Tidying House

Well, a friend is, somewhat unexpectedly, coming by to visit tomorrow after she gets off work. And she isn’t the type of friend where I would be okay not tidying at all. She’s better than my dad’s level, but not quite to the ‘do nothing’ level like my best friend and a few family members. So, had to stay up an extra couple hours tonight to do some tidying. Mostly laundry, really, but got it sorted and folded and at least in baskets for the separate bedrooms where the clothes go. It should take me only about ten to fifteen minutes tomorrow afternoon to move the folded laundry out of the living room (and probably just into my bedroom, unless I have the time and ability to put away the baby’s clothes).

So, that just leaves all the random stuff in the other spaces of the common areas. And then I have to put the totes back into the closet in the baby’s room. Been thinking about a slight shift in how the totes are organized, and I think I need to make that shift tomorrow. The most recent and the upcoming size totes should be within easy reach, not piled under anything. I originally had them all just in order of size, but keep struggling with having to put away more and more of the most recent size well after the fact, because certain super cute outfits (or hidden ones) are bigger than others and don’t go into the tote at the same time as the majority. So, I have to keep getting it out and adding more to it well after the fact. So, yeah, put the most recent and the current/upcoming as the two most accessible ones.

The common spaces random stuff is the hardest, because it is lots of random stuff, probably most of which doesn’t quite have a set place for it to live, thus its being left out in the first place. Or else its place is hard to get to… also, my luggage from last week. Ugh. Whatever. I can just stick all of that in the front room for the evening and be done with the effort for the day. Same with the swim stuff in the dining room.

Ugh… I want to make our house the lovely home I dream about. At least, the one within this house. (I also dream about some home I’ve never seen before, which is grand and luxurious and has fresh, clean lines everywhere and lots of space. I can tell by the walls and ceilings etc that this is not that house. But I do have dreams within this house of a beautiful and open and tidy home.)

God, help me to do this, please, and voluntarily. Keep my husband and my baby safe, please, and make them both whole and well. Thank you for our home. Keep it safe, too, please. Heal it if these ants and other bugs, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

Negative capitalism

Lame news: Black Rifle changed their recipe for the iced coffees. Probably why they were suddenly at Costco, because they can’t sell them well enough elsewhere. Lots of complaints on Reddit starting about nine months ago. Now, instead of sugar, they use sucralose. Lots of people hate them. I had one today and didn’t even finish it. I wondered why I disliked it, when I used to love it so much. Thought about it and realized the flavor seemed off, like it had a gross ingredient. Sure enough, sucralose. And I confirmed that it wasn’t always that way. Huge bummer.

I’m actually really upset by this, it turns out. I was very excited to give this special treat to my husband, since they were on sale for less than the Kirkland brand ones, and I decided we needed to get those instead of his buying something for $3 a pop every other day. But now this special treat has been ruined and I feel stupid and worthless. Like I should have checked the ingredients, even though we had no reason to think the recipe had changed. There was no reason to check the ingredients on something we had purchased semi-regularly for years. The packaging wasn’t even different.

So, I gave him hope and delight (and myself, too, because I used to love them – it was something we shared) and now have ripped it away. And, because of our financial situation, we need to go ahead and return them, at least the more expensive ones we’d gotten. Which is another layer of upsetting him.

Just feeling like a super failure over here tonight. Also because my husband is sleeping in his car tonight because I failed to find local accommodations for him at his new job in another city. He’ll be able to commute daily in another week or two, we hope. Just have to wait for the plane to get here for him to use it. But it isn’t here yet and his job has already started, three hours from home driving. So, he can’t commute daily. We had a place last week. But that fell through for this week suddenly, which was its own kind of crappy (She didn’t even let me know one way or the other – just kind of ghosted me.). And it wasn’t because of us. It was because other people have been staying there a lot lately, so the husband is tired of having visitors. So, we get the backlash of that. He said he doesn’t mind sleeping in his car, but I know he needed to go to bed early today, as he has a rising cold that sounds horrible, and he couldn’t go to sleep, because it was too hot today, and he couldn’t just leave the car running. So, he had to wait for it to cool down enough, and finally went to bed just after midnight. (This is all kind of crushing me, by the way.)

Also, my throat started hurting tonight. Not cool.

Oh, random funny bad thing: I turned on the outside light just before coming to the bedroom to finish getting ready for bed. It initially lights up the whole backyard, then the main light is only motion sensitive after the first thirty seconds or so. By the time I made it into the bedroom, though, after flipping on the light, I was suddenly hearing a rooster crow. I’m sorry… what?! We don’t have any roosters. Just hens. They lay eggs. That’s why we have them. But, suddenly, a rooster was crowing. I rushed to the back door and opened it to confirm location. Yes, it sounded very much like it was in our yard. I went and threw on some clothes (because our fence is still down on one side, and I can’t go out there naked these days still), then rushed out back. However, the crowing had stopped and I never found a rooster anywhere. I was surprised by where one particular chicken was sitting, like it was posted for night sentry, as it was a new chicken. But all the chickens seemed to be awake and alert. I opened the back and found no rooster, though. Super weird.

Anyway, goodnight.

Post-a-day 2025

Skilled

The past two nights, I have changed my daughter’s diaper while she was breastfeeding. Didn’t even break the seal. Wild.(!!!)

Dear Lord, please, keep us safe and well, especially my husband and daughter. In your name, we pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

Shipping

Normally, I am so not about having someone mail me clothes, especially not secondhand clothes. However, this baby outfit is made in Austria, which is where I’m from, sort of. (Not at all, actually, but I lived there for a while, and so it feels very like home and is definitely a big part of me and who I am. So, poorly worded initially, but same sentiment.) Österreich is home to me, in a way, so I’d love to have this very well-priced baby Dirndl for my daughter to wear a few times this year. And I am even willing to pay more to ship it than the lady is asking for the outfit itself. That’s how much I’d like my daughter to be able to wear this outfit.

And did I mention that it is also actually super cute and has great colors? Because it does. I think it would look delightful and complementary on my daughter. Win-win-win. (Because it’s also Austrian.)

I hope this works out this week!

God, guide us always clearly, please. Keep us safe and well and together, always pursuing and fulfilling your will. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

Opera

Took the baby to the opera tonight for her first experience at the opera. It was awesome. She loved it. Employees – and real ones, not simply the volunteer ushers, though they agreed – loved her and were super happy to see someone so young in attendance. She was also all dressed duo adorably, which totally added to the cute factor.

One lady specifically came to tell us that she was glad we were there and that we needn’t worry about noise from the baby; if anyone had an issue, we could send them to her. Fortunately, the baby was quiet enough to be inside for more than half of the evening. My mom and I traded off taking her outside whenever she got a little too excited about the music and performance, that she started cooing and yakking along. Once, she even bumped her head on a wall when I let her sit on the ground in the back for a bit, and I had to rush out with her, because she started crying. I’d say that was the only actual disturbance she may have caused. Though, even that was very brief.

This was the right performance for brining her, to be sure, as it was several individual songs/scenes from various operas, a showcase. So, there were constant breaks and it was easy to go in and out. One cool bit was that they now do a miniature interview of two performers after each piece, so the audience gets a chance to get to know them and connect with them. It was very cool.

Anecdote of the night: An Asian guy – I genuinely missed where he was from, because I was outside with the baby when they first started talking, but he mentioned he loves the restaurant Mala Sichuan, which is an awesome restaurant for Sichuan Chinese food – discussed how he had moved here and spoke very little and very poor English. As he was moving into an apartment, he happened upon a cat that was eating from the trash outside. He said the cat just looked at him like, “Welcome to my home.” He had never considered himself a cat person, but he ended up taking the cat in and adopting it. He would sing to the cat all the time, and the cat would sit and just watch him as he sang – it felt like there was a dialogue between them after he finished singing. ‘Yes, pretty good. But your high notes could use some work.’ He said that he had thought he was rescuing the cat, but it turned out that the cat actually rescued him. He was in a new and foreign place, spoke the language poorly, and didn’t have any local family or friends yet. The cat became a close friend who didn’t care how bad his English was – only that he fed it. And they still have this great relationship. Also, – and his co-performer made sure he added this information before closing – he named the cat “Healthy”. Why? “Because I just want it to be healthy.”

Super adorable and wonderful.

Great time at the opera tonight.

Thank you, God. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

Hot sleep

Well, I managed much better last night on the air mattress. However, it was still too hot. I even adjusted the air one degree and opened our window again (because it was much cooler outside than in the house, even though outside wasn’t actually cold). It was functional, but my sleep was still crappy and only about half the night. Tonight is the final night I’ll be in this environment, so I anticipate much better sleep after tonight.

I am immensely grateful for our home and our electricity and air conditioning. God has given me an opportunity to be grateful for the subtle things and happy in their presence despite outside seemingly big difficulties. Lots in life, including the big stuff, can be hard right now, but the ease of having a clean and comfortable home is incomparable. And we do have that.

Thank you, God. Please, keep us safe and well and together, especially my husband and daughter. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

No sleep

Dear God, please, help me to sleep well tonight and each night. Grant us all rejuvenating sleep. Guide us to be our best selves. Help us to love ourselves and one another well. Help me to be kind and gentle with my husband. Help him to hear me clearly. Please, keep him and our daughter and me safe and well and together. Thank you for our home. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

Travel

Well, we made it to San Antonio. Only two and a half hours after scheduled. And it seems like the only thing we move forgotten so far is the baby wash. Though, I wish I had been extra and had brought the electric fan for the baby outside, because then we could have used it in the bedroom overnight. It is quite warm in here, and I am worried I will end up not sleeping much. :/

God, please, make it cool enough for us to sleep comfortably and well each night. Keep us safe, make us well, and keep us together, please, especially my husband and daughter. Thank you for this day. In your names I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025

Ring-ring

I recently found out that both my parents canceled their home phone lines instead of transferring them to a mobile line. This news was genuinely crushing, because these have been my home phone numbers since I was four years old. I had, in recent years, hoped to use the numbers myself, should my parents ever decide they didn’t want the landlines anymore. But now they are gone for good, and it is upsetting me a shocking amount.

On another note, I started wearing my wedding ring and engagement ring again this weekend. This was a huge move for me. When I was pregnant, I eventually hit a point where I couldn’t stand the tactile experience of things touching me, so I couldn’t even wear my silicone ring near the end of the pregnancy. (All I could stand was my watch, and only sometimes, because it put pressure on my wrist in a way that helped with lessening the nausea.) I noticed a couple weeks ago that I wasn’t having the same tactile reaction anymore, and so I started wearing the silicone ring. One, because it is stretchy and I wouldn’t have to risk the mental struggle that trying on my normal rings might create if they happened to be too tight still (from the weight gain of the pregnancy). Two, because I was worried about hitting the baby and scratching her with the engagement ring.

So, I tested out the feeling of wearing the silicone band. It seemed to be reasonably good, though I did have to stretch it a bit to have it be comfortable. But then it was fine after a bit of stretching. So, after a couple weeks or so of that, I felt mentally prepared to try it the real rings, in terms of safety with the baby, that is. Fortunately, though they were slightly snugger than in the past, they still fit comfortably (and the engagement ring even started spinning today, it was loose enough), so I was able to wear them without discomfort. The day went really well, and I was so happy to be wearing my rings again, to be able to show the world around me about me and my wonderful husband.

So, I wore them again today, too.

But then I started having a sort of breakdown this afternoon, because this was such a huge thing for me, and on several levels, yet no one even seemed to notice. I had been worried for months that people were thinking I was not married, yet not a single person even noticed that I was suddenly wearing rings. And it’s not like they have to comment or even notice. I was just a bit surprised and a lot deflated that not a single person did, not even my family, the people who know firsthand about the struggles I had with rings this past year-ish.

So, yeah… double ring upset this week and a half-ish.

God, keep us safe and well and together, please. In your name, I pray. Amen.

Post-a-day 2025