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!

Hell Week

This week has been rough. I’m not going to go into any detail because I’m trying to respect my daughter’s privacy, but I’d say that this week has been the most emotional for me since her birth.

Parents get a bad rap. We get blamed for pretty much everything. Kids are misbehaving? The parents must not be effective disaplinarians. Kids performing poorly in school? Parents must not value a good education. Kids are socially awkward? The parents must shelter those poor, poor kids. It almost feels like parents can never get it right. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Parenting decisions are the hardest I’ve ever had to make. Because those decisions are effecting someone else’s life. Not my life, not my husband’s, but the very lives of our children are directly effected by the choices we make for them. And sometimes it’s terrifying.

When I was a kid, I thought that when you grew up you would finally know all the answers. That choices would be easier once you were in complete control of your own life.

Oh God, how I wish I had been right.

Being a parent is like learning a language and each child’s personality is a different dialect. Much like English grammar, there seems to be an exception to every rule. It’s dizzying when you don’t know what to do next because it seems like there are always a million different choices, but you need to make the precise one in order to not screw up your kids.

Please, God, let me make those precise choices because I don’t want to make a mistake.

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.

The Ride is Over

The roller coaster goes up. And then it comes down.

I hit my emotional limit last month dealing with my child’s mental health issues. Five weeks later and I feel like I’m sitting on the bench watching the rides from a distance. With a correct diagnosis, we have received more help and support from the “system” than I even knew existed. We started a mood stabilizer that has changed the lives of everyone in my house. We are receiving In Home Support from 2 Master’s Level LCSWs who call themselves Behavior Health Professionals, or BHPs, 10 hours per week.

I have a Case Manager who has been educating me on all of the programs and resources available to our family. She does all the research and paperwork and we are reaping the benefits. My daughter got a scholarship to take Therapeutic Horseback Riding lessons at a local farm. We are looking into other social activities for her as well. Although, I must say, one activity at a time is all we’re taking on at the moment.

On one hand, I have been super busy implementing all the treatment plans we have been given, juggling appointments and blocks of time the BHPs are here. We still have day camp, trips to the beach, trips to the lake, bike riding, hiking, and spending time with friends. (My kids, not me, unfortunately.) On the other hand, my life hasn’t been this calm in a long time. I’ll take calm and busy any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

The biggest miracle that has occurred from all this? My daughter is SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!! Ever since we started the mood stabilizer, everyone in the house is getting continuous sleep at night. It may not sound like much when compared to the other improvements in behavior and mood, but let me tell you, I am a better person and a better parent after 5 weeks of being able to sleep through the night. This is the first time in six and a half years that I have felt rested.

Only three more weeks until school starts! This mama, as calm as she is, is really ready for the fall.

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?

It’s a Crazy Life

I have been a bad, bad girl as far as blogging goes. I haven’t even been able to keep up with the reading of other people’s blog posts. This is a crazy time of year for me. We’ve got Christmas, which having 2 kids in school has made infinitely more complicated, and then both kids’ birthdays.

The good news is, I am done Christmas shopping. Kids, niece and nephew, all the grandparents, and 3 teachers. Done! And I just got the final package from Amazon with the birthday presents. Once my Christmas card order gets here, I will be done waiting for packages. We still have one Kindergarten “Holiday Concert” to attend, one pre-school Christmas party to attend and bring food for and one Kindergarten party to provide food for.

I have been going for Physical Therapy for the last 6 weeks. It is awesome and I am pain free most days. We are still working on my “neuromuscular re-education” as they put it, but it works. I have 2 appointments a week to schedule into my weeks, around the times for school drop-offs, bus stop drop-offs, shopping without kids time, and Caylie’s doctors’ appointments.

Caylie started seeing a counselor about a month ago, so I’ve been carting my kids to that appointment once a week. And we are seeing a Behavior Specialist once a month for Caylie as well, which I’m factoring into the juggling act of my appointment/commitment schedule.

Most recently, my insomniac almost 6 year old has developed some kind of phobia about going to sleep. So after a couple of months of being able to sleep through the night, we are back to sleep deprivation and the new behavior of our child having a major panic attack at bed time.

That’s been my life between blog posts. Oh, and I’m almost done with the first draft of my novel. I think, if I can actually get some writing time in when Mike’s on vacation for Christmas, I can have it finished by the end of the month! Take that, crazy, boring life! Bam!

Merry Christmas everyone! And Happy Holidays if you celebrate something else, or nothing at all! I’ll catch you again next year.

A Christmas (Shopping) Story

Oh the joys of the season. Crowded stores playing crappy, overdone Christmas music. Shopping elbow to elbow with strangers while you sweat like a beast in your winter jacket. Getting to the aisle that houses the item you wanted and finding that they’re all sold out. You peruse the picked over shelves until your eyes glaze over and you go into a coma. Can you tell I hate Christmas shopping?

My worst nightmare!

Retail therapy doesn’t usually feel therapeutic when I attempt it during the holidays. But today. Ah, my friends. Today I got the all time shopper’s high.

I want to get my kids some sort of tablet this Christmas and have been reading all the website reviews of the different tablets that are good for kids and yada, yada, yada. I had it narrowed down to either the Leapfrog Leap Pad 2, or a Kindle Fire. Since I’ve got a budget for Christmas shopping, either of these gifts would put me at the top of the budget. And just as I was about to buy them each a Kindle, I see that Walmart (I know, I know, they’re horrible and I shouldn’t give them business) is having a Pre-Black Friday sale and that the Leap Pad 2 is 50% off the normal price. So, this Christmas shopping hater, this avoid-crowded-places-at-all-costs introvert, deigned to attend a holiday sale event. The sale started at 8 a.m. Friday morning. I dropped Caylie off at school and walked into Walmart at 8:07 a.m. And they were sold out of the Lap Pad 2s. A staff member tells me that they’re offering the same price online. I drive home, take my wallet into the office and log onto the website. Just as I’m clicking the “check-out” button, I get a message telling me that the item I want is currently out of stock. It wasn’t even 9 a.m.

Now I guess I’m still a Christmas-shopping-for-kids newbie because this is the first time I have wanted to get them a gift that was, apparently, the hottest gift of the season. I’ve been having flashbacks to the 80s when all I wanted for Christmas was a Cabbage Patch doll. People were being trampled in the stores trying to buy them and much to my self-centered 9 year-old’s dismay, I didn’t get a Cabbage Patch that year. My parents just couldn’t get one.

I suppose at this point I could just go buy the Kindles that I was originally intending to get. But the Kindles and the 2 sets of headphones I purchased so I don’t have to listen to video game music would be the only things I could get them for Christmas. The 50% off sale would let me get 2 for the price of one and give me almost $100 left over to get more presents. My female shopper’s logic leaves only one conclusion: I spend the next few days going to the 2 local stores in my area to see if any more Lead Pads have come in. I check the website every few hours to see if they are back in stock. I’m out of luck.

And then, cue the music, I force my husband to take me to Walmart this morning and lo and behold… there is one lone pink Leap Pad 2 on the shelf and I snatched it up just as another mother turned the corner with her shopping cart! Ha! Take that bitch! I got the last one! I feel like dancing. My husband witnesses first hand the shopper’s high he’s heard so much about. I’ve been in a good mood all day! I picked up a green one for Chase on Amazon.com where they were selling for $20 more than the Walmart sale price. So I still saved some money. And if I went over the budget just a teensy bit, Mike will just have to bite the bullet.

I may hate Christmas shopping, but I love watching my kids when they open those presents on Christmas morning.

My Real Day

I keep re-reading my blog post about my imaginary day. It just sounds so lovely and relaxing. Then I thought, maybe I should show my wonderful followers what a real day looks like for me.

6 a.m. The alarm goes off, jarring me awake.. But I have discovered that my sound machine/alarm clock has a wind chime tone. I awake to wind chimes chiming, as I slap at the clock to make it STOP. Then I roll over and pull the covers over my head while mumbling unintelligibly about the unnaturalness of waking up when it’s still dark.

6:30 a.m. I get up and pour big bowls of Fruity Pebbles for everyone. What? It has the word fruit in it.

7:50 a.m. I drop Caylie at school and drive north for a 9 a.m. appointment. On the way, Chase and stop at a store and buy dental floss to kill some time and keep our gums healthy.

9 a.m. My Physical Therapist guides me through a series of movements so she can evaluate my pelvic movement, gait, and muscle alignment. I’m totally jacked up on my entire left side. She then guides me through a session of stretches to open up my rib cage and stretch the muscle that attaches my pelvis to my ribs. Easy schmeezy.

10:30 a.m. Muscles I didn’t realize I had in my back are starting to ache.

11 a.m. I make lunch for Chase and myself. Then I talk on the phone while I throw dinner in the crockpot. Eventually, I remember that I have a lunch waiting for me to eat it.

12 p.m. Chase and I dance around the living room doing ninja moves. We pretend we’re Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and are obnoxiously loud with our kiai as we make our pretend hits. My neighbors were surely eating themselves up with jealousy at our boisterousness.

12:30 p.m. I throw in a load of laundry. I finish the erotic vampire urban fantasy romance novel that I started yesterday. Then I grab my Kindle and cruise Facebook and check my emails in a semi-quiet house. (I replaced the batteries in Chase’s Imaginext T-Rex. It provided hours of me-time).

1:30 p.m. I put in a second load of laundry. I fold my first load of laundry. Then I start cleaning my house. I’ve been so lazy about cleaning lately that this proves to be a daunting task. Chase provides running commentary on how well things are looking while I put away toys.

2:50 p.m. We walk to the bus stop and wait for Caylie. The balmy 47 degree day in Maine makes my newfound back muscles feel like they will shatter with any sudden movements.

3:15 p.m. I break up a fight over the newly noisy T-Rex and wish that I had a nanny.

3:30 p.m. I put on a movie for the kids and write a blog.

4 p.m. I’m off to fold my second load of laundry while my crockpot cooks a pot roast.

Bet you’re wondering what will happen next! So exciting! I’ll give you a preview of what’s to come: We’ll eat, clean up, nag my daughter to get ready for bed, brush teeth, sing lullabies, yell at the kid who keeps coming out of her room while we’re trying to watch a horror movie and I’ll be asleep by 9:30 p.m. Riveting, isn’t it?

A Day in my Imaginary Life

My friend Mary over at Contrary Mom is currently participating in “A Day in the Life of…” project. I’m finding it fascinating to see what other people are doing with their days. I thought about doing this, but my life is really boring and I’d fall asleep just blogging about the details. So instead, I’m going to blog about what I would like to be doing on a typical day. (We’ll assume, for this imaginary day, that funds are unlimited. Wouldn’t that be nice?)

9 a.m. I am gently brought to consciousness by the soft chime of a tibetan singing bowl.

9:15 a.m. I eat breakfast in bed. I’d like the raspberry coconut pancakes they serve at my favorite breakfast place in Monterey, CA. (First Awakenings; you need to eat there. You do.) I get to eat gluten without consequence in my imagination!

9:45 a.m. My personal yoga instructor guides me through a session that awakens and energizes me for the rest of the day.

11 a.m. I make notes on an idea for my next best-selling novel while I soak my feet and get a head, neck and scalp massage at Soakology. And I think I’ll try their Apple Pie Chai while I’m relaxing too.

12:30 p.m. My girlfriends and I meet up for lunch, eat some amazing food that I don’t have to cook and laugh so obnoxiously loud in our joi de vivre that other people glare at us in jealousy. Because we are enjoying ourselves that much. Truly.

2 p.m. I sit down and work on my novel in a quiet house.

4 p.m. I pick the kids up from the nanny and consult with our personal chef about what we’d like for dinner tonight.

4:30 p.m. I spend quality time with my family.

6 p.m. We eat our gourmet dinner and share about our day. No one interrupts anyone else or tries to talk over them. There is no yelling and the kids eat all their vegetables without complaint.

7 p.m. The live-in nanny bathes the kids and makes sure they’re ready for bed.

7:30 p.m. I sing lullabies and tuck in my kiddos. They fall asleep immediately and NEVER wake me up in the middle of the night.

8 p.m. Mike and I go and have some “alone time.” For 2 hours.

10 p.m. I’m so exhausted from all that alone time, that all I can do is lay in bed and read.

11 p.m. I fall asleep to the cracking sound of the fireplace and the summer nights track on my sound machine.