So the general consensus seems to be that 2009 kind of sucked. I’m guessing that this has to do with many members of the general consensus losing their jobs. So, indeed, point taken.
We mostly managed to survive The Year of the Layoff, although we weren’t entirely unscathed. (Long story — some other time, maybe.) (We both still have our jobs. For now. Please bribe the Job Gods for us, would you?) So at first, I was slightly taken aback by all the “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, 2009!” Facebook statuses, etc. Anyway, even after being reminded for the umpteenth time that the economy is a total disaster, for whatever reason, I’m reluctant to write off 2009 entirely. For us, it was…an unusual year. On the one hand, we kind of kicked ass. We accomplished a lot and we are going to get big shiny gold stars from our financial planner. And! We bought a home!
But we kind of forgot to have fun.
Well. Renovating our home took many, grinding, soul-eating months. We fell off the map. We didn’t see our friends, it seemed, for ages. And then once the (saw)dust settled, it looked for a few months there like we were both going to lose our jobs and we set about on a kind of XXXtreme battening down of the hatches, and going for drinks or movies or burgers or coffees, or any of those things you typically do with your friends, was out of the question. Because LAWD would we be screwed in our new home if neither of us was working and we didn’t have a contingency plan and/or fund. At one point, we had a fight over three dollars. (It seemed like a lot of money at the time.)
(I’m not even going to talk to you about The Cough, which is now in its third month. It’s in the 97th percentile for its age and it’s almost sleeping through the night already! We think it might be able to sit up on its own soon.)
So my New Year’s resolution this year is to have fun. I’ve signed up for classes at the community centre, I’m accepting invitations, I’m blogging (hi!), I’m thinking about what might be a good fit for volunteering*, and, well, I dunno, I guess I’ll do whatever else seems fun. Fun is pretty easy to find, so this should prove an easy resolution to keep.
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*Yeah, listen. I hate volunteering. I know you’re not supposed to say (or think?) that, but it often feels an awful lot like work to me, complete with schedules and office politics. Except the office politics come with a more self-congratulatory crowd, with the kind of people who eye you haughtily across the lunch room over their spelt muffins, waiting for you to do something that they can sniff at. And do you know what I already do 40 hours a week? Deal with schedules and office politics and annoying people I have no choice but to be around. Except I get PAID to do it and it therefore makes some sense for me to feel obligated to show up.
So there’s that. But. I want a dog. And I cannot have a dog. I mean, technically, I can. But, no. We have enough going on here at Chez Hairball in terms of pet hair. So I want to volunteer somewhere** where I can scratch ribs and make tails thump and get snorgled by a wet puppy dog nose…and have that somehow translate into social good. Because, for reals, THAT would be fun.
**Can’t be the SPCA. Guess where my last volunteer position was. Yeah. And now guess how we ended up with the third cat. Yeah. So I want to work with lovey bubkins, but they can’t be on death row, or I fear that we will end up on a very special episode of Hoarders, the one where they find out where where all the pound puppies went.
There are two reasons. One, I’m still sick. Have been sick for months now*. Coughing. It’s neither funny nor interesting, yet sinisterly all-consuming. But, seriously, I really don’t want to talk about it.
The other reason.
An old friend passed away suddenly last month just days after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and, because she was a loyal and supportive reader here, it just hasn’t felt the same. I’d begin to compose a post in my mind and I’d quickly get tripped up on the empty chair in my imaginary audience.
I want to keep this short. I won’t stake any claim on grief when I’m not at the epicentre of this tragedy; this story belongs to her husband and her two little kids. But there’s this: Robyn, Honey, it’s not fair. Thirty-three is too young. I know you didn’t want to leave your kids behind. Fuck cancer — you didn’t deserve this.
And there’s this: You were a sweet person. I’ve known you all my life and can’t remember you once making a cutting remark about someone else. Poised — you were poised. You could sing like an angel, but maybe kindness was your true talent.
And there’s this: Thank you for reading. Thank you for your support.
I’ll see you on the other side, old friend.
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*Yes, the doctor. I’ve been to the doctor. In short, they have no idea. Which: what can you do.
It’s come to my attention that perhaps no one is aware that they should be feeling sorry for me right now. The world continues to spin on its axis and everyone is carrying on with their own lives, focused on their own problems, even though I’m sick. It’s weird, right? To expect a grown woman in her thirties to know what to do with herself when she’s sick, as though most people her own age somehow manage not only to take care of themselves, but growing children too? Ha! See? I knew it! It’s weird!
Perhaps this has been some kind of miscommunication. Perhaps people aren’t fully aware of the gravity of my situation. I have a mild fever, people. A MILD FEVER. Sometimes I feel cold and kind of achy. Yeah. I KNOW. How such things can be trifled with when there’s an international pandemic going on is beyond me. People are critically ill and dying, but what about me? What about that gentle aching in my shoulder that can almost be ignored?
And to make matters worse, my totally flexible employers have been entirely sympathetic and understanding. When the doctor ordered bed rest and was so serious about it he wrote a note to my employer*, my supervisor shoved his note back at me, muttering things about how entirely unnecessary it was, and gave me a hug. And, get this. GET THIS. I can work from home in these situations, if I’m up to it, so that I don’t have to use up my sick days. Sure, my sick days are paid and guaranteed because I’m in a unionized environment, but they’re also banked so that one day I’ll get paid out for those days. How is that fair? Or you know what else? I can choose to go in next Friday to make up time, even though I usually get every third Friday off — in addition to my four weeks’ paid vacation, that is. How can I be expected to work a day that most places I would be required to work anyway?!?
So, OK FINE, I have many attractive perks and options that most people, even those of us lucky enough to be in the industrialized world don’t have (except for maybe the French), but I have big problems here, BIG problems that overshadow all of that. Being home alone all day is boring. I may get to sleep in and then shuffle to the living room to loaf about in my pajamas while no less than two cats snuggle me, but maybe, JUST MAYBE, I don’t want to watch movies anymore. Did you ever think of that? Or maybe people aren’t posting to their blogs at nearly the rate I need them to. Or maybe I am in between library books and am being forced to wait until this evening for my husband to bring me home new ones. (I know! A husband who brings me things! ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE. My GOD the humanity.) Yeah. They’re here and they’re real, these problems. REAL.
And did you hear the part about the mild fever?
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*Well, OK, yes. The slightly serious thing in this whole mild (MILD!) debacle is that I have a pulmonary infection. Also mild (MILD!), I suspect, in the grand scheme of pulmonary infections. Except that it affects my breathing in a most inconvenient (yet mild!) way. Oh that’s right, folks. A MILD INFECTION. You can go ahead and send chocolates, puppies, and kittens directly to my home address. Thank you.
Also, yes, those who have been subjected to my Facebook status updates, my tweets or, let’s say as a ball park figure, those who have been within a 10 mile radius of my person in the last several months will have heard me inevitably whining about being sick PREVIOUS to now. I have been sick this whole time. So. I probably should have gone to the doctor sooner. If you want to feel sorry for me for legitimate reasons, you can pity me for being such a dumb-ass.
[Post inspired by Jen who managed to make me smile today, but who also once cracked me up on her old blog talking about her renos. You should go read her new blog.]
Listen. September was awful. I got sick and was dragging my ass around and then I started to get better. And then. Someone I love passed away and…yeah. That one hurts. I’m not going to write about it because it’s not really mine to write about (it was my best friend’s dad, and although he was like a second dad to me, I could never do her grief justice) except to say being remembered for all the laughter and music you brought into everyone’s life can only mean a life well lived and loved. Would that more of us could be so gracious and open-armed.
I went home for the funeral and we couldn’t afford to fly Kieran out too and I was sad and alone at all the wrong times and cried a lot and then I came home with a fever and got sicker than ever. (I know the words SWINE FLU just came flying at you in big black letters, but, uh, I dunno. I don’t think so? Probably not? OK?)
And then it was Thanksgiving and we drove home through a freak early snowstorm and next thing I knew we were with my best friend and her family for Thanksgiving dinner and Kieran was hanging her son by his ankles and she and I were giggling on the couch about our Grade 5 teacher and the hole that was torn in my heart when I saw her crying for her dad at the funeral began to heal over.
The next day we were surrounded by my own family and in-laws from all corners, and my cousin’s kids were adorable and fun and awesome as always.
As was Kieran’s mini-me baby brother.
And then we were in Calgary with my dear friend Karla, stuffing ourselves with homemade pizza and cupcakes and laughing until we cried about that time I drove for a really, really long time on a really, really flat tire with Karla as my passenger going, “Dude. I THINK SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH YOUR TRUCK.” Then, the next day, because Kieran had never had it and it’s a Calgary institution, we got Pete’s Drive-in and then rolled about like beached whales and groaned dramatically while rubbing our Buddha bellies. And finally, between all the friends and food and cousins and giggling, I was full up again.
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Because this is a post that should not be without music, here’s an old favourite of mine, a song Rob introduced me to when he played it for us kids at the lake cabin…he was perhaps the only person I’ve known who could do Simon and Garfunkel justice.
The spare bedroom (seen here and here in varying states of spirit-killing squalor). But let’s go back to the beginning, just for full effect.
Before
As you can see, again with the beige (BEIGE). Grubby, depressing beige. Beige wallpaper, beige carpet, beige curtains. BEIGE. There is a certain efficiency to using the same non-colour for every surface of your home, BUT STILL. I’ve been over the nightmare that was that fracking wallpaper, so there’s not much fun to be had by way of a during picture, except perhaps to review this…this…STATE OF AFFAIRS THAT CAN ONLY BE SPOKEN OF IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE MY GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE LIVING LIKE THAT BUT ANYWAY HERE YOU GO, I’LL STOP YELLING NOW.
During, My God, the During
And now, several months of manual labour and an untold number of boxes later, here we are!
After
What you’re looking at: walls that have been de-wallpapered, patched, and painted “Zen Green,” which doesn’t actually photograph all that well, but it’s a really pretty, soft, airy green; new flooring that, of course, matches the flooring in the rest of the house; new floaty curtains; new baseboards; our old skool TV atop our antique sideboard that has been waiting to be refinished for the last year but is just going to have to wait even longer because, you know, RENOS; and our new (to us) futon that we got off of Freecycle because we had grown quite weary of spending money on the new home and, also, free! The room in general is a little…unfinished yet, in terms of giving it any real personality or flare, but we’re getting there.
Now, about that futon. I was wary of the free futon from strangers over the Internet. I felt quite certain that cat pee would be involved. However, like I said, spending money on the new home had worn rather thin at that point, and moreover, we’d resolved that all of the renovations would be paid for in cash and buying a new piece of furniture would have been stretching our limits in that regard. So we were willing to give the free futon a shot, figuring that at least we could get a free frame and buy a new, non-urine soaked mattress if necessary. But instead of getting a musty mattress saturated with pee (or wandering into an axe-murderer’s trap, which was my other fear), we hit the freecycle jackpot and found ourselves in one of the most immaculate homes I’ve ever seen, picking up a perfectly good, stain and odour-free futon. For free. The only downside to the whole transaction was that the mattress cover was rather ugly. So, I dug our old duvet cover out of the Goodwill bag and lo! It suited the paint in the spare room quite nicely! Only. Erm, by quite nicely I mean “matched exactly.” As in, “Where’s the futon? I see two floating arm rests and then a sea of Zen Green…” And so commenced my city-wide search for some throw pillows to jazz up the room a bit and, also, to outline the location of the futon so that unwary visitors wouldn’t go bashing their shins into our cleverly camouflaged furniture. And you’ll never guess what colour of cushion is widely available everywhere, from Ikea to Urban Barn and every big box and little store in between. ZEN GREEN. Zen green cushions in every shape and size imaginable! (And don’t even get me started on what it took to come full circle to those white curtains that are exactly the same as the ones in the master bedroom because do you want to know what is very popular right now for curtains? Yes. Of course. ZEN GREEN.) (But I rather love the look of those white curtains now, so it’s all for the best.)
Some other notes on this room: I’d wanted it to feel light and airy and with the colour, the natural light, and the sheer curtains it really does. The room is perfect for sitting and reading, which I love. I also love the whole idea of having another room. We lived in one bedroom apartments for years; this tiny room has become this lovely little sanctuary and the airy feel adds to that. We don’t have to be in the living room or the bedroom…or the living room…or the bedroom. We can, if we want, have a space to ourselves. It’s…a revelation.
We also wanted to try having the TV separate from the main living area so that the focus of the living room could be more on creating a “conversation circle” with the furniture, instead of just pointing all the furniture at the TV. This has worked out quite nicely on the whole. However, the spare bedroom is small and turned out to be rather narrower than we initially thought (I think it’s really designed to be either an office or a nursery) and as you can see, our TV is rather big. So when we do watch TV or movies, we’re uncomfortably close to the screen and we end feeling a little sea sick and cross-eyed. This situation would likely be rectified by a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, but given how very little TV we watch, it just isn’t worth spending the money at this point. I feel obliged to explain that, by the way, because a surprising number of people are resistant to our hesitation to rush out an buy a new TV to the point where I find myself apologizing for how we’re not spending money on a luxury item we don’t need or use. People are weird about it is all I’m saying.
Boy, being frugal can take the wind out of the design-revelation sails, can’t it? “Ta-da! A room with a discarded futon with an old duvet cover that had been headed to charity…all of it facing another second-hand piece of furniture and a hand-me-down TV that is generally considered a mockery to middle class living! Oprah? Are you calling Nate?”
Anyway, I’d also wanted the spare bedroom to serve as an office/space where I can write, which it may well do yet, with a little rearranging of the furniture to accommodate a desk. Although it would have to be creative rearranging once a new piece of furniture was added, wouldn’t it? It’s a small, small space…albeit a small, small space that’s somehow added a whole new dimension to our living space in general. If it came down to it, I’d give up the en suite bathroom (as handy as it is) in a heart beat before I’d give up having a second bedroom.
For this is all I’ve been doing with my time, lo these many months. Tonight, the en suite bathroom.
Before
What you’re looking at: Well, not much. It is but a wee room that is rather tricky to photograph. Anyway, first allow me to draw your attention to that mirror/medicine cabinet combo…thing. That’s glued to the wall. Glued. Yes. We’ve also got going on a faintly musty, yet decent and sturdy vanity; a deplorably chipped beige (BEIGE) sink with ugly faucet; a surprisingly unstained counter top that is unfortunate only for its old skool “pork chop” that runs over the toilet; a rather clunky, big ol’, water guzzling HOG of a 13L toilet that’s also a wee bit on the drippy side; some actually rather lovely blue paint that had to go anyway as it matched too exactly our towels — but, really, we also wanted the colour to be the same as the bedroom; and some truly hideous, asbestos-era linoleum that’s topped by three (3) different types of mismatched baseboards. Oh, and you can’t tell, but the knobs on the vanity doors are a slightly weird size and somehow indescribably odd and ugly, even though they look like they should be cool and modern.
There are no “during” pictures because of the cramped quarters, but the during part did include me applying four (4) coats of paint. Not including the primer. All the other walls took two coats of paint, so this remains a mystery…our only going theory is that yellow paint just doesn’t cover blue paint all that well. My blood pressure is going up thinking about that, so moving on before the ranting overcomes me.
After
What you’re looking at: more Moonlit Yellow paint (four layers of it — ahem!); a proper medicine cabinet (switched out from the main bathroom, actually); a scoured, cleaned, and painted vanity (that has new contact paper on the inside too!), cured of its mustiness and affixed with appropriately sized knobs; the same counter top after undergoing a pork-chop-ectomy; a white sink also switched out from the main bathroom that is sans chips(ish) (I touched up the one chip that it had and you can’t see it at all!); a pretty, new water saving(!) faucet; and a bad ass (so to speak) new, water-saving(!), dual flush toilet. (You’re also looking at poor lighting due to the fact that one of the bulbs in the light fixture burnt out and we…just can’t right now. Too many balls in the air to attend to routine household maintenance, you know? Anyway.)
And in this picture, you can see a little more clearly my pride and joy:
The new tile! Tiling is the one renovation we didn’t take on ourselves because for the tiny amount of square footage we needed covered, hiring a professional was only marginally more expensive than doing it ourselves (once we factored in the cost of the tools we needed for the job). And with hiring someone, there was much less swearing and feeling put-upon, what with all the First World problems. The tile is accented by new baseboards. That all match.
Now to briefly switch gears, a wee glimpse of the living room — the merest hint of a preview — because you need to know that Kes and Logan are fully in love now. They’ve been flirting for years, but now it’s come down to openly snuggling and grooming each other’s faces.
Nermal usually sulks when they do this, as she is convinced that Logan is her nemesis. Nermal still gets tons of Kes cuddles, though; she just wants ALL the Kes cuddles. Here is Nermal, not sulking but demonstrating why we sometimes think she’s a spy from the cat home planet.
I am aware that this couldn’t possibly be as exciting for you as it is for me, but please bear with me anyway. Because it’s exciting! To have a home! That is not squalid and filthy and covered in grit, not to mention a home that doesn’t have a miter saw on the dining room table (or toilets in the dining room for that matter!).
Annnnnnd, I’ll stop there. Because I could go on all night about the hating and the hate with all the hating of living in a mess. Which is over. So it’s okay, self, shh, shh.
Tonight I have for you the master bedroom. Complete! Clean! Yellow! My favourite colour!
Let’s start with the before, shall we?
Before
What you’re looking at: a poorly lit shot of a very drab, grubby room. The poor lighting has something to do with the fact that there is no lighting. The walls are filthy beige — and by filthy I mean when I washed them down before painting them, they turned out to be an entirely lighter shade of beige — and a filthy beige carpet. There was also, for the record, no baseboards, no closet doors, and the door to the en suite bathroom had a sizable hole in it.
During
The first order of business was to remove the filth sponge carpet. And, dudes. Carpets are gross. There were PILES OF DIRT trapped under there (you can click here to see, if you want). I was truly horrified and have sworn that I will never have carpet again, if I can help it. Next up was painting the walls with fresh paint and — hey! — a colour. OTHER THAN BEIGE.
Then it was time for new flooring…
And then ceiling paint, and closet doors, and doors, and baseboards, and curtains and…voila! A MERE THREE AND A HALF MONTHS LATER…
After
And we have a beautiful new master bedroom! With lighting and colour and cleanliness. SWOON. Aside: See the bedside tables? They used to be green and last weekend I painted them white to match the bed frame. This was a task I put off for several months because I thought it would be fussy and annoying, but spray painting turns out to be quite the opposite of fussy (although, I’m afraid, extremely toxic). I put it off to the point of considering buying new bedside tables, which would have cost at least $100 instead of, like, uh, $5.
Here’s a less artful shot of the room from the other side, if only to demonstrate Kieran’s handy work in that we now have closet doors that, you know, exist and entry doors without holes punched in them. It also nicely shows off the colour of the paint (it’s called Moonlit Yellow, which is apt because it has a delicate silvery undertone to it). The paint! Which is yellow! My favourite! Did I mention that already?
Tomorrow: the en suite! But for now, bbs, I have a date with Harry Potter. Oh, did I tell you? We’re relaxing this week and not doing renos. We were both gravely run down. Besides, what’s left is so negligible, I won’t even bother boring you with it. But for this week we’re enjoying what is as good as done.
Sigh. This right here is one of the more awkward aspects of blogging. Where you write something and put it up and then after you’ve marinated on it for a while you change your mind. You didn’t like how it came out. In real life when I’m perhaps saying sarcastic, graceless things, as I am wont to do (most unfortunately), I have the benefit of other people’s falling facial expressions to provide useful cues as to when to STFU. Here, I say stupid things and then have to wait half a day for my brain to catch up with my mouth. And then I have to writhe in horror that I’ve said something stupid on the Internet. Where many, many people can see it.
Which is to say: my post yesterday…I don’t like how it came out. It came out all negative and jabby at blogging in general (hopefully not at other bloggers, because nooooooooo), when what I was trying to say is that **I** suck at this. At blogging. Me. I suck. (Case in point: RIGHT NOW.) Blogging doesn’t suck; I do. Because I’m not entirely convinced that what I’d hoped would be a self-deprecating tone didn’t ratchet into just plain old deprecating, I’ve pulled the post. I don’t know how much weight anyone gives to my opinions in these here parts, but I don’t want Blue Yon Belly to be a negative space. I’m posting this retraction for the four of you who pick me up in your reader. So, gentle readers, if you caught that last post, forgive me.
First to Nelson, BC for some camping and navel gazing…
Then to the Okanagan for some more camping and navel gazing…but with more wine.
There are still renovations to be done, but we are close. Thisclose. Pictures to follow shortly. And then we can speak of other things! That I’m doing! With my time! Or that you’re doing with your time! Really!
Life is kicking my ass right now. I…I wish that I had some stunning “after” pictures indicating our triumphant completion of the renovations and unpacking, but no. Things don’t look especially different from the last set of pictures. There are still boxes everywhere, only now the boxes have disheartening tufts of cat hair collecting around their bases. In short, everything is a mess.
It’s not for lack of trying, you see. We unpack. Constantly. AND YET. The boxes, with all the boxes, with all the stuff, everywhere. I also make dispirited attempts to quell the cat hair with the vacuum, but it never fails that just as I turn the machine off, a new cat hair tumbleweed will come billowing out of some corner I couldn’t reach. ON ACCOUNT OF ALL THE BOXES.
If there’s one thing that will crush my spirit, it’s actions with no countering measurable outcomes. This is what the unpacking has become. Someone (JG!) very aptly compared moving into an apartment to those tile games that have the one missing tile. You know the ones, where you have to move a bunch of tiles out of the way in order to put one tile in its right place. But this creates a cascade of tile moving and shuffling and you end up having to remove that tile from where you put it in order to move around another two tiles, but then you can’t get that original tile BACK because there’s now FOUR tiles in its way. AND SO ON.
Well, anyway. I won’t keep you. I’m just saying. I’m not enjoying this. I know one day it’ll be done—probably quite soon, actually. (Ever notice how when you get to the point of being all “ZOMG I hate this and I can’t STAND IT ANYMORE and I’m so upset I’m going to COMPLAIN ABOUT IT to the INTERNET” it’s usually when you’re about to crest the hill, only you don’t realize it yet, mostly because you’re just feeling the whole lotta hill behind you.)
So, I’ll be seeing you soon, BBs. With pictures. AFTER PICTURES. Dammit.
**Nothing like whining publicly to light a fire under one’s ass. I…well, I never quite feel comfortable after I post about my frustration with something. Although it certainly helps me to vent (better living through sarcasm!), I’m not entirely sure it makes for the best read. But! Anyway! You wouldn’t believe how much better things are right now. We busted through the log jam of boxes and we’re getting close to living like normal humans again. I’m very excited! And—AND!—we scored a free futon for our spare bedroom! And—AND!—we found out that we were grossly misinformed about the cost of replacing our bathroom counter. Like, the lady we initially talked to must have taken a long, burbling hit off of her Home Depot bong before talking to us, because what we thought would cost, oh, $1000 plus change will ACTUALLY cost us $60. Sixty bucks. That’s it. That? We can afford. On with the renovations!
Anyway, it was a good weekend, a productive weekend, and it was AWESOME. And I’m feeling much better because, hey, I can walk from one end of the spare bedroom to the other. Now, isn’t that something?
Life lessons learned from the last two months: a) Moving is hard. Use sparingly. (Starting…nnnnnnnnnnoooow.) b) Clutter: I can’t. I CAN’T. It makes me want to PEEL MY FACE OFF, but whether that’s before or after my stabbing spree, I can’t decide. In short, I need a clean, peaceful space and I need to STAY THERE.**
