Twist of Lemon

Well it has been a busy, tiring, crappy week. I was out sick on Sunday and most of Monday. We had the carpet installed on Monday, as well as some linoleum. that went fairly well but took them from 8 AM to 2 PM, during which time I got nothing accomplished. My Dad showed up on Tuesday and has been the best help in the world! He says sometimes he is going slowly, but he packed my entire kitchen and has helped fix up things around the house as well as kept me going when I would have just crawled into a corner to start crying. But most of the place is packed up, now it just remains to move everything down to the garage and basement. Tomorrow I will repaint the spare room and finish up a few little fixits. Dad is now worn out, and I am not too far behind. Brian caught the virus I had and has been out for a few days. I think it was a food borne virus and he probably caught it while it was aerosol during my upchuck phase on Saturday. We have high hopes he will be in shape on Saturday to help me pack and unpack the U-haul. We wont be taking much more than a couch, a bed, food, kitchen implements and clothes to the temporary spot. Anyone who would like to help us move it out of the U-haul and into the apartment Saturday afternoon would be greatly appreciated! And possibly even fed and liquored up!

Well last night was the big work going away party for one of the engineers at the plant and me. About twenty people showed up and I had a really nice time. Nice to know that even though the site is going to hell in a hand basket that there are still good people that I am going to miss. People kept buying me drinks, and I got to play one game of darts and see the lunar eclipse, so fun times! Unfortunately one of the drinks most often bought for me were cherry bombs. Cherry bombs for those not in the know are a shot of cherry schnapps in red bull. Too much red bull later in the evening makes it very hard to sleep I soon found out. Today at work was terribly busy and and I found myself trying to train the new kid on some computer work while I was testing product from across the room. “Yeah so you see the cell which says count, well you copy that number onto the other spreadsheet and it will then calculate the amount of culture you need to add to the blend. No the cell that says count, oh ok I’ll be right there just let me finish plating this one thing…” Fun times. Today was the last day I will see my [now former] boss, and he gave me a heartfelt thank you for my hard work over the last few years. I am not sorry to leave, but I am sorry they are going to be in such a hurtbag with me gone. Well I am sorry for him, not some of my soon to be former co-workers. Tomorrow is my last day, and I wish I could say I was going to slack the whole day, but I don’t think my conscience will let me do that easily. I will be happy to be done, so i can concentrate fully on getting the house ready for sale, and Brian and I ready for the move.

Tonight I managed the replace the bulb in the passenger headlight of the stratus. I feel so, well, competent adult when I am able to do little fix it jobs around the house. I know I am in my third decade, but I normally feel pretty young and inexperienced until I put in a new water softener, or explain office politics to the new guy at work. Trying to choose a Realtor makes me feel anything but competent.

Another day another dollar or something.  Training the new guy at work is not going very well as the only things I have left to train him on are computer based and he doesn’t have computer access yet.  Only four days left to go at the sinking ship.  I heard today that the company is going through layoffs at other sites, and was considering laying off staff at the Rochester site.  Couldn’t pick a better time to leave I guess.  There are many people I will be sorry to leave behind, but there are also a few that deserve to be let go.

The second of the two Realtor choices came by today.  I think I will have a difficult choice to make, since they both seem very good. Both have also mentioned that the market down here has started to warm up, with the new residents coming in to work at Mayo.  I will be getting new carpeting in the house next Monday, and new linoleum in the basement [to cover some nasty orange looking stuff].  Neutral colors! Neutral colors!  Gotta get someone to clean the drive of snow, and I need to trim the shrubbery!  Stuff to do, stuff to do!  I’m late!  I’m late!

Well the first Realtor stopped by this morning, he just took a look around so he can find some comparable houses to give an idea of how high to price the house. I wasn’t really ready for company, but the house wasn’t in too much disorder. Then he mentioned that maybe we should look to not only replace the living room carpet [as we had planned] but to also replace the carpet on the stairs as well as the ugly bit of orange linoleum at the base of the stairs. He also mentioned that I would probably want to clear the entire driveway of snow. So I have called a couple places to get estimates of how much it will cost to remove the snow for me, and I called to get an estimate of how much it would cost to have a housecleaning service come in for one big cleaning. I don’t know how much the flooring is going to cost, but hopefully we can afford it and it will make a difference in the sale.

What else did I do today? Glad you asked! Absolutely nothing. I feel terribly overwhelmed with all that needs to be done. Things to clean, trash to be removed, items to be packed, problems to be fixed. And I feel fat and ugly. So I slept. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Long time no input.  After two weeks of vacation and now a week back at work I figured I better get something posted.  The time off was wonderful, but not entirely stress free.  Most of the stress came from trying to finish the revamp of our spare room.  Over a year ago Brain and I pulled up the nasty purple shag carpet and refinished the oak hardwood floor underneath.  That was as far as we went, until three days before we were to have company for New Years.  And we had to get it finished, for I had moved all the junk from the spare room into our guest room.  It took two coats of the base color to cover the original violet walls.  Here is a pictorial progress report:

Ugly purple carpet and violet walls

You can really see the violet in this picture of Brain working.

All finished!

The most difficult part of the whole three day experience was using a cheap miter box to cut the baseboard.  If you ever have to cut baseboard let my experience work for you, rent or borrow a motorized miter saw.