I see him everyday, but I miss him

Sweet Hubby's started this overnight schedule where he works 4 nights in a row and then he's off for 3 days. The days that he works, I just count on not seeing him except for about an hour for dinner. He doesn't get home in the morning until breakfast time, then he goes straight to bed. He wakes up around 5ish, showers and then leaves directly after dinner. Which means for the majority of the week, I wake up and go to bed alone.

The days that he's off are great. We get to spend a lot of family time together and we get a lot done around the house. But it seems like all our time is just covering the basics. Even when we get a chance to actually have an uninterrupted conversation, we just talk necessities, like the finances or schedules or what needs to be done to the house and when.

The last few weekends, the kids have gone to their grandparents. Which leaves me at home alone after Sweet Hubby goes to work at 7pm. That was nice the first weekend and okay the second, but this weekend, it kinda sucked. I've eaten almost an entire pan of brownies since Friday night and I've watched far too many shows about selling houses. My house is clean and the laundry is done, so there's not much to do in that area. Although, I have become obsessed with bringing my scorched yard back to life, so the last few nights I've spent a lot of time outside moving the sprinkler. In my jammies.

I'm kinda lonely. And feeling pathetic. There doesn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Sweet Hubby's supposed to be working this schedule for 6 months. There's talk that his manager might bring him back to days, but we're not sure about that yet.

I'm gonna go finish off the last brownie.

It's official

There's a sign in our yard and our listing should be on the MLS very very soon.

We're selling our first house!

What a fun guy!

There's this show on Discovery Kids called Grossology. I let my kids watch just about anything on DK except Grossology. I watched half of an episode with the kids once and it was banned. The name says it all. Trust me.

So Stephen was watching a bit of Prehistoric Planet (which is super cool and a new favorite) when a Grossology commercial came on. So he says, "Hey, mom, the next Grossology episode is about basketball and a fun guy. Can I watch it?"

"No."

"But it's about fun guy. Please?"

"What? Sorry. No."

"It's just a fun guy, Mom!"

A light bulb came and I tried to stifle a giggle. "FUNGI! As in mushrooms and such. Not a fun guy! No, you're not watching it."

Evidently, the fun guy that that episode is about is the kind that gives one athlete's foot. Nice.

The randomly randomness of random

The last two days I've been desperately trying to think of something to blog about that doesn't have anything to do with selling the house or the possibility of Sweet Hubby's job change. It's nearly impossible. So I decided to tell you some random things about myself. Aren't you excited?

(On a side note because obviously I can't NOT blog about the house or the job: We don't even have a sign in the yard yet or have a listing agreement signed and someone is coming to look at the house tomorrow. And Sweet Hubby called last night to tell me that his job change probably won't be happening. But I was asleep when he called and I keep feeling like the phone call might have been a dream.)

So. The random things.

*One of my greatest pleasures is eating a bag of peanunt M&Ms and finding one without the peanut. It is the goal of every bag for me.

*Sometimes when the kids aren't around and I'm just watching TV, I'll watch some of their favorite shows if there's nothing else on that interests me.

*I think I'm addicted to change. It occurred to me that we've had some kind of major change every 9 months-a year since we got married 7.5 years ago. We've moved three times (not counting the move to the first apartment), Sweet Hubby's either been promoted or completely changed job 5 times, we've had 3 babies (and I'm counting getting pregnant in my "9 months-a year" statement), we've had 6 different cars, we've repainted something in the house 5 times, and I'm constantly moving furniture around. Every once in a while I start to get itchy for a big change. Even when something good changes, I get excited about it.

*I ate Pringles and half a root beer for dinner the other night.

*I've had to cut back on watching Fox News because all the election talk is starting to make nervous now that we're down to one repub and one dem. I also had a dream where I had a conversation with Hillary Clinton. I decided it was time to turn the channel once in a while.

*I'm realizing now that I'm trying to get the house ready to sell that I must be hopelessly unorganized. If we move, I'm going to try to be so much better about it. I cleaned out Marc-Adam's closet yesterday and was just so irritated with myself.

*I still have clothes in my closet that I wore in high school. Not much because I have cleaned out my wardrobe several times in the last few years, but I still have t-shirts that I wore in high school (and one or two from junior high!) that I still wear.

*I have tan lines across the top of my feet from my flip-flops that I wear all the time.

*I have a hard time remembering my age and all my personal numbers because my brain is so filled up with everyone else's numbers. I hardly use mine anymore.

Don't pay attention to anything I say

So our situation might be changing. Again. Sweet Hubby might be making a change in his job, in which case we might not be moving. Again. There's a lot of "might"s in our life right now. I promise I won't be blogging about anything else until we know what's happening for sure.

All systems go

So after whining and pouting about not getting the numbers we wanted/needed, I decided to call the realtor and tell him what else we were planning to do (paint the exterior, paint the kitchen, etc). I asked him if we could list higher than the number we wanted. He said "sure" and that all the improvements would help. YAY! We're having the carpet people come out Monday to measure the rooms that we're getting the carpet in and that should be put in about 10 days from now. Sweet Hubby painted the master bedroom (that used to be dark purple) and we've got the next week lined up with all sorts of projects. It's a little difficult to plan on the projects since Sweet Hubby works from 8p-8a and sleeps from 9:30ish am-4:30ish pm.

Anyway, all that to say: we're putting our house on the market!

Yay!

Nassomuch

So we finally heard back from the realtor. And the numbers he gave us were about $5000 lower than our lowest allowable number that we decided on. Bah.

So now we either sit tight for a while, or we try to get a second opinion. Although, I'm not sure it'll matter. I'm not sure if "second opinions" are customary in the home selling process. There's really no one else in town we want to use.

Bah.

I'm done now.

Have you ever had a really overwhelming project? Have you ever started said project and then decided you were done with it only halfway through?

Our master bedroom closet was a nightmare. Shameful, really. So, because of this crazy idea that I got that we should sell our house, I decided now would be a good time to clean it out. So I cleaned it out. It's now empty except for the things neatly stacked on shelves and hung on rods. And now I've decided that I want to be done with this project. Except half of the contents of the closet are now strewn about my bedroom in various and random piles. Most of it is laundry that needs to be washed. Oh, and did I mention that our bedroom needs to be cleaned out by some point this afternoon because Sweet Hubby has decided he wants to paint it? Did I also mention that he had 2 wisdom teeth pulled this morning?

We are a bucket-full of crazy. With a little bit of lazy added in.

It's a dangerous combination.

Deep breaths and prayer

We had a realtor out yesterday afternoon. He's supposed to be calling us tomorrow with the figures of what he thinks we can sell it for. Please pray for that. I've now got it in my head that there's no way we can get what we need to be able to walk away with a nice little check to go toward the next down payment. And as much as I know my parents love us, I'm fairly certain that only God himself would want to house my entire family for more than a few months. If we don't get enough equity out of this house it would take us much longer than a few months to save up what we need.

I've really got my heart set on moving out of this little town now. I've started looking at houses and churches and thinking about how much money we'll be saving in gas and how we'll be so much closer to our pediatrician and the hospital that we had the last two babies at. If the realtor doesn't call back with the "magic number", my heart will be broken. I've let myself get entirely too excited at the idea of moving.

So I'm doing lots of deep breathing and praying and remembering that I'm not in control of this.

That's the good news and the bad news.

The almost big news

So obviously I haven't been blogging much. I've had a few things on my mind that I don't really want to blog about just yet. And if I can't blog about those things, then I just can't blog because I'm not really thinking about anything else. But I decided to relax a little and blog about the biggest thing taking up my brain cells right.

We're going to try to sell our house. I've been straightening and cleaning like mad for a few days because I called our realtor (that sounds so hoity-toity, "our" realtor...he's just the guy who sold us this house). He hasn't called us back yet, but I want him to come over and take a look around and tell us what we can do to help this house sell ASAP. Not that we are in a particular hurry, because we aren't, I just don't want to have the house sitting on the market for months and months. We are going to make some cosmetic changes. We're going to recarpet the bedrooms. I think two of the bedrooms have the original carpet. Shag carpet. Dark brown shag carpet. Actually, I love it except that it's brown and shag. I loved having it in the boys' rooms and in the playroom (before we ripped all the carpet up in the living areas) because it's so soft and plush, they almost never get hurt when they fall on it. Our bedroom has some nasty well-loved berber carpet which is reminding us of one particular fit that one of our children threw and also of one particular illness that the same child had. It's in nice shape, y'all. So we're going to replace it all. And then all of the flooring in our house (except for a few closets and the utility room) will have been replaced. We're also going to repaint the kitchen and the exterior of the house. Right now the outside is brick with a nasty yellowish beige and brown trim. We're going to paint the yelllow white and brown black. It should look much nicer. We also have to put a few finishing touches on our last remodel project that never got finishes. And Sweet Hubby will have to fix the ceiling in our room where he accidentally made a nice little entryway for himself via the attic.

The down side to making all these changes is that we don't have the cash to do it right now. Which means we'll have to put it on a credit card. We recently paid off all of our credit card debt, so it's a little painful for us to have to charge again.

We're hoping since we've made all these updates (because the house was firmly set in the 60s when we moved in) that we can get quite a bit of equity out of the house. The plan is that we'll sell the house for as much as we can get and then move in with my folks for a few months while Sweet Hubby is working overnights (he just started that shift this weekend and will be working it for the next 6 months). For those few months we'll be trying to save our money like mad to put a decent down payment on the next house. Which will be in a nicer area with more to do and a bigger homeschool community. It will also have everything we should need within just a few miles. And that will be.so.nice. Because as it is I have to drive at least 20 minutes to do anything. The gas is killing us. Sweet Hubby will actually be a bit closer to work and it will be much more of straight shot for him.

So that's the plan. I'm cautiously excited. I know the housing market stinks. And I know that no one in their right mind should want to move out here. But we have a nice little house with a huge yard and all we need is one person or family to want to buy our house. I can't wait to buy a new house. I've already started looking and there are at least a hundred in the area in which we are currently looking (although, I'm not married to moving to that area).

WFMW~Pill Taking

I always feel weird about doing a Works for Me Wednesday because my tips are always so simple that I think everyone on earth must be doing them and I'm just so silly because I think I figured something out on my own and think that I need to share with the world. When the world already knew. But here goes one anyway, because I think it really could be a big help if people don't already do this.

Some pills are hard to take, right? Either they are really big or they are just plain nasty. When I was pregnant, I had to take an iron pill that was both. But I figured out a way to get it down without having to taste or feel it.

Before you put your pill in your mouth, take a good sized sip of whatever you are washing your pill down with. Then push the pill in your mouth (obviously, your mouth will have to stay closed since it's full of drink and you may have to suck the pill in a little) You have to be careful to not let the pill turn sideways, so it's best to swallow as quickly as possible. That's it. I never taste or feel pills anymore. You might have to try this trick a couple of times before getting it just right, but it's so much easier than the regular way of taking the pill then drinking the water.

Go check out some more great tips at Rocks in My Dryer.

After a dose of Tylenol and a short nap, I was able to haul my rear out of bed to have this conversation with Stephen:

Stephen (to himself): Damn, damn, damn.

Me (calmly, after overhearing him): What'd you say?

Stephen (looking a bit like a deer in the headlights): I was just saying damn. Not like, "Damn, you're stupid" or "Damn, dad did something bad". Just damn. I don't want to get in trouble! I wasn't saying it bad!!

Me (trying not to fall out of my chair laughing and keep myself from crying because it hurts to laugh this hard): Okay. I appreciate that you weren't meaning anything bad, but it's still not an okay word for 5 year olds to say.


I have no idea where that came from.

I'm afraid the conversation won't come across on the blog nearly as funny as I found. But I suppose you just have to know Stephen. For the record, he might have heard the word damn uttered a few times in our house, but never "Damn you're stupid" or "Damn, dad did something bad". Really, it's just damn. And honestly, "stupid" is more of a dirty word in our house than "damn".

A little update on Marc-Adam

In case you were wondering, Marc-Adam's illness and fever went away on Friday almost as quickly as it came on. He had us pretty worried, but he's completely back to normal now.

However, now I'm feeling pretty crummy. I'm pretty sure whatever is going on with me is completely unrelated to M-A's illness and not contagious, but it is keeping me from feeling normal and productive. In fact, it took everything I had just to get out of bed this morning. And now, I'm going to go lay back down while the kids are resting and pray that I can get back up afterward.

The good news and the bad news

Good news~I found my camera!! I just know you've been dying to see pictures of my new-to-me piano and all the tasty peaches we got.

Bad news~I don't when I'll be able to post them (I'm not doing it now because that would require going out to the car and I'm just not gonna) because M-A's got a nasty fever and is stuck like glue to my chest for the majority of his waking hours. We took him to the doctor today and we think he's okay, we just need to keep an eye on this fever and look out for any new symptoms.

You know you've been spending too much time with your kids when....

....you use words like "potty" and "night-night" in conversation with other adults.

Yeah.

How cool!

I use the word "cool" too much. Maybe I should try "neat", "neato", "swell".....maybe not.

ANYWAY, I stumbled upon this website today called, Laptop Lunches. They're neat (haha, I can use that word) reusable lunch boxes with containers that are all BPA, lead and phthalate free (honestly, I don't know what phthalates are, but the lunch boxes are free of it). Obviously, we won't be needing a lunch box for the school lunch, but we do take lots of field trips and have play dates at lunch time. I'm thinking these are perfect for each of the kids. I want some.

Oh, and check out the photo gallery of lunches. It's inspirational, I tell you.

Wow, did I just say that?

Stephen and I were having a "teachable moment" this afternoon and I caught myself saying this:

Stephen, there are times when we're really angry or upset or things seem really bad and we don't feel like praying. Those times when it's hardest to pray are the times when we need to pray the hardest.

I was pretty impressed with myself. That's pretty deep for me.