I've had a pretty decent life as an adult. As a kid, it kind of sucked because things were mostly done to me, and I had little to no control over anything. However, at age 13 when we were in Vegas I used all the chips I had and pressured my mom to move to Seattle. Why did I want to move to Seattle? I dunno, but it had to be better than Vegas, and it least it wasn't 120 degrees. My plea worked. A couple years after that I started community college and mentally moved out of the house even though I was physically there. And at 17 I physically moved out of the house when I went away to college.
Once I could control my life, life exponentially improved. Ages 17+ have been pretty darn good. Some people loved being a kid and hate being an adult. I'm the opposite; being a kid was really repressive for me , but it might have had something to do with my living situation. Anyway, choosing where you want to live, choosing how you spend your days, and being an adult are wonderful. That freedom is amazing.
That being said, my worst year ever was Julia's first year. My freedom got yanked away, and I was at home with a screaming infant all day. I wanted to work, but wasn't allowed to (by Julia because no daycare in their right mind would have taken her and given her eating issues, it just wouldn't have worked). Her screaming frayed my nerves, her lack of eating worried me, her incessant screaming didn't allow me to sleep. It sucked. I never, ever want to go through that again. Once things smoothed out a bit in mid 2009 I appreciated getting back to a new normal as a family of three.
November 2009 through July 2010 took the second prize spot for Worst Almost Year ever. It has nothing to do with Julia this time. My disdain for the months noted completely have to do with us choosing to buy this house, sell the old house, and the assorted resulting drama. It was an awful time.
The uncertainty was a big part of it. I was never fully on board to buy the house. In fact, we pulled out of the deal only to be sucked back at the last minute. I was leery of spending more than we wanted to, the renovations needed and associated money, selling the other house in a down market, not wanting to move at Christmas, and realizing that we both had full-time jobs, a toddler, and S was active in tae kwon do. It seemed like so much to deal with, so much that could go wrong, and there was a lot of uncertainty. I don't like uncertainty.
Well, we went through it anyway despite both of our hearts not being 100% into it. Intellectually the house met our entire list of desires in a home once it was remodeled, and it could be a good financial decision in the long-term if we could deal with several months of crap. Emotionally we were willing to bail and chalk it up to not being ready to get into a whole big pile of worms. Our agent knew that, and I think she paved a smooth path for us knowing our hesitance.
We did this all with very little family help. We didn't get packers or movers. It was all us and our friends. S's parents are in Arizona and chose not to come (that's fine). S's brother and his family are an hour north and also chose to not help in any way. (However, when they want anything, we are expected to drop everything and help them because "it's family.") My mom is a couple miles away, and she helped haul away Hwang trash one afternoon. Other than that, it was just us and our friends who did the initial move in and cleaning. And people wonder why I'm more attached to my friends than family.
In addition to knowing December would be a bad month due to the move, December was a bad month because we learned that our old house was kinda living on a lake although it is in a suburb. Yeah, that was really, really disconcerting and expensive to fix. Then the previous owners of the new house didn't leave any of the things they said they would leave and instead left trash and toenails and really old, heavy electronics and smelly crap all over the freaking house. "Move in ready" would not describe the state of it. I was off two weeks in late December last year, and the vast majority of that time was spent boxing up Hwang trash and doing that initial deep cleaning of the house. And we still had the old house, so we would go by to check on it every other day or so and were dealing with the agent to sell that house.
The next few months we worked full-time at our jobs, we'd come home every night and unpack or paint or fix little things that needed to be fixed. After Julia went to bed at 7-8pm, we'd work until at least midnight trying to get stuff done and make some headway on making the house more livable and getting it to how we wanted it.
People really didn't seem to "get it." They thought only one room needed to be painted or something, and then it would magically be livable. Let me ask, how long does it take you to paint one 100 square foot room, including the prep and taping and actual painting and cleaning up? Well, we have 4,500 square feet, and all of our painting had to be done after Julia went to bed. It's a freaking EPIC project. We steam cleaned every carpet ourselves, painted every room, sanitized everything, orchestrated a complete kitchen renovation, new countertops and sinks in the bathrooms, cleaning a 600 square foot deck thoroughly, replaced fixtures, tiled a 150 square feet laundry room, plus getting rid of all of the Hwang trash and negotiating the sale of our old house and the final deep cleaning of the old house.
We're the ones who chose to do this; it's not like I'm being a victim here. I'm just saying - we did a MASSIVE amount of work, especially considering we both work full-time, have a child, and have hobbies that we kept up with while undertaking it all.
MASSIVE.
There were days, particularly in the first few months, where I just wanted to go back to the old house and wished we had never done this move. Go to work and come home to this strange place that creeped me out, immediately jump into mommy mode with the nighttime Julia routine, put her to bed, and then work another 4-6 hours on painting or unpacking or cleaning. Go to sleep, and do it all the next day. It really was relentless for several months. At least the financial worries eased once we got an offer on the old house and as it got closer to us getting rid of that house. But still...it was stressful.
Here I am now, and I can acknowledge just how far we have come. I haven't moved mountains or anything, but I did step out of my comfort zone, worked extremely hard, and now have some time to reflect on how awesome my husband and I really did work. And we did it together. We were on the same page the whole time, we both gave 100% to our specific tasks, and we got it done. Of course, there's still many things that need to be done around the house in the near future, but we got everything on the "need to do immediately" list accomplished by July.
Probably the worst side effect of this whole thing is that I have absolutely NO pity for people who complain about not having time to do stuff. If I of all people (known for my slothlike, napping nature) can pack, move, unpack, move other people's trash, decorate, clean, steam clean, paint until the wee hours of the morning after working all day and taking care of a child, for the love of GAWD shut up about your disdain for having to paint your dang kitchen. And you don't even have a kid. If I can do it, you can do it. Just admit that you don't want to paint your dang kitchen; don't say "I don't have time" instead. That's a lousy excuse. You can do anything you set your mind to. Just admit that you don't want to set your mind to something you don't want to do. Don't make stupid excuses for your inaction.
Ultimately, I came out of this year much stronger. When we survived Julia's first year, it was mainly relief that we survived and acknowledgment that it was our own personal hell. When we survived this year, I look back and think how we really came together and knocked the ball out of the park when it comes to teamwork, determination, and sheer hard work.
Happy 1st anniversary in this house!
No comments:
Post a Comment