Fun house action!

I think I'm fighting a cold. Ugh. I have been very lucky and haven't had any sort of illness this winter at all, but everyone at work has been a revolving door of sickness. Thank goodness today is a fake holiday in MA because I am sitting around the house hoping I can just rest it off. It seemed to work yesterday...

We did some major house action this weekend which makes me feel awesome! We finally got around to painting the dining room with the gorgeous paint we bought when we first moved in (thank you SO MUCH for all of your help, Morgan!!), and it is stunning. I can't even remember the drab blue-grey color the previous owners had in here anymore. I also painted the interior panels of the china cabinet we bought at IKEA a million months ago so they match the walls perfectly - it adds an element of cute! So now our dining room is a blue and white paradise. LOVE. And I can finally put my great-grandmother's china away.

We were originally thinking of bringing the blue of the dining room all the way down the far wall to the end of the house, thereby creating one blue accent wall in the living room and making that whole area look larger than two separate rooms. Now, though, seeing that gorgeous blue, I am having doubts. We're going to try to figure out a way to check what the blue will look like behind the red brick of the fireplace. The blue is amazing but I don't know if it would be amazing under brick. So we're deciding.

Nearly three weeks ago, we had a house painted come in to give us an estimate on fixing the baby's room. The previous owners did a half-wallpaper, half-painted stripes monstrosity and I'm concerned that it will be difficult (read: take a lot of time) to cover up the stripes properly. Oh, and they painted the ceiling, too - blue. And since they used wallpaper, they didn't seem to think they needed to make sure the ceiling paint stayed on the ceiling... so there is extra blue everywhere and stripes and honestly, who wants to deal with that? So we've been waiting nearly three weeks for our estimate and we call them all the time and ARGH - why is there never any follow through? I feel like all I do is call and harass people. (I am still calling the gym to try to get my refund check.) I am not that person. I suppose I will call another house painter today and get a competing estimate. (Then I can harass two people.)

It's weird to be home alone without my smoochie. I spent all of December home alone when I was between jobs, but December was full of stress and bleeding and lost babies and this is much different. Now instead of being forbidden to spend too much time up on my feet I'm trying to gear up to do dishes, laundry, cleaning... good times. The weather sucks so at least I'm not tempted to go outside and play!

Exciting update, right?

So much for loafing...

Three words:

Water
In
Basement

What started out as a plan two hours ago to leisurely grab the laundry before enjoying a tasty lunch turned into a hauling, moving, pushing, dripping, unpacking, repacking, wiping, stacking extravaganza!

Now my belly is hurting and Jen is off to acquire a wet/dry vac and a dehumidifier, neither of which we were planning to buy right now. As the rain washes away, so does the savings.

We're fortunate, though - the casualties include six wet books and the ironing board cover. Miraculously most of the boxes that got wet (most of the boxes were on rubbermaid bins but at least 7 were sitting in standing water) were extra-thick big boxes for things like computers and appliances, and the water didn't even make it through. We've sure got a lot of wet, soggy boxes to throw out, though. Too bad garbage pickup was, oh, three hours ago.

Perhaps now, though, I can have a little lunch.

Flooding

Water is still coming in. There is a bunch of flooding all over the area (southern NH, western MA, northwestern CT) and most of the rivers in my county flooded. I guess it is inevitable, then, and perhaps not entirely the fault of our foundation.

Jen tried some of that basement seal stuff and we have been wet-vac fiends. The water, however, continues to seep. I have heard that the river is expected to be below flood levels soon (if not already) but who knows how long it will take for the water table to recover. I guess we'll eat some dinner and check on it again before bed, and then expect a disaster in the morning. At least we have everything that can be lifted elevated at least a foot now. I am very scared that we will wake up to several feet of water in the morning.

I told Jen to bring the litter boxes upstairs (yuck) and we'll have to bring the cat food up as well. Poor little guys!

Gosh, I hope this is kind of a freak thing and not something that a) will compromise our foundation (which is usually very good in rainy weather) or b) begin a yucky, wet trend.

Sigh.