Making Your House A Home: A Tale of Triumph and Woe.

Feb 27, 2009

Sometimes I want to curse my stupid house for being stupid. I mean, we bought it on purpose and everything. We WANTED a house we could fix up, we just really had no idea what that meant, and will be fixing up this house for the rest of our lives as a result. My friend Alisha has an old house too, and compared it to a two year old; It hangs on your leg, whining and whining and no matter what you give it it is never satisfied.

Yep, sounds about right.

BUT, I have not been looking on the bright side!

It is possible that I am not the most vigilant parent, and we obviously haven't toddler proofed the house as well as we need to and Harrison is always getting into things. The other day I found him surrounded by the white board pens out of Richard's desk drawer. And he had opened every pen in turn and colored all over the carpet (and himself of course.)


but did I freak out? Well, only a little, but not about the carpet. Why? Because it is just an ugly carpet remnant our neighbor had in his garage and I couldn't care less about it. Once we actually get around to redoing that room the carpet is going to be replaced.

Wow, how am I going to function when I have to worry about my carpet?

So, it turns out my tiny messer is perfectly suited to his surroundings (or the other way around) and I should just be glad of that, and hope that I have somehow taught him to be NOT so destructive by the time the house is done. Indeed, t'will be my greatest accomplishment as a parent! It was Faralee who said: "lets be honest, as cute as Harrison is he is definitely the biggest tornado of destruction the world has ever seen. No one competes." So, yeah. When I am thinking that he is the greatest mess maker in the land and there is no way I can possibly keep up with the ruination, there is at least some comfort in knowing that I am right.

Blah, blah blah.

We have finally come to the HOME INSPECTION stage of our adoption application. I have been working all week to get the house clean (Richard told me our case worker probably wouldn't squat down and check behind our toilet for dust, but I say you can never be too sure!) and to somehow make it look less like a construction site and more like a home. We did this with a plant on the dining room table, and a vanilla scented candle in the living room. I know. We are so clever. I didn't watch 500 episodes of Designed to Sell for nothing!

But as I worked I got more and more discouraged. The more I did, the more there was left to do, and the more I realized that I could never get done. I figured we would be lucky after this if they let us keep Harrison, let alone have ANOTHER kid.

However, through divine intervention, our sweet case worker saw our house through Oh!-Look-at-all-the-neat-things-you-have-done-to-this-quaint-old-house eyes, instead of You-actually-let-a-baby-crawl-around-on-that-floor? eyes. She didn't even mention the huge miter saw sitting in the middle of the dining room.

So it is over. It's nice to have an excuse to clean my house that deeply every once in a while, but Man! I need a maid! Because, as I always say, why do for myself what I can pay someone else to do for me?