adjusting to a new normal

Things have not felt normal in my life for what feels like a long time. When we put our house on the market, I knew it would make things different. In that case, it was a good different. I had to have the house clean all the time! The bed always had to be made. The dishes always had to be put away. Every toy had to be in a specific place. It was nice. I could sit on my couch while the kids were napping and breathe a sigh of contentment. I liked looking around and having everything like I wanted it (minus some family pictures I had to take down to have the house on the market).

Then there was the month during which we had an offer on our house and started the frantic packing. My neat, clean, organized house came apart and turned into lots of brown boxes and messes everywhere I looked. Nothing had a place anymore. This went on longer than expected because our closing date kept getting moved back, back, back. Finally the day came when we actually signed the papers and sold our home. All of a sudden we realized it was taking longer to pack up those "last few items" and we were running out of time until the movers came and took all of our things to storage. They were in storage for three days. During that time, we signed the papers for the new house and started the next stage of craziness.

The house we purchased was being occupied by a young guy and his live-in girlfriend. The dad, who owned the home, had already moved out because of a job transfer. The problem was that this son of his was not a neat person. He left our house in absolute disorder and nastiness. Thankfully, his realtor had a cleaning crew come through for us, but there was still so much to be done.

We knew there would be a lot of painting involved since the man who owned the house before us really liked peach walls. And of course, I had to have pink in Allie's room! We had the carpets cleaned so that our new house would be fresh and clean. This is when we found out that if a cat has ever urinated on carpet it stinks horribly when you get them cleaned. This is why we spent the $50 a gallon and had the guy apply the urine treatment on the carpets as well. They still stunk. After we moved in, we started to notice the smell of cigarettes in one of the other bedrooms. Lovely. So, although we had already spent $800 to get the carpets cleaned, we decided it would be best to replace the carpet and start over.

I had no idea how difficult it would be to choose carpet. For one thing, it is expensive. For another thing, you can't compare prices between stores because all of the carpet is private labeled for the individual stores. Frustration. Instead of spending the time unpacking and painting, I was spending my time carpet shopping with two kids. Not fun. I finally decided on carpet I like a lot. We can't afford it. We still have the stinky carpet. It now has paint drips on it in two of the rooms because we thought we were getting new carpet and didn't use drop cloths.

This is where I am today. I have rooms with ugly wall colors because I haven't had a chance to paint them yet. Allie's room is a pretty pink, but she's not currently sleeping in it because it smelled so bad the first couple of nights she was in there. We would open the door in the morning and be blasted with the smell of cat urine. She slept in the pack and play for about a week when I asked Todd to set up the crib, even if it had to be in a different room. Turns out that this is the room that smells like cigarette smoke. Now my baby girl is sleeping in a stinky room of another sort. The wall in that room has one wall painted. We never got around to finishing the other three walls. Our room is painted (good-bye peach!) but the furniture remains in the middle of the room because we haven't had a chance to move it back yet. My kitchen is unpacked and organized (yay!) but the walls have a lot of holes since the people hung pictures in every possible place. Then Todd decided to fill the holes with with goo. The problem is that we have no touch up paint for that room. The valences from the previous owners are still up too. While they aren't horrible, they also don't match my other furniture. The living room is in order but there are absolutely no pictures hanging on any of my walls. I need Todd to help me hang them and he has been busy painting when he is not at work or training for his marathon. My closet is full of unpacked boxes. My upstairs game room is full of unpacked boxes and is also still two shades of peach. We had no TV because our very large projection TV wouldn't fit. Todd went and bought one. It's smaller than my computer monitor, but it was affordable. We are both parking in the driveway everyday in the 100 degree weather because our garage is still full of junk from the move. My playroom is dark brown. Brown is not a fun playroom color.

This is my new normal. Todd thinks I'm being negative. I think I miss my clean, organized life. I miss the days when all I had to worry about was playing with my kids and keeping up with the laundry. Everyday I get a little bit more done. I take Tyler to the new preschool he started last week. I workout even when it's the last thing I want to do. I go to the grocery store. I hope the extra-friendly neighbors don't come over and see my chaos.

This is my new normal. I am trying to adjust.