the day that went off the rails

Joey was scheduled for an appointment at the allergist at 8:45 this morning. He's allergic to eggs and milk, and the only meat he eats is Tyson dino nuggets, and are they really even meat at all? Basically we are raising a tiny vegan. 

Anyway the plan for this appointment was to feed him pudding and see if he reacted, or if he is growing out of his milk allergy. I made the pudding last night, and actually made a second batch for myself because I'm eight months pregnant and it looked delicious. I took the morning off work, and decided that if he passed the test we'd head to Trader Joe's on the way home and buy all kinds of dairy products to celebrate. 

Unfortunately, we never made it to the allergist, because the poor guy woke up with the stomach virus. Matt and I told him he could lay on the couch and watch TV all day, which delighted him. We got him settled on the couch and I turned on his favorite show, Stinky and Dirty. It's a cute show about a trash truck (Stinky) and a digger (Dirty) but here's a word to the wise, if you're going to say "Stinky and Dirty" to your Comcast voice remote, make sure to really enunciate "stinky." Because if the remote hears "Kinky and Dirty" you will get more than you bargained for on the results screen.

Anyway we were about three minutes into the episode when an error message showed up on the screen. Turns out there was a nationwide Comcast internet and tv outage. Now, Matt works for Comcast and I know better than to bite the hand that feeds you and pays the mortgage, but that was not the best timing. 

Joey and I went for a walk to get some fresh air and Matt took advantage of the internet outage and the inability to do his actual work, and he went to go to a plumbing store to try to find a part to fix our dishwasher, which broke last night because of course it did. Luckily by the time we got home from our walk the internet was back on. However, the tv was tuned to the Hallmark channel, which was showing a black and white movie. I told Joey "Look! The tv is fixed!" and he took one look at that black and white movie and said, "No Mommy, TB still broken."

The next few hours are kind of a blur but I'm pretty sure they involved doling out small morsels of club crackers and doing laundry. Joey took a good nap and when he woke up I naively thought we might have been lucky enough to get away with a mild case of the stomach bug. And then between the hours of 3:00 and 6:00 pm I found myself making deals with the Lord. 

Joey's had the standard childhood sicknesses - RSV, croup, lots of colds, a case of hand, foot, and mouth disease unlike anything you've ever seen, and even a surgery.  However, I have met my match with the stomach bug. Yikes. 

He was pretty sad that he couldn't eat any dinner, and I tried to sneak mine discreetly so that he wouldn't feel bad that I was eating and he wasn't. But he totally called me out, and said "You have chicken in your mouth." I admitted that I did, and prepared for him to ask for something to eat too, but all he said was "Don't talk with ya dinna in ya mouth."

I know every parent thinks their kid is the smartest, and I'm not saying he is a genius or anything, but I do wonder at least once a day where he learns this stuff. I've never told him not to talk with his mouth full, and clearly I do not lead by example when it comes to that particular area of etiquette. 

Sometimes I have to blink several times and make sure it's really a tiny two year old in dinosaur pants standing in front of me, and not a middle aged boss man. That little boss was exhausted by bedtime, and after one round of I've Been Working on the Railroad, he practically ushered me out of his room. 

Between the ongoing bathroom renovation project (have I mentioned we are renovating our bathrooms?), the broken dishwasher, and the stomach bug, our house is a complete wreck from top to bottom.

Instead of cleaning it up, I pulled a Scarlett O'Hara and decided "I'll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day."

And also like Scarlett, I decided "As God is my witness, I swear I'll never go hungry again" and made myself a bowl of chocolate pudding, since we have 47 servings in the fridge. 

Maybe I can convince Joey to watch Gone With the Wind tomorrow. The broken black and white version, of course. 

our wedding vows should have said "in good times and bathroom renovations"

Well, we are currently in the midst of renovating our bathrooms. File this under, it would have been easier to move.

(Both bathrooms. There used to be a wall in between.)

 

I needed a little reassurance that this too shall pass and that I won't be showering at my mom and dad's house forever, so I dusted off the old blog to read through some posts about previous home renovation projects that we have survived. 

It seems like the general theme surrounding renovations is that they take much longer than originally expected, and are accompanied with a trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot, as evidenced by the two passages I wrote below about our kitchen reno.  

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Here I am again to talk about my kitchen.  I apologize in advance if you're as sorry about reading kitchen posts as I am writing them.  When we started the kitchen renovation it was Labor Day, and we said we'd probably be finished by Thanksgiving, but FOR SURE by Christmas.

Well those same fools are now well past Easter and just hoping things wrap up by Memorial Day.  

Matt and I were discussing the ideal vs the actual timeline the other day, and he said, "Well, there were just a few aspects that I didn't expect."

"Like what?" I asked.

"For starters, I didn't expect Christmas to come so quickly."

And this one...

Well, the kitchen is finished. After 8 months. 35 weekends. Hundreds of trips to Lowe's. And 1 trip to Urgent Care for a tetanus shot.

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We have two full bathrooms and one half bathroom in our house. We renovated the half bath during the Covid lockdown last year, but have totally ignored the other two bathrooms since we moved in six years ago because they've been holding strong since Eisenhower was president. They've seen 13 total presidential administrations and if it's not broke, don't fix it.  

Although some (namely Matt) would argue they were broke. For instance, the master shower door stopped closing two presidents ago and since then I just fashion a makeshift clamp with a wet washcloth to keep it mostly shut while I shower. 

Matt's been talking about renovating the bathrooms for a while now, but I was reluctant to give my stamp of approval because all I saw was dollar signs and a big headache. Turns out I was pretty spot on. But what sealed the deal for us to do them now was the fact that Oh Baby Darling #2 is coming in January, and we figured it was better to go through a major bathroom renovation project with one child still in diapers, as opposed to a potty-training/ed toddler and a new baby. 

All that to say, Matt promised me that one of the bathrooms would be fully operational at all times, and that he'd take a week of PTO and could easily knock out the hall bathroom in that time. 

I'm here to tell you that we are two weeks into this saga and I just repacked my shower bag to schlep to my parents' house for the 14th time. Reminds me of the old days of 2006 in Mifflin Hall when I'd squeak down the hall in my shower shoes with my caddy stocked with more Garnier Fructis products than you can imagine. But instead of getting dressed in my finest outfit from Forever 21 to go drink jungle juice from a questionable Rubbermaid container afterwards, I now come home in my stretchiest maternity pajamas for a wild evening of trying to heat up a dino nugget without setting off the smoke detector and convincing Joey to eat half a molecule of a vegetable.

Also, the promise of maintaining one fully operational bathroom went out the window sometime between 9:00 a.m. last Monday and noon, which is when I looked out the window to see the master bathroom toilet in the dumpster. 

I got home with Joey and he saw the old bathtub in the driveway. "HEY!" he yelled, "Daddy moved my tub!"

Last Friday evening, I'd just gotten out of the shower (have I mentioned yet I've been showering at my parents house?) and I had a text from Matt that said "drill through the finger," accompanied by a photo of said finger. I rushed downstairs and my mom said Joey could stay at their house while I went home to assess the injury. 

What I saw when I got home was a finger that, well, looked like a drill went into it. I said to Matt, "Well, obviously you need to go to Urgent Care." He didn't even try to fight it and say he'd be fine. He just said, "I guess I'll go get my wallet."

I drove us over there and waited in the car while he ran in, because did you read the part about me wearing my stretchiest maternity pajama pants? It ended up taking TWO HOURS and he got a tetanus shot, a prescription for an antibiotic, and a bandage. 

As we drove home he said "It seems like every time I attempt a major project, I get an injury. Changing the brakes in my truck? Sliced my wrist (that particular injury required surgery).  Kitchen? Nail gun to the leg. Bathroom? Drill to the finger."

He's had more tetanus shots than anyone I know. 

Our neighbor stopped over this morning while Matt was starting day four of tile that he originally thought would take one day. Our neighbor said, "So what's exactly been the slow part? All of it?"

That would be a yes.

And don't get me wrong, Matt is working so hard. He did all the demo by himself and the trash weighed 4220 pounds, and I can't even take credit for one ounce of it. Although I will think twice the next time I complain about taking the trash from the kitchen to the outside trashcan because SMALL POTATOES. And he's been working from 7:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night, barely stopping for lunch. But it's just really easy to watch a few episodes of This Old House and say "Oh I'll be able to knock the tile out in one day, two days tops" and not as easy when you're actually doing it.   

I'm trying not to think about the fact that the master bathroom is still completely gutted, the house is filthy and dusty from construction, Christmas is in less than two months, and I'm eight months pregnant and this is what the nursery looks like. 

Instead I'm trying to focus on the fact that these are the last two rooms in our house that had yet to be remodeled since we moved in. So, assuming we survive this, we have no more major projects ahead of us. 

Today Matt finished tiling the shower, and grouted most of it. I was so excited that I went to the store and bought a shower curtain rod and a shower curtain, and was just about to unearth my shampoo when I googled how long it takes grout to cure. 

At this rate, we might be on to our next president before this is finished. 

more words than i ever thought i'd write about fish

Hello. It's Monday, and my hip hurts. I wish I could say it's from all the workouts I've been doing, but the truth is, I think it's because I hopped a little too enthusiastically when Joey and I were listening to the party freeze dance song for the 478th time this past week. 

I did get one workout in last week. Well, it wasn't so much a workout as it was a leisurely walk around the neighborhood because the temp hit 48 degrees for one glorious day, and it felt positively tropical. I wore leggings and my snow boots, since the sidewalks were slushy, and while we were walking Matt said to me, "Well, you are just the epitome of fashion."

Except he pronounced epitome as if it rhymed with metronome. But still, I appreciated the sentiment. 

Aside from our walk, the other big excitement from last week was that we got new fish, and by some miracle of nature and a bottle of Tetra Safe Start, they're still alive five days later. This was our third attempt at buying fish, from the same store, and the same employee helped us who had helped us a few days before. Matt asked her a question, and she said, "Remind me what kind of fish you already have?"

And Matt said, "Oh, we don't have any fish."

MAYDAY, MAYDAY. SHE REMEMBERED US.

She looked at him with the most quizzical look, but thank goodness she didn't look us and our terrible track record up in the system. We ended up with three tetras and three guppies. Did you know that guppies can give birth every thirty days, and have TWENTY TO FIFTY baby guppies each time?  We sure didn't.

Once the fish lived for a few days and we were pretty confident that the water conditions were finally optimal, we headed back to Petsmart to get just a few more because we are gluttons for punishment. Also because that twenty gallon fish tank Matt bought when he was overly optimistic about fishkeeping was looking pretty empty with six tiny fish. 

While Matt waited at the fish bowl, Joey and I walked around to see the animals. We have worn out the tile in Petsmart this pandemic, making at least two or three trips a month since about May. It's the perfect place to go, because it's never very crowded, Joey basically thinks he is at the zoo, and I'm not tempted to spend any money. 

So the two of us made our usual route from the cats, to the doggy daycare, wound around to the birds, and finished up with the hamsters. By the time we got back to the fish tanks, Matt was watching as tiger barbs were put into a bag for us, "because Joe likes tigers."  I know a thing or two about fish, and one of the things I know is that tiger barbs fall into the semi-aggressive category. The employee told us they'd for sure go after our prolific guppies, so she dumped them back in their tank and suggested another variety of tiny little fish. 

We got six of the kind she suggested, and as of this writing, we can only find three. We know that one got sucked into the filter, but the other two have disappeared. We can't find them anywhere. We are hoping the tetras ate them, which is a weird thing to say, but better than the alternative, which is that they are lost somewhere on my brand new carpets.

Matt told me the news of the lost fish this morning over breakfast, and we both agreed that we are DONE getting fish. This aquarium is closed, which the exception of the incalculable number of baby guppies headed our way. 

And speaking of our new carpets, after breakfast Matt and Joey went downstairs to play, and I followed a few minutes later. When I got into the family room, I noticed what looked like vacuum lines on the carpet. "Wow, did you vacuum?" I asked Matt. "Thanks!"

"No," he said, "I just dragged my feet back and forth on the whole carpet so that it looked like I vacuumed."

He was not kidding. He even demonstrated his method for me. 

"What on earth would make you think to do that?" I asked him.

"Well I was sitting here with Joe and realized the carpet is still new enough that it works. It's like our couch. Don't you remember when we first got it, and the material (it's a suede type material) was so new and I wrote 'boob' on the side with my finger?"

I know this will shock you, but I don't have any recollection of Matt writing boob on the side of our couch. I just hope my in-laws didn't see it. 

That is really the height of class and sophistication. 

Or should I say, the epitome.

animal house

Well, the last post around here was about Joey being born. We just sent him off to college this weekend, so time sure flies.

Just kidding. But he does turn 18 months old in a few days which means he's no longer my sweet little tiny baby, but instead a toddler who never stops moving and is obsessed with baked beans, his train set, and his grandparents.

My mom says Matt and I have a crush on him, and we totally do. She also says that one of these days the crush will end, but it hasn't so far. Although tonight he told me to "SHH" when I started to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so that day might be coming sooner rather than later.

Anyway, since my last post was about Joey's arrival, I thought it was only fitting for my return post to be about the newest addition to our little family.

Or, should I say additions.

Let me explain. 

A few weeks ago, Joey spent the day at my parents' house because we were getting new carpeting, and he  took quite a liking to my dad's beta fish. I mentioned this to Matt, and we talked about the fish for a day or two, and then that was the end of it. 

Or so I thought. Until the Fed Ex truck stopped last week and dropped a twenty gallon fish tank on our doorstep. 

I didn't know the theme of our week was about to be, go big or go to Petsmart. 

Repeatedly.

Matt excitedly brought the tank inside and told me had the perfect spot for it, on the low console table underneath our television.  It was almost like for a moment he forgot that we live with a very curious and determined toddler, who would only need about 3 seconds to throw a toy into the tank and/or splash fish water all over our aforementioned brand new carpet. 

So Matt carried the tank up to the upstairs bedroom that he is using as a makeshift pandemic office. He filled the tank with water, and after we picked Joey up from daycare, we took a trip to Petsmart to buy our new family members. We chose eight fish and some fancy tank decor, including bright blue stone, some plants, and a very realistic sunken ship to make the fish feel right at home. 

Now, I don't necessarily have a background in marine biology. In fact, I have degree in what my dad calls the very lucrative field of English. But I told Matt he needed to float the fish bag on top of the tank and let them acclimate slowly to the water. Matt doesn't have a background in marine biology either, but he used his computer forensics degree to determine my advice was fake news, and dumped the fish right on in. 

We went downstairs and then checked on them before bed. Joey excitedly ran right over to the tank to watch them swim around. Just kidding. He gave the tank half a glance, and then handed Matt the laser level so Matt could shine the laser pointer on the rug and Joey could crawl around chasing it and roar like a dinosaur. Listen. When you have a toddler during a long winter and a global pandemic, you get pretty creative with your pastimes. And that happens to be one of our favorites.

But I looked at the tank while the boys played with the laser and growled, and everything appeared to be going swimmingly. Sadly things changed overnight, because Matt took Joey upstairs to feed the fish the next morning, and walked back downstairs and said, "Well, they're all dead."

HATE TO SAY I TOLD YOU SO. 

That afternoon, we made the drive of shame back to Petsmart. We decided that if the same employee was working at the fish tanks, we would just breeze right back out the door and try again another day. But as luck would (or wouldn't) have it, it was a different employee. We got four fish, and when we paid, the cashier asked me if I would like a bag.  "No thanks," I told her, "this one will be fine."

Spoiler alert. It was not fine.

Hindsight is a plastic shopping bag. 

We headed back home and I held the fish on my lap.  I even took their photo as we drove, those little fish were safe with me!

We pulled into the driveway, and Matt got Joey out of his car seat. I stood on the driveway with my fish bag, looking at the snow that had fallen the day before and thinking about how I heard someone say that it was so cold outside the snow was actually squeaky. I thought about other words I would use to describe freezing cold snow, and it was at that moment my English major heart betrayed my marine biology one, because I heard a splash at my feet. I HAD DROPPED THE BAG OF FISH. 

Matt immediately jumped into action, which was good because I was kind of shocked and thinking about words I would use to describe cold snow. We managed to scrape three of the poor fish off of the driveway with my Giant keychain bonus card and get them back into the bag, which had popped but had a little water left in it. We couldn't find the fourth fish, and at the moment Matt said, "If he fell into the snow, we are losing time to save him," we saw him under the bottom of my boot.

Well, we saw half of him. 

I ran inside (kicked my fish boots off at the door) and dumped the three survivors into a Ziploc bag. Matt took my advice that time, and floated the bag in the tank. We gradually added fish tank water to their bag. We checked the temperature. We sang them lullabies, said a prayer to St. Francis, and went to bed.

Matt headed back up first thing in the morning to check on them. And then came back down with the news, "All three, dead."

Matt immediately ordered a water testing kit from Amazon, because surely the fact that we are amateur fish owners who DROPPED THE FISH ON A FREEZING COLD DRIVEWAY had nothing to do with their demise. When it arrived this weekend he headed up to the tank to test our water. He came back downstairs and said matter of factly, "Well, we have extremely hard water. The fish need it to be 60, and ours measured 180. I think we need to get a whole house water softener. And it just makes sense to replace the water heater at the same time."

That $8.00 water testing kit just cost us just north of two grand. 

We should have just gotten a dog, it would have been a fraction of the cost. 

My brother, who has had several successful aquariums in his day, suggested that we get a bacteria starter to put in the tank for several days before we add any more fish. So back to Petsmart we went, yet again, to get the bottle of bacteria. I don't know why we had to pay ten dollars for bacteria when I'm pretty sure I could have opened the fridge and found some moldy produce that I bought weeks ago with the best of intentions. But instead we shelled over our cold hard cash and came home and dumped some in. 

We figured that had to do the trick. Sadly, when Matt headed upstairs to his office to work this morning, I heard him say, "Oh man, what happened to my fish tank?"

It was so cloudy, it looked like someone had poured a gallon of milk in it. I decided to just hope things worked themselves out, and walked into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, where I saw this on the counter. "What's on the blue plate?" I asked Matt. 

"Oh that?" he said, "it's just a sugar cake that I'm making for my bees. I think they're about to run out of honey and this will give them the carbs they need to make it through the winter. I have to keep adding layers every few hours so don't touch it."

Did I mention we have also gotten a bee hive?

And people say kids are high maintenance.