seriously BATS?

My brain is stuck on spin cycle and it’s Not Great Bob.

I have been eating my feelings, and my feelings taste like vanilla ice cream speckled with rainbow Nerds.

Vanilla ice cream not pictured, as it is already in my belly.

All the things that are stressing me are Champagne problems, so it’s a little frustrating to be feeling so riled.

We are having some landscaping work done. It’s been postponed twice, for no clear reason, which is its own mildly stressful thing. Finally, it’s happening this week and I am so jittery. Will the changes look good, or at least better than before? Will the updates reduce maintenance costs, as planned? Will the new plants survive? Will the transplanted plants survive? Will the project be worth the cost?

A bunch of phone calls I have been delaying continue to require resolution. Just make the phone calls! But I don’t want to, because this will be the second or third round of calls to each of the three places and those calls are either going to result in a) another round of phone tag or b) additional questions / appointments / decision points. I don’t wanna.

My husband and I have completely stalled on our furniture-buying plans. Which is fine-ish, but also I still have an old, torn, ugly couch in my front room and plus we pretty much already CHOSE some of the furniture, we just haven’t chosen everything, and now I am afraid the costs of everything are continuing to climb and/or we will end up delaying the purchases until the holidays when we will already be spending a bunch of money.

My cat is afraid of our Halloween décor. Carla put up all the Halloween decorations yesterday, including the many many wall bats I’ve accumulated over the years (they are my favorite), and poor Leo spent the rest of the evening under my bed, which is where he goes when a Very Loud Noise frightens the fluff out of him. He was super jumpy and weird last night after I dragged him out from under the bed, and then this morning he was super jumpy and weird during our morning routine – only half-heartedly chasing things during play time and then doing that thing where he stands and stares intently into the nothingness as though he is seeing something otherworldly. Do I take the Halloween decorations down? Will ALL decorations freak him out? What is going to happen when we have a Christmas tree in our living room?

We cannot decide what to do for an upcoming vacation. Originally, my husband and Carla wanted to go to either England or Japan, and I was opposed to an overseas trip following so close on the heels of our Paris trip. My alternative was to go skiing out west or to go to Canada, land of so many beautiful sites and home to so many amazing bloggers. My husband would prefer someplace warm and suggested Los Angeles, Santa Fe, or Las Vegas. (Why do they all have two-part names? Do you think he included that in his criteria?) Carla wants to go to Japan, which would be amazing, but also the very idea of flying such a long distance to a country where I speak no more than a single word of the language gives me the vapors. THE VAPORS. I can’t drum up any enthusiasm whatsoever for the US options my husband has come up with, to the point that I have come around about going to England… but my husband thinks we may not have enough time to plan an overseas trip at this point. So we keep going in circles and not deciding and our designated time off is getting closer and closer. (Where would YOU go?)

I have a dumb post in my drafts that I am probably going to publish and then I’ll feel extra dumb about putting it out in the world, but I keep thinking about it and maybe that’s part of why I feel Stuck lately? Just as you are kind and tolerant of not only my whining about non-problems, but doing said whining when the world at large is facing so many real, hard, life-altering things, and when so many of YOU are enduring real, hard, life-altering things, I am guessing you will be kind and tolerant of my forthcoming dumb post, but I am still feeling dumb about it. And feeling dumb about THIS post, too.

An ongoing unbloggable but also Not Actually Bad situation continues to assert itself despite Taking Measures. I have been venting to friends and sending emails and ordering books and trying to collect my thoughts and trying to figure out if there is someone in authority I can talk to who might have the power to address things. This makes it sound worse than it is; it’s nothing serious, it’s just one of those things that you want to FIX if you CAN.

I have a Social Event to attend and I don’t want to. It’s not like social anxiety is anything new to me, and honestly, now that I’m taking an anti-anxiety medication, the symptoms I typically suffer (sweating, blushing, pounding heart, feeling like I’m going to vom, tangled tongue) affect me a lot less. But I still HATE going to events where I’m expected to socialize with a bunch of people. Hate. HATE.

Again, nothing is really wrong. And yet I am so edgy and hand-wringy about everything. I think what the stress comes from is a) decision-making without a clear winner and/or b) my lack of control over a situation or its outcome.

I was texting with a friend the other day about a similar issue making a tough decision, and I tried to reframe it for her by reminding her that no matter what she decides, the outcome will be positive. That’s true for me, too. So what if the decision-making doesn’t have a clear winner? That means it doesn’t have a clear loser, either! Even if there isn’t a genuinely positive outcome, at the very worst, these decisions won’t be irreversibly damaging if we choose wrong. Like if the new landscaping sucks, well. It will be a waste of money and we’ll be annoyed, but no one is going to die (except possibly some transplanted hydrangeas). And if we hate it enough, in a few years we can hire someone else to do something different.

And look. Leo seems to be coming around on his feelings about the bats.

“Are you loving the new house?!” This is the most common question I get these days, and it’s posed in an excited, expectant way. People are so happy for us! They are so excited to see the new place and hear all about how much we are loving it!

Well. It has been one month since we moved into our new house, and in general I feel like it’s been a huge, expensive, horrible mistake. This is supposed to be our dream house, our forever house, and I am instead feeling like we uprooted our happy, perfectly wonderful life for nothing. No, worse than nothing. We replaced something not-perfect-but-pretty-great with a money-sucking monster that we drastically overpaid for. I have been feeling so negative about the house and so overwhelmed with all the minutiae of moving and so guilty for feeling so disgruntled over something I CHOSE, ON PURPOSE, something I should feel grateful for and appreciative of, that I’ve had neither time nor inclination to blog.

I also feel guilty for getting so bent out of shape about what are very minor things. I know this! It’s not like we are lacking clean water. We aren’t dealing with family tragedy, we have food and shelter. All the REAL needs are being addressed, and I know – I know – we are super fortunate to have this house at all, and to have savings to apply toward fixing it up. Plus, we had a home inspection and the house is FINE, overall. It just feels like death by a thousand paper cuts, you know? Like I could deal with a corroded shower handle, and deal with replacing it… but then when the grill doesn’t work and the refrigerator leaks every time you open it and the oven makes a horrific rattling noise when it reaches temperature and half the light switches make a sizzly I-am-about-to-shock-you noise when you flip them and the other half seem to operate nothing at all and the garage door suddenly won’t close AT ALL, it feels like everything is falling apart. Plus, everything – EVERYTHING – seems to be at least $3500 to address. Every estimate we get is right around that price point, as though all the service companies in the state got together and decided that this would be the standard starting fee for any and every type of service. $3500 is not nothing!

This week, I’ve been able to dip my toe back into blog reading, and I do want to get back to blog writing. But it feels like all the negativity is clogging up my writing pipes. I think the only way to move forward is to write it all down. Even though it will sound whiny and self-pitying and unrelatable.

But! If you want to skip all the negativity (and I don’t blame you – there’s enough in the intro paragraphs of this post already), I did force myself, Elisabeth-style, to come up with some things that are bringing me joy and giving me hope that this low phase is indeed temporary.

Five Woes (and I recognize that I am tremendously lucky to be able to complain about these things)

5. Phone Calls and Appointments. I have made approximately five million phone calls and endured five thousand service appointments in the new house and spent an obscene amount of money. There are things that we chose to do, like installing new floors and asking an electrician to estimate the cost for installing an outlet in the floor of the living room and changing the locks and hiring someone to rein in the overgrown landscaping. There are things we had to do, like replace my daughter’s leaking trim kit in her shower, and install a pressure regulating valve on our water line, and replace the failing pool heater, and fix the garage door that refused to close. There are things that were supposed to be “free” (or covered under our membership plan), like flushing our water heater and getting a clean and check of our furnace, which both uncovered things that need to be taken care of. There are things that are still in the works, like installing a security/fire safety system and getting our air ducts cleaned. There are things I never ever would have wanted to spend money on, like hiring an exterminator to get rid of all the mice in our basement (yuck) or inviting a bat guy to assess and address our bat problem (wtf). I have had to be available between 8:00 and 12:00 pretty much every single day since we moved here, which is annoying and hard to schedule my life around.

4. Critter Corpses. Mice – five of them, three in traps the exterminator set after we discovered our mouse problem and two in our furnace intake valve, which the very nice HVAC person found and disposed of. Chipmunk – one, drowned in the pool. Frog – one, same fate. Bat – only one (so far) thank everything – in our basement, which the very unflappable plumber discovered and removed when he was installing the new pressure regulator.

3. Cold or Allergies? I have been sneezing nearly nonstop since we moved here. Early on, the sneezing developed into what seemed like a genuine cold: fever, runny nose, general crankiness. (Covid tests were negative.) But while the cold ended two weeks ago, I am still sniffly and sneezy and my head is stuffy and I feel ever-so-slightly like I need my inhaler. The previous owners had dogs and I really think that I am allergic to this house. We replaced all the flooring on the first and second floors, getting rid of all the threadbare, mismatched carpet… but the carpet in the basement was in great shape, so we just got it cleaned… and I’m afraid that was a mistake and we should have replaced it as well. I’m hoping that cleaning the air ducts will help, but I’m waiting on another estimate before we schedule it.

2. Commute. Our previous house was, on the worst, most-trafficky days, seven minutes away from my daughter’s school, so my daily commute was 28 minutes total (not counting after school activities). Our current commute is nearly four times as long (not counting after school activities), which means I am spending roughly two hours in the car each day. I am listening to a good number of audiobooks, but sheesh.

1. New Car. This has been the most expensive summer of our lives, so why not add a new car to the mix? My lease is about to end, and being a one-car family is not workable for us. But this is pretty much the worst time (ever????) to buy a new car, as inventory is nonexistent and prices are high. It would be prohibitively expensive to buy out my lease, so we are planning to lease another vehicle… but the current lease deals are also SO EXPENSIVE. (Nearly double the cost for a similar vehicle to what I drive now.) Plus, while my preference would be to lease the exact same car I drive now, there are none of that model available. So we are going with a totally different vehicle and even though it gets great ratings and I enjoyed driving it, I am not great with change. Plus, I am having trouble communicating with the salesperson, who seemed very eager to work with us at first, but now seems to have ghosted me??? And yes, I realize we could just get a smaller, less expensive vehicle so a lot of this woe is our own damn fault.

0. No One Calls Me Back!!!!! You might expect that with so many service appointments, this would be hyperbole… And I suppose it is. But it feels like no one will return my calls. I have filled out so many online estimate requests that go completely unanswered and left so many voicemails that go unreturned. A person from one of the landscaping/snow removal companies I called returned my call FOUR WEEKS after I’d asked for an estimate, and then when I told her we’d gone with someone else (the one person who did get back to me – this is now the bar: respond to me and I will pay you money!), wanted to tell me about all the things that had prevented her from returning my call right away. People who said they would send me estimates have never sent them. The salesperson who was going to lease us our car stopped responding to my texts and didn’t return my voicemails. WHAT IS HAPPENING. I get that there are ongoing staffing issues, but… how are businesses operating???

Five Wows

1. The Pool. Longtime readers may recall that having a pool was one of my wishlist items for my dream house. Since the pandemic, I’ve really come to realize how much we depend on our home to provide space for everything from exercise to entertainment to comfort. Plus, we still lean toward entertaining outdoors. So having a pool was definitely on my list. (“Be careful what you wish for” has been a cruelly gleeful refrain in my brain these days.) This house has nearly everything on the wishlist, including a pool. And, while taking care of a pool and getting it serviced is a massive headache, it is also one of my favorite things about this house because it makes Carla SO HAPPY. Since it’s the end of the pool season, we have been able to find pool toys for cheap and she is loving her inflatable shark and her scuba gear and her treasure chest of jewels to dive for. Fall has been very mild so far, so we are still enjoying pool time and it makes me so happy to see her enjoying herself so much. Plus, I have dreams of being the Teen Hangout House when Carla gets older, and I feel like a pool could be very attractive to her friends.

2. The Commute. Even though I hate driving on the freeway and I feel like I’m at the gas station way too often, I am surprised to find that I otherwise love the commute. Carla is so charming and energetic in the mornings. She is usually quite chatty and I get all sorts of tidbits about what’s going on her brain and at school. We often listen to the Kid Nuz podcast and that opens up all sorts of interesting topics for discussion. After school, she’s more subdued and worn out from the day, so we often listen to classical music or maybe stop at Starbucks on the way to her music lesson. I am loving this focused time with her, with none of the usual distractions of laundry or dinner or my phone. (Plus, as I mentioned before, all this time in the car means I am listening to a ton of audiobooks. I listened to eight of them in September alone, which is a lot for me.)

3. My Parents and My Husband. It seems like something goes wrong every single day at this house. (Yesterday: the gas line started making a weird noise.) I am stressed and worried about money. I feel like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit, with the hysterical seal-laugh and all, but my husband is being so calm and optimistic. He says soothing things like, “We’re just taking care of everything up front so we can enjoy the house for the long run!” and “These are all little things, and we will fix them.” and “We are going to enjoy this house, this is just a rough patch.” It is buoying and gives me strength. My parents, likewise, are being so matter-of-fact about everything. The mouse thing really shook me, I think because I expected to move into this brand-new house and found out it was full of mouse poop and scurrying critters. But my mom reminds me that I grew up in the country and mice are just Part Of Rural Living. She’s very blasé about the bat, too – bats eat mosquitos, after all. My dad inspects or fixes things every time he’s here, and is available by text when I need to ask whether I should call the gas company (yes) or just not worry about the weird squeak click click coming from the meter. He and my husband removed all the awful curtains and reattached the cupboards to my daughter’s vanity. He tested the bathroom fan to see if it is fixable and offers suggestions for how to deal with day-to-day issues and is helping me address the mouse entry points. My parents took Carla on a hike and picnic the other day! They come over to hang out by the pool occasionally! When I need a babysitter, I just ask them and they say yes! It is so nice to have them here.

4. New Neighbors. One of the hardest parts of leaving our old house was leaving our neighbors (and their dogs). We haven’t met everyone on our street yet, but we have met three of the nearest neighbors, and they all seem super nice. The across-the-street neighbors are SO lovely. They invited us to a backyard dinner (and by the way, they are extraordinary cooks!) and introduced us to a bunch of people who live in the neighborhood. Best of all, they have three children who have been so friendly and welcoming to Carla. She has already been over to their house countless times, has walked their dog, and has invited the kids over to play games at our house. One afternoon, the kids’ parent took all of them plus Carla to the park. I am LOVING THIS. I want kids running in and out of my house. I want Carla to have friends nearby.

5. All the Trees. This is my backyard. Do you see how one tree is wearing a scarlet sweater???!!!! I look outside and I walk around our yard, clipping some of the beautiful dahlias the previous owners planted, and I feel so peaceful.

(Until the next serviceperson arrives, or I get an email with the next $3500 proposal for work to be done. Oh look. Here’s the estimate from the bat guy. Do I want more bats, or do I want to pay $3,675 for bat prevention measures?)

What’s the occasion for your current pity party? Lay it on me.

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suzanne day by day

the mundane, the magical, and everything in between

Five Woes and Five Wows