I'm starting a new trend

The Wife Blogs. Are there any out there? Blogs of women who are wives, but not moms? I mean, is a woman's life not blog-worthy until she has children? Do I not have anything interesting to say until I can talk about snot and poop and sore nipples?

I guess not, cuz I sure haven't had much to say recently.

Don't get me wrong, I sure do love me some mommy blogs. (I won't tell you how many I read on a daily basis.) But I don't like that I end up feeling a little discontent and boring because I am JUST A WIFE.

Although now that I think about it, I bet a lot of mommy blogs started out as wife blogs and, well, things just happened.

In case you were wondering

We figured out why Autumn's burps smell so bad.

It's because she eats poop.

Cuz that's all I've got

I think I'm figuring out why it has been so hard for me to post more regularly here on this blog. I used to love it so much, and something has to be wrong for it to seem so much like a chore for me. But I think I connected some dots tonight.

Life in Philly has been hard. I've said that before. But I've been a little embarrassed to share any more than that, other than "life is hard."

There are so many great things going on for me, and I feel like you'll think I'm being melodramatic or ungrateful. And maybe I am.

But the truth is, this sucks. There are times when I don't think I am a good wife, or a good employee, or a good daughter or a good sister, or a good friend. And so why do I deserve your sympathy?

If I have a good marriage with a man that I love, who is so right for me in so many ways, why do I ever sit on the floor of my closet and cry, unable to think of a single friend I can call who can really meet me where I am and not misunderstand me, or think I'm weak or dramatic or ungrateful?

I'm tired. I'm imperfect. I don't think you think that good enough is good enough. That I am good enough. And I'm not. But that's just gonna have to be good enough.

I'm sick

It's not terrible. Just a cold. But it's enough to make me feel yucky.

I complain when I am sick. I think a lot of people do this, so I feel justified, or at least validated. My husband has been very sweet to me today by listening to me complain. Also, I told him I was hungry and he asked what I wanted and I said Banana Nut Cheerios and he asked if we had any and I said no so he went and got some, God bless him.

He also bought me some NyQuil. Did you know...?

1. NyQuil is 10% alcohol. I sure didn't know that. No wonder the label warns you about liver disease if you take too much.
2. NyQuil has high fructose corn syrup. That stuff is in EVERYTHING. It will soon take over the world.
3. One of the warnings says, "Failure to follow these warnings could result in serious consequences." Could you be a little more vague, please?
4. It also says, "Do not use to make a child sleep." Why not? I am sure using it to make an adult sleep...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......................

What a bargain!

As a finance person, I work with numbers and spreadsheets a lot. But when you work with numbers a lot, you frequently end up making mistakes just from typing things incorrectly. There are tricks though to help you figure out what you did wrong.

If you are off by 3 (or 300 or 3,000,) it generally means you accidentally hit the wrong key in the column on your 10- key, like in the middle of a long number, your finger didn’t make it all the way to the 7 and hit the 4 instead.

If you are off by a factor of 9, it usually means you entered numbers in reverse, like 5627 instead of 5267. It can take me FOREVER to find those.

The other day, I was off by 3. I hate being off by 3, because the amount of work you have to put into finding those stupid $3 hardly seems worth it, but I can’t not do it. I HAVE to find it.

As I was working, I changed my facebook status to "Meredith is $3 off."

It wasn’t until two days later that I realized I made it sound as if I had gone on sale.

A tiny bit closer

I worked on another chair today. I finished taking the back off. Two down, two to go. Did I mention its hard and there are a lot of staples?

I gave up TV for Lent

I used to not watch much TV. Jeff and I don't have cable, so we only get local stuff and sometimes rabbit ears don't get great reception, so we didn't even hook them up to the TV. So for about a year after we bought the house, we didn't watch much TV. We'd watch stuff on DVD, like Gilmore Girls or Lost, but no live TV. I felt a little out of it when people would talk about, "You know that commercial where..." and I'd say, "No, I don't know, I don't watch TV." I felt a little self-righteous. Shocking, I know.

Last summer, as the summer Olympics were approaching, I knew we'd have to do something. You may not know this about me, but I sure do love the Olympics. When the Olympics are on, I basically do nothing else for two weeks except work, sleep, and watch the Olympics. So we found the rabbit ears down in the basement and made sure we got good reception on NBC so that when the time came, there would be nothing to stop my two-week TV binge.

It all worked flawlessly.

Except that after the Olympics were over, I kept watching TV. I feel okay with some of it, like Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, but a few months ago I started in with the trash TV, like The Bachelor and True Beauty. I've also been watching The Biggest Loser, but don't try to make me feel bad for that one, cuz it won't work. (But you could make me feel bad for sitting on the couch eating cookies while watching it, but I would rather you didn't. Thanks.)

So for Lent, I decided to give up TV. So far, it has been interesting. No, "interesting" isn't the right word. It's more like "boring." What did I used to do with myself before I watched TV?

I'm pretty sure the fact that I am asking myself this question means that giving up TV for Lent was a good idea.

So from now until Easter, here is what I HOPE I do with all my extra time:
1. Read more.
2. Blog more.
3. Cook more.
4. Get ready for company (which involves about 12 small project, like finishing my chairs, which haven't been touched in two months.)

And even though I'm gonna miss the season finales of The Bachelor and The Biggest Loser, I'm pretty sure I'll like my life a little more for doing this.

At least once I get the hang of it.

A project I have started

And I hope I will finish.

I have a pretty bad track record at finishing things I start, especially if the thing takes longer than an hour to complete. Hopefully, if I chronicle my progress here, I will be inspired to actually finish.

Some background:

Much of the furniture in our house came from the trash. I mean, you know, not literally a trash can, but pretty often around here, people decide to get rid of things and they just put them out on the sidewalk for anyone to take. So we take. Because one person's trash is another's treasure.

Here are our most recent acquisitions:



We got four of these chairs and they all basically look like this. They are decent chairs, but they require some cosmetic work, which will take an undetermined amount of time to complete.

1. Remove old cushions.
2. Touch up the wood.
3. Re-cover and reattach cushions.

My sis-in-law re-covered some chairs a few months ago, and they look great. I helped a (very) little bit, and it didn't seem that complicated. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the wood, but hopefully that'll come to me later.

So, tonight I started working on the chairs.

The first thing I did was remove the fabric from the upright part of the chair. This was actually pretty freaking hard. The back layer was attached to the chair with a lot of freaking staples. Then there was padding. Then there was the front layer, again with the crapload of staples. Then there was the ribbing around the entire edge. More staples. So I only did one chair. It was hard and I started getting complainy.

Then I (I mean, my husband, under my close supervision) unscrewed the seat cushions from all the chairs.

Here's what we have now:


Upon closer inspection of the nekkid chair, we see:


1. The wood on that decorative middle piece is actually very nice.
2. There are staple holes everywhere. (You may have to click the picture to enlarge it in order to see the staple holes.)

Also, one of the other chairs has wood that looks a little greenish or something.



Ooky!

So here's the plan. A few weeks ago, I bought this fabric at a thrift store. The seat cushions will be re-covered with this.

( Do you see the cute little Autumn butt and tail?)

Also, I will smooth out the wood where all the staples holes and various other imperfections (both previously existing and newly created during the staple removing process) are and will paint the chairs black.

That is the plan.

Ask me about it occasionally will ya? I'd like to get these finished by the end of 2009, and I think I may need some prodding.

If you think Autumn's eye is gross

You should smell her burps. I don't know how I ended up with a dog whose burps (burps!) smell like diarrhea. It's gross.

I am making a face right now. An I'm-smelling-something-gross face. In fact, Jeff just came downstairs and said, "Why the face?"

Then he decided to go back upstairs because it stinks in the living room.

Something I figured out

I am new to the world of short hair, and I am a little slow sometimes. Here is something I just figured out about my new, short hair.

The trick is not always to get your hair to do what you want. Sometimes that is impossible. In those instances, you just gotta make it LOOK like you got your hair to do what you want.

And then own it.