just got so much work done in two days, and it's still nowhere near finished. We might have only moved a few things to the apartment, but we moved EVERYTHING else to other rooms in the house, and it all got dirty. Having Karma and PIC take care of e-baby Saturday and Sunday was a lifesaver.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

NOLA Recap

Last weekend we went to New Orleans (Covington, really) for Fish and Jen's wedding. It was the first time I'd been back since The Storm, and I'm 1) glad I waited to go until after a lot of the cleanup was done 2) glad I went at all. It's unreal how much has changed, and yet, the stuff that's the same is, well, exactly the same.

First thing we did was pick up some po-boys from Deanie's and go to the lakefront to eat them. We sat on the seawall to watch pelicans, ducks and seagulls as we ate and although it is still not really cleaned up, or even entirely reopened yet, some things were no different than ever. The green slime below water line on the seawall, the bird begging for food, the guy waxing his Camaro in the afternoon sunshine playing Def Leppard.

Next we drove all over lakeview, my old neighborhood and area of some of the worst Katrina flooding. My old high school looks terrific. My old elementary school doesn't exist anymore. For that matter, neither does my old house. But houses across the street (several feet higher than my side of the street and backing up to Bayou St John, ergo desirable property) were, for the most part, being renovated and made habitable. It has to be strange to live on a street where people live on one side of the road in modern, luxurious and architecturally designed homes of widely varying styles, and the other side consists entirely of abandoned, destroyed, stripped, or completely eliminated houses.

Since I knew to expect this, though, it wasn't quite as painful to see in person. There's no way to walk around a concrete pad was once your childhood home without a little bit of melancholy, but it didn't last. We cheered ourselves up by wandering around City Park awhile, and then we took e-baby to dinner at Camellia Grill. And then to Angelo Brocato's for cannolis. Pecan waffles and cannolis can cure almost anything.

Friday was Halloween, so we got e-baby dressed up in her costume for the post-rehersal reception. She was so proud of herself, I could have just eaten her up.

I won't give a play-by-play of the entire weekend, because if you read this blog, you were either there yourself, or wouldn't care much about the details. But I will say that e-baby was SO impressed with the fact that K is an animal doctor and immediately fell in love with her. She learned that Fish and Jen are both animal doctors, too, and so of course, she's decided to be an animal doctor herself one day.

More than anything, it was just really great to see old friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in a very long time, some of whom I could easily live next door to and be happy as a clam. We need to have an annual reunion or something, y'all. I'm so happy for Fish and Jen, and for this new stage of life together. Jen was a stunning bride and Fish is quite a catch himself (pun INTENDED!).

I posted the New Orleans trip pictures this morning. And J & K, I definitely want a copy of your pictures from the weekend. Please!

So this week we're back at work, feeling hopeful for the future, waiting for our house to be finished (a week and a half to move home again WOOOO!) and enjoying that these are the last few nights of late-night car engine exaust noises and car stereos.