Fixer Upper

So here is the deal. We are redoing Naomi's room, so that it may become Naomi and Muriel's room. It is about time Muriel wakes someone else up at 4:45, although actually she and Naomi are perfectly suited as roommates because Naomi sleeps like a rock. The point is, we are undergoing a minor renovation, with all that it entails. And it entails everyone sleeping in our bedroom (along with most of their furniture), and it entails the house smelling like super eco-friendly floor oil something or other (which still stinks, just saying), and pointedly NOT smelling like VOC-free paint from the same crunchy home improvement center as the floor oil.

Although I would say we get along quite well most of the time, when we undertake any kind of home improvement project, unfortunately Jim and I, hmmm, well, we clash. We both perceive ourselves to be the project manager, and we have a difficult time believing the other person could have any good ideas whatsoever. I have to admit this is mostly on me, since Jim is better about reading endless tutorials and doing practice runs on things like cutting granite tiles and installing appliances. Really, he's good at things. That does not stop me from trying to run the show.

But now there's a new wrinkle, and it is kids. Our kids are getting better every day at amusing themselves, playing endless games with each other, pretending to be cats (for whatever reason), and in poor literature-starved Muriel's case, looking at books all day long. But they can't really take care of themselves or feed themselves or put themselves to bed, so there is no way that the two of us (the grown up two) can actually put the kind of waking hours joint work time in on a project. What has emerged is an unfortunate but of course strangely natural-feeling gender dynamic, where Mommy cooks dinner and does dishes and reads stories and puts kids to bed, and Daddy saws and hammers and masks and rents big loud equipment. Feh. I will be glad when the room is put back together, and the bunk bed is assembled, and I have mustered the industry to bag and hide 50-75% of the stuffed toys that will not find a home in the new room. In the meantime, I think Jim is kind of enjoying the manly man shtick, deeply entwined as it is with a sensitive (by which I mean, chemically sensitive) love of the earth and the acquisition of new power equipment.

So yeah, before the little distractions joined our household, and in spite of our mutual smartypants handicap, we did manage to do quite a lot of work (together) on our house back in St. Paul. It was a hundred year old house, and lovely inside, but it needed some paint, and some attention to the extremely low-end Home Depot remodel job on the bathroom and the kitchen. We pulled together! We painted! We tiled! Oh, the pride of getting that insanely heavy kitchen sink set into the counter! Before we started that kitchen job, we sat at the dining room table, eating breakfast, arguing about how to do something or other. I took the dishes to the sink, and Jim followed me, and said, Before we start this big job, promise me one thing. And... there was the ring he had been holding on to, waiting for the right minute. Hee. This Sunday is the sixth anniversary of that thing that I promised him, post remodeling bicker, post breakfast.

So as not to end on a corny note, or so as to end on a cornier note, here's the sign Naomi made to remind everyone to keep out of the room where Daddy is working:



"No Coming In!" I love the exclamation point. Also pictured is Jim, brushing oil onto the newly refinished floor, and a bucket. So you don't feel you have missed out by not going in?