Wednesday 25 May 2011

Springtime

We have so much stuff going on at the moment and in the immediate future, including some actual "work" on the house coming up very soon. In fact, I'm supposed to be clearing out the basement at this very moment - so, of course, I finally feel moved to write a blog post. Funny, huh? I don't actually mind clearing the basement; I have already made very good progress and boxing things up is a lot like playing with my fabric and craft supplies. But blog posts take place upstairs, which means that I can be a) playing on the internet, b) eating chips and salsa, and c) watching Ace of Cakes, all at the same time. Multi-tasking is fun!

I am very excited about impending home improvements. We've been doing bits and pieces in the garden and it's really gratifying to see the change - there's a very good "effect to effort" ratio. I spent £20 at the garden centre up the road and a month later everything is still alive and flowering. Nice! And it's been agreed with the other freeholders to paint the front of the house! I am so happy about this, because lots of other houses along the street are freshly painted while ours...has a plant growing out of the 2nd floor window ledge. I think the new paint will smarten things up, so that the exterior gives a better indication of the cuteness inside.

The biggest project (from our point of view, since painting the house is obviously a pretty big undertaking but not one in which we will have any direct involvement) is getting our basement sorted out. It's damp, so a very nice man named Paul is going to chip off all the plaster, treat the walls with a liquid PVA and then re-plaster with a mixture which includes another damp-proofing agent. Then everything will be painted bright white. Sometime after that, we're going to put down a new floor, possibly a laminate as it turns out that the rubber flooring I wanted is not only difficult to keep clean but also really expensive. Then we're having the stairs re-done - at the moment they're just open steps with no risers - and having cupboards built in underneath. When all that's done, we're going to move our bedroom down there and turn the upstairs bedroom into an actual nursery. Granted, it will be a nursery with a futon in it. I would have hoped that by the age of, well, nearly 40, I'd be living a futon-free life, but sometimes things don't work out the way you imagine. And it'll be somewhere to sleep when we have guests and the rest of the time, a nice place to read stories.

But enough of my unrealised furniture-related ambitions. In addition to the home improvements, we're also just generally busy. I've gone back to work two days a week, while Matthew stays home with Astrid. She is getting very active and very sociable, so we have activities almost every day, which she really likes and which I am finding exhausting. She is growing, hitting lots of developmental milestones, and eats well - I never imagine I would peel and chop so many apples and pears. I don't really mind, though.