From a Door to a Headboard

When I had my son at the end of 2009, I convinced my husband that we needed a new bed. The old one was 10 years old and I wanted to upgrade to a king this time around. The master bedroom in my house is huge, so we definitely had the space. The previous owners put a 500 square foot addition on our ranch that makes up our office and master bedroom. Our queen sleigh bed looked small in the large space.

The new king mattress fit nicely into our space, but my sleigh bed, which was made for a queen, was relegated to the attic to sit in storage. For the next 5 years, our bed was a big mattress set on a metal frame.

Enter my bff, Pinterest, and I figured out how I could pretty up my bed. Here’s a before shot. (When I snapped this photo, I was playing around with the idea of using my bureau as a footboard. I was also doing laundry. Let’s just pretend it’s not there.)

I visited Habitat for Humanity’s Re-store with my friend Denise, and I came home with this door for only $25.

The “Princess door.”

The princesses were a bitch to get off. I used nail polish to remove them, but that only took off the color. The dark outline of each princess was still clear as day. So, because I was wanting to move on, I just sanded it down and figured the first coat of paint would cover them up.

After the first coat of paint.

I chose a light teal color. First, because I liked it, and second, because I had some left over from when we painted the playroom walls the same color. I picked up a 7 foot piece of vinyl molding/trim from Home Depot for $7 and a big bottle of wood glue for $3. Using my husband’s circular saw (I have no idea what it’s proper name is) I cut the trim to the width of the door. I used the wood glue to attach the trim to the top of the door and added a second coat of paint.

Trim and second coat of paint? Check!

Once the paint was dry, I had to figure out how I was going to mount this thing. I didn’t have any other wood to make “legs” to keep the headboard up off the floor, so I decided I would nail it directly to the wall. But the door was too heavy for me to both hold in place and nail to the wall at the same time.

It just so happens that one of my filing cabinets was the exact height that I wanted the bottom of the headboard to be off the floor! Yay for things working in my favor! My level told me everything was perfect.

Fitting flush underneath the window trim.

This drives me completely crazy!

 

Apparently, the builders of my master bedroom didn’t line up the bottom of the two windows exactly. What the heck people?! Aren’t you all anal retentive like me? Why can’t everything line up correctly? This tiny little snag was quite the conundrum for me. Do I hang the headboard according to the level, which makes the right corner cover the bottom corner of the window trim? Or do I move the right side of the headboard down a teeny tiny bit to fit flush underneath the window trim, leaving the headboard slightly tilted to the right? I chose the latter.

Nailed it!

Side view.

Not too bad for $35. Once my headboard was in place, I bought a new duvet cover to spruce things up.

And voila!

My coastal-colored bed. My husband hates the ruffles. I think they make it look romantic.

My CFO

I’d like to think of myself as the CEO of my family of four. With all the planning and scheduling and housework, “mom” isn’t a good enough title. If I’m the CEO, then my husband is most definitely the CFO. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that we live on a budget. And we are able to live a comfortable life on one income because the CFO and his monthly spread sheet budget run a tight ship around here.

With all the added stress this past week, I’ve been a little naughty in regards to following the family budget. So, before Mike collects the week’s receipts and starts entering numbers, I think I’d better make a few adjustments to his spread sheet.

Here are the categories I need to add this month:
Guilt purchases: 34.68
Child bribes: 20.97
Retail therapy: 141.52

Subcategories:
Under “medications”: Dunkin Donuts coffee purchases; Wendy’s frosties
Under “groceries”: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in which I drowned my sorrows (hey, it’s food!)

I think it could have been worse. I unleashed the rest of my stress by rearranging furniture. And cleaning. In fact, I’ve been cleaning so much that I started moving furniture to clean underneath which then prompted me to completely rearrange all three bedrooms and the playroom. I also completed a diy project I’ve been working on during stolen moments of free time.

What do you do when you’re anxious or stressed? I need some new ideas!

You Have Problems

My daughter had a friend over last week. They were playing in her room when I heard the friend say, “You have problems.” My daughter responded with an amused, “No, I don’t.” and continued to play. The friend repeated it a few more times. “You have problems.”

“No, I don’t have problems.”

“Yes you do have problems. My mom told me you have problems.”

I was sitting in the living room listening to this exchange with my gut slowly shriveling up inside me with hurt and dread and guilt. What do you say in that kind of situation? I called the friend into the living room and politely asked her to stop saying that to my daughter and that if she continued to say it, I would send her home. The friend meekly complied. For about 2 minutes. Then I heard some furious whispering and my daughter burst out of her room crying, ran down the hall and out the door. I ran after her, worried and upset for her. She told me she didn’t want to play with her friend anymore because she was being mean. I wasn’t sure what to say to her, so I thought about what I would do if someone was being mean to me in my own house.

“If your friend continues to be mean and you don’t want to play with her anymore, you can ask her to go home. You don’t have to play with friends who are mean to you.” I wasn’t sure if she’d do it. My daughter’s self-esteem is low and she is so social and loving that she puts up with a lot from other kids for the chance to play with them.

I sat back down in the living room. Playing commenced. About 2 minutes went by when the friend whispered something else and my daughter said, in a clear and loud voice, “You’re being mean and I want you to go home.”

The friend left the house crying and I called her mom to let her know she was walking home (a few houses down) and why she was crying. I can describe the conversation with one word: awkward. When I hung up with the mom, I was still upset. Not at the friend, or even at the mom who told her daughter that my kid had problems, but just generally upset that this was probably just the tip of the iceberg to come. Being hurt by your friends sucks. Watching your child get hurt by her friends sucks about a thousand times more.

That night while I was making dinner, my daughter sat down at the table and asked me if she had problems.

“Do you think you have problems?” I countered.

“No.”

“Then you don’t have any problems.” And I meant it. Because, who doesn’t have problems? If you feel good about yourself and you are functioning well in society, you’re doing just fine. And if anyone tells you otherwise, just tell them to go home.

On Being Strong

The newest trend I’ve noticed on Facebook is the gratitude challenge. A friend challenges you to name three things you are grateful for for seven days. I haven’t been challenged yet, but I was thinking about it when I was driving home from a friend’s house the other day.

I’m grateful for my strength. Not just my emotional strength which I’ve discovered I have in spades, but my physical strength as well. I’ve never really appreciated that fact before because it made me feel unfeminine. Tall and stocky with the broad shoulders, I’ve always felt a little manly. (Thank God for breasts!)

Lately, I’m happy that I’m strong. It’s freeing, in a way, to know that I don’t need to rely on anyone but myself to get things done. I’m completely independent. I don’t need to wait around until I can ask someone to do something. I can get things done and spend the rest of the time just enjoying being with my friends and loved ones.

This thought came upon me after driving by a hutch on the side of a really backwoods road with a big “Free” sign on it. It was a really nice piece of furniture, solid wood, and I thought, “That would look really great in a garden shed as a potting surface and storage unit.” I pulled into the bottom of the long dirt driveway, lowered half of the backseat while my son was asking me why we were stopping. In the pouring rain (did I mention it was raining?) I pushed and pulled and lifted that sucker up and into the back of my small SUV. I didn’t have any bungee cord or rope, and since the end of the hutch was sticking out of the hatch, I pulled the auxillary cord for my iPod out of my glovebox and used that to tie my hatch door down. We were back on the road less than five minutes later.

Just give me a chambray shirt and a bandana and I’ll show you how to move some furniture, baby!

When I pulled into my garage, (and after I got over feeling weird for taking something off the road) I was pretty darn proud of myself. I saw something I wanted and I was able to get it all by myself. As I gloated, I unloaded it, moved it to a safe place, untied the auxillary cord completely and I pulled the hatch closed….

BAM! I smashed the corner of the door into my skull. As I staggered back against the garage wall and clutched my head, I thought, “Well damn, I guess that’s what I get for being so smug.” I would have laughed if the pain in my head wasn’t so horrible. I spent the next half hour on the couch with an ice pack on my head while my son danced around the living room begging me to make chocolate chip cookies.

The moral of this story? I’m grateful for my strength, for people who give away nice furniture and the fact that I didn’t give myself brain damage while being distracted by my own awesomeness.

Is there anything about yourself that you’re grateful for?

Remember Veruca Salt?

I’m not talking about the band, either. The all time classic movie from my childhood is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. If you are anywhere near my age, or if you have just seen the original movie (I won’t even comment on the creepiness of the Johnny Depp remake), you will remember Veruca Salt.

Oh yeah. There she is as we best remember her – demanding something that she wants. Of all the children’s characters in that movie, Veruca Salt stands out. Why? Because she has personality. Yes, she’s a spoiled brat. Yes, she is pretty unlikable and we feel sorry for her father in the movie, being saddled with such a termagant for a kid. But maybe Veruca is misunderstood. She’s a little girl begging for attention from her parents, who are too busy for her and instead indulge her every whim so that they don’t have to deal with any confrontation.

Look at that sweet face. All she wanted was a golden egg! Geez!

 

You’re thinking, What’s the point of all this, Tamara? The point, my dears, is that we remember Veruca because of her distinct personality. Actually, she’s my favorite character in the movie because she completely cracks me up. That girl knows how to get what she wants.

I keep this thought in my head when I’m dealing with the little quirks of my own children’s personalities. This morning, I dropped my son off for his last day of nursery school. He was wearing his favorite Spiderman t-shirt and matching shorts. He was also wearing his Spiderman winter cap and red gloves. He refused to take them off before we left because he said that wearing them makes him Spiderman. So Spiderman/Chase went to school in a winter hat and gloves because I figure, hey, that’s just his personality. Who cares if it looks a little ridiculous; it’s pretty cute if you ask me.

And when my daughter wears her bathing suit to school under her clothes and removes said clothes on the bus in the morning? Okay, okay, I think. It’s just a Veruca Salt. She’s just being who she is, my quirky little firecracker who thinks she looks pretty in her bathing suit.

I grew up with a strong personality. I, too, know how to get what I want. So when my kids are testing my limits with all those personality quirks that make them who they are, I tell myself that they’ll turn out all right. Because I was quirky too and look how great I turned out.

An Introvert’s Guide to Parenting

Hi, my name is Tamara and I’m an introvert. One of the many, many things that I didn’t know about parenting when I was newly wedded and dreaming of babies is that your entire social sphere is altered irreparably by the appearance of a mini-you.

When you become a parent:

Strangers Will Feel Urged to Talk to You. It’s like some invisible door has been opened and people feel comfortable stepping on through to chat. If you are outside of the house and are toting a kid (or two), people feel some sort of common bond with you. Which means they will strike up a conversation. Anywhere you go. You’re standing in the grocery store staring at the wall of spaghetti sauces and trying to decide which one you want while simultaneously remembering something stupid you said 15 years ago and (on the other side of your brain) trying to debunk Sartre’s Existentialist Philosophy. A stranger will roll on up into your peripheral vision and smile and make some benign comment about your kids. Or about children in general. Or (my favorite) ask you a stupid question. Like, “Oh my God, they are so cute! Are they twins?” when, really, your kids are different genders and 2 years apart in age.

This stranger-speaking phenomenon will begin the moment you are obviously pregnant. During your pregnancy, the stranger speaking to you may also touch you. You will, most assuredly, hear at least one terrifying birth/parenting story that will haunt you for the next three months.

Kids will invite your kids to birthday parties. Hello personal nightmare. No matter the venue, it’s loud, it’s crowded, it’s overwhelmingly visually stimulating and you will need to try to keep track of where your child is at all moments while mingling with complete strangers. These parties can last for hours. And you can’t leave whenever you want because a) they haven’t sung Happy Birthday yet, b) you don’t want to offend the parents of your kid’s friend or c) you’re parked in and would have to ask 5+ strangers to move their cars. Did I mention that it’s loud? And crowded?

You have to go places you would never had visited before. There are baby clothes stores, baby furniture stores, photography studios, school functions, school field trips, your neighbors’ houses, ER visits, pediatricians, pediatric eye doctors, any number of specialists if your pediatrician thinks something is wrong with your child’s development. You will visit water parks, amusement parks, local parks and playgrounds packed with other parents who will want to chat because they haven’t spoken to another adult all day long. You will, at least once, set foot in a kid-centric restaurant/playland for birthday parties. See above.

Eventually, your kids will want to leave the house. This will bother you since you can’t think of anything more fun than hanging out at home. In elastic waistband pants. Your kids, on the other hand, will be able to think of numerous places outside of the house and yard that they would like you to take them. See above.

You will dread drop-off/pick-up and/or the wait at the bus stop. The drive-by drop-off is always preferred by the introvert, but sometimes that’s not an option. You will be mingling with the other parents while you drop off and pick up. You will have to stand at the bus stop with a group of other parents from your neighborhood and make *shudder* small talk. (This introvert will say that once you get to know the parents, this won’t bother you anymore. You will look forward to chatting with the one or two parents that you know.)

You will have to do all these things without letting your kids know they bother you, because you don’t want to inadvertently teach them to be uncomfortable in the same circumstances.

Can my other introverted parents out there think of anything I missed?

Killing Time

I sectioned off this time without kids to work on my manuscript, but I’m just not feeling it. I need to do a lot of re-writing and I’m not in the writing kind of mood. The only thing I really feel like doing lately is a whole lot of nothing.

I’ve been spending a lot of time worrying about my daughter. Like how to keep her safe. Guess who figured out how to shut off the alarms on the doors? Hooray to Kindergarten for teaching her to read, and hooray to me for having a daughter who is clever enough to read the word “off” and click the switch in that direction. But boo to the fact that my clever little girl doesn’t have any fear and doesn’t make good choices. And suffers from insomnia and can do I-don’t-want-to-know what while the rest of us are sleeping.

I never realized that being a parent would make you feel so helpless. As much as I want to, I can’t control my kids’ actions. Maybe I can control some little things, like what time they eat, what time they go to bed, but the big stuff is out of my hands. Like making friends and making the “right” choices. Like being safe when I’m not right there to protect them. It’s maddening!

Self Doubt and the Artist

The hardest part about writing, for me, has been overcoming my own self doubt. I’ll write and write and I’ll be totally in love with my work and then BAM! Self doubt creeps in and makes me think everything I’ve written is just a big pile of shit and I should quit while I’m ahead. I started writing a novel when I was 18. I never finished it. My God! That was 20 years ago! I still have it in a folder somewhere, jammed into the back of one of our filing cabinets. Maybe I’ll look at it again. Maybe not. Here I am, 20 years later – 20 years of life experience, self confidence, self acceptance later. And that hater, Self Doubt, is still lingering.

But here’s the schtick: it’s an artist thing. Everyone who creates something has some moment of doubt that what they’ve made is any good. If anyone else, except their mom, will like it. Pull through, oh creators of beautiful things, and remember that we are our own worst critics.

While I was MIA

I want to say that I was doing something completely incredible while I was MIA from the blogging world. Sadly, I wasn’t off learning a new language, traveling through Europe, curing disease, de-worming orphans, or spreading the word to people in undiscovered parts of the world. I’ve been here, in Maine, occasionally finding time to work on revising my book (it’s slow going) and discovering the joy of scrapbooking.

Yes, scrapbooking. A friend suggested I try it after I told her how stifled I’ve been feeling. There are times when I just get sick of the endless laundry, sibling fights, whining kids, cooking and trying to keep a house clean when I have 2 kids that like to mess it up within minutes. So I made a mini scrapbook album out of a brown paper bag to give to my daughter. The creative process was cathartic. I really miss the days of print-based design. Everything to do with design nowadays seems to be web design or mobile app design. I don’t find writing a computer language to create something emotionally fulfilling. Too bad for me that the world has become so high tech.

I have also been dealing with a wandering 6 year old. Again. Now I have alarms on all the doors in my house so that she can’t sneak out when we’re asleep. Which she did 2 weeks ago. In the rain. In her nightgown. My neighbor drove her home and rang the doorbell until we woke up. I’m still trying to figure out how to keep her from getting out her window without nailing it shut or putting bars on the outside. And yes, she did try to jump out her window when her dad put her in a time out recently and she wanted to go outside. Lovely, right? She pushed her screen out and everything. I didn’t think I’d have to worry about my kid sneaking out until she was at least 13. Apparently, the joke’s on me.

Do they make LoJacks for kids? Or invisible fences with shock collars that can’t be removed by clever little fingers?

Snoop Mommy Mom

This may just be my weirdest blog post ever. Because, for some reason, I wrote down some lyrics… to a rap song. It probably came about because I had an old 80s song in my head. Here’s my song, yet untitled. (Suggestions are welcome and humor appreciated.)

Rap it to the beat of JJ Fad’s “Supersonic” (Yes, I’m dating myself. No, I don’t know why I had that song in my head today.)

“I’m just chillin’ in my jammies

It’s a quarter to 5

And I’ve gotta make dinner

The kids are starting to cry

 

They say that they’re starving

But I know they’re well fed

They say if I don’t feed ’em

Then they’re gonna be dead

 

(Chorus)

I’m all up on it

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

I’m all up on it

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

 

There’s a fight goin’ on

Under my feet

As they roll across the floor

Grabbing the last treat –

 

Out my pantry

Where I swear I’ve gotta lock

To keep these greedy kids out

Man, I’m gonna clean their clock

 

(Chorus)

I’m all up on it

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

I’m all up on it

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

 

They’re hurting each other

The kids are starting to squeal 

So I put on my mad mom face

‘Cause this shiznit just got real

 

That’s all I’ve got so far. I’ve dubbed myself Snoop Mommy Mom, although I liked a friend’s suggestion of Notorious M.O.M. too. Or maybe Bust Some Heads….