Psycho Detection Skills Required
As I was taking a box out to the garage today, a man pulled up in front of our house, got out of his car and took a flier from our "for sale" sign. As I walked back from the garage, the man stood in front of my house reading the flier. When I got closer, he asked me if I was the owner of the home. I said that I was. He asked me a couple questions about our garage and parking spaces. He asked me if he was parked in one of our spaces and I told him that he was in our neighbor’s spot.
He then said, "So I should probably move my car up to the visitor parking area before you show me your house." He stared at me waiting for a response.
After painting for 12 hours this weekend (more to come on this tomorrow), I was completely exhausted and probably lacking any form of poker face. All I could think of as I stood there looking at this middle-aged single man who was by himself was, "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again."
I quickly told him he should call his realtor or call the number on our sign and speak with our realtor so that he can make an appointment.
"Oh," he said, "well, then I’ll just take this" he said as he gestured at his flier. He seemed a bit put-off by my very polite response. I went inside, locked both the locks on my door and considered turning my security system on. My realtor warned me about people like that, but I didn’t ever really think I’d encounter one.
As I sit here many hours later, I find it interesting that we didn’t later get a call from the showing center. If he was in such a hurry to see our property today, then why didn’t he make an appointment to come back? Something tells me that my psycho killer detection skills were spot-on.
Before and After
I have no skin left on my knuckles. I’m completely exhausted. All I do is think about how I can restage, rework and get an offer by Monday when our contingency is up on our new house contract. So, do the changes that we’ve made make a difference?
Kitchen floor before. We had a 16 year old floor that had faded and was stained in some areas:
Kitchen floor after. We put in a new tile floor (peel and stick) in about five hours:
Living room before, which was completely set up to watch the TV on the opposite wall:
Living room after, which is now staged to focus attention on the marble gas fireplace.
Big I’s room before, where a big full size loft bed blocked the window and made the room appear small:
Big I’s room after replacing her loft bed with a twin sized day bed:
So, think I can have my own show now or what?
If you can’t bring the heel to the butt. . .
I am just one finger away from having my heel touch my butt. One finger. That is it; and it seems like it’s going to be impossible to get it to go just that teeny tiny little bit further.
Today I told my PT I have a plan. Instead of continuing to torture myself with painful flexion, I’m just going to start eating lots and lots of ice cream and potato chips. If I can’t get my heel to my skinny butt, then I’ll bulk up the butt and bring it to my heel.
My PT and another ACL recoveree thought it was pretty funny. Personally, I think it’s pretty smart. Bigger buns are in these days anyway right? The problem is that with all the biking, treadmilling, and leg pressing I’m doing, I’m tightening up and making getting that heel to touch that much harder.
Bring on the mint chocolate chip and salt & vinegar potato chips. I’ve got a plan and I’m prepared to use it.
Designed to Hurt
Last night Mr. BBM and I were up until after 2 a.m. putting in a new kitchen floor. We started around 9 p.m., once the girls were fast asleep, and we’re still not finished. I ordered two books last week: "The Idiot’s Guide to Staging a Home for a Quick Sale" and "Designed to Sell." Five of our rooms got completely reworked in the form of new bedding, different curtain scenarios and rearrangement of furniture this weekend. Then we got cocky and decided we could bang out a new floor in just a couple of hours.
Can I tell you how much I hate the person who built my current house? I seriously think he must have failed geometry class and has no business being a builder. Either that or he came to work seriously lit. There is not a wall in my house that is square. We found out the hard way last night.
Since I couldn’t be on my hands and knees to painstakingly place each tile, I spent the night scooting around on my butt which has brought a whole host of aches and pains today. I’m fairly certain I’ve pulled my butt muscle. My back hurts every time I blink and the back of my thighs feel like they’re under attack. I also seriously broke a nail. It’s the kind of break that takes some of the skin along with it and looks like total crap for a good week or two.
Mr. BBM isn’t in much better shape. His knees are swollen. His back is aching from lifting up the refrigerator while I tried to quickly and carefully wiggle tiles into place (Note: quickly and carefully have no business being used in the same sentence). Also note that I strongly suggested cutting the tiles since who looks under the fridge anyway, but Mr. BBM was in much too much of a determined and exhausted mood to be told he didn’t have to act like the Incredible Hulk by lifting a refrigerator he had no business lifting all by himself. He eventually saw the error of his ways and believe it or not, my idea to cut the tiles worked just fine and nobody had to break their back. I did it while Mr. BBM sprawled out on the floor proclaiming he might be dying.
At 9:40 p.m. last night Mr. BBM said that we were going to have a ton of tiles leftover. It was going that well. Today, we have six tiles, and I am betting that we’ll need about 20 just to get the stupid angle right where the kitchen floor meets the hardwood floors of the entranceway. We’ll have also created about 60 new ways to swear during that process. Mr. BBM and I wrecked about six tiles last night trying to fit one into a single spot; and I have never heard Mr. BBM swear so much. His swearing and the fact that he was wandering aimlessly around the kitchen with cut up tiles stuck to his pants made me so silly I could hardly breathe from laughing so hard.
We’re also getting a quote this week on new neutral carpeting to replace all of the pink carpet in each of the three bedrooms, hallway and stairs. We figure that if it doesn’t sell, we’ll at least have new flooring. New flooring we can live with; painting the girls’ rooms when we might have to end up staying here anyway? Not gonna happen. We’re standing firm on that. Yes, that’s my final answer Regis, Meredith and Mr. Realtor.
We did however, remove Big I’s full sized loft bed from her room this weekend and replaced it with a twin day bed on loan from my sister. It’s opened up the room so much and despite her original protests, I think Big I is fairly happy with her new digs.
I read in one of my books that you should invest 1-3% of the asking price of your house in improvements and then you can plan to get it all back and then some. By removing the objectionable pink carpet and old kitchen floor, we’re hoping to do just that. Of course, we should probably figure some chiropractor bills into that equation, and possibly a massage therapist. . .
PT for Everyone!
I once had to take the girls with me to PT, but it was only for about 10 minutes. Mr. BBM showed up and took them home before they had the chance to do any serious damage. Since then, they’ve asked if they could go along with me from time to time. It’s like they think they serve ice cream there or something. Yesterday, they had to go for the full almost two hours. It was as if I brought live entertainment to the PT room.
When we arrived, it was packed. Spring must be surgery season. Four tables were filled up leaving one for me. Several people were also circuiting through their exercise routines. I set the girls up on a low padded table that no one ever uses. Mickey Mouse Park came out of Lil C’s bag along with all of her Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters. Big I got to work on her homework.
Lil C felt it necessary to unpack her entire entertainment bag so in no time at all the rather large table was littered with Dora diapers, Mickey characters and a random Teddy Graham or eight. Like the angel that she is, Big I was quiet and completed her homework without making a peep. Then there was Lil C.
Always needing to be the center of attention, she started talking and loudly right away. She had to confirm everything that was happening to Mommy’s knee. "You laying down now Mommy?"; "You putting heat on your knee Mommy?"; "You all done yet Mommy?" she asked me every 10 minutes or so. The other patients smiled with amusement at her boisterous and talkative manner. When my PT asked me if I wanted some reading material, I refused. "I left it at home for a reason," I told him. "She could turn into a little devil in no time at all."
Things got entertaining when Big I finished up her homework and got out her two new library books. One of them was a dinosaur book. Big I began turning the pages and showing the pictures to Lil C. It was super quiet at the time so Lil C’s very loud, "Oh Wow! Look at the Dio-Whore" echoed around the room. Everyone sort of stopped what they were doing and looked at her and then at me.
"Yes," I confirmed from the floor where I was doing some stretching, "she said ‘dio-whore’. That’s what she calls them." An eruption of laughter took hold of the room and even the poor guy fresh from surgery laughed until he almost cried. Realizing she was a "hit," Lil C continued to talk about "dio-whores" for the next 15 minutes.
Then she made friends. One of my PT buddies came in with her older daughter and they made the mistake of engaging Lil C in conversation. She spent the next hour talking to them loudly, telling them all about her Mickey guys, sharing the fact that she had burped with them, and even going so far as to make her Mickey characters use the one woman’s head as a sliding board.
She also played some April Fool’s jokes which she learned like a pro from her sister earlier in the week and told several people "you have a bunch of bugs on your head." She was a real hit.
With 15 minutes left in my routine, she decided she was bored and ready to go home. She packed the important things up into her bag, leaving behind her diapers and random Teddy Grahams and dragged her filled up bag towards the door.
"I am going home," she announced with a pout on her face. She spent the last 10 minutes of our visit to PT glaring at me as I walked backwards on the treadmill. When I was finally done, there was Teddy Graham carnage to be cleaned from the table, and two very bored kids. I highly doubt there will be much interest in accompanying me back to PT anytime soon. It’s certainly lost its allure for them.
It hasn’t for me though. I hit 154 degrees yesterday. Only one more to go.
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