Diary of a Metal Mommy

Your mind! It’s always in the gutter, and I’m telling you, it’s getting embarrassing. The title of this blog entry refers to my lovely new outdoor chair, nothing more. We have a couple of nice green outdoor chairs, but with our growing family we needed more. With Sullivan’s soccer games going on now, a person needs a place to place once arse that is not the itchy grass. The green ones are like some sort of fancy Galyan’s-type chair that probably cost something like $50 a piece, at least–they were a gift. I didn’t feel like being quite so free with my money, so I decided to try Target. This is where I found my lovely pink chair. It’s definitely cheaper quality than the others we have–you get what you pay for!– but mine has the arm rests and the cup holder–nice! Another thing it has, however, is a weird funky-ass smell. (well, thank goodness not really an ASS smell, but just a funky smell) I’m setting it up outside to air it out. Why is it that so many things I get end up having a smell?! (don’t answer that.) But smell or no, I’ll look stylin’ lounging around in my girlie chair. I wore a pink shirt last night to the soccer game, too, and I swear it wasn’t planned.

If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. That was definitely the case with our shot at getting our bathroom/laundry area done downstairs on the Bathroom Renovations show. Two very nice women came out to the house to meet us and take a look at the project. Emily, the person Cory had been emailing back and forth, was very excited when she saw/heard what we wanted to do, especially at the idea of it being a retro-style area. (yeah!) Then the bomb dropped–all of the materials they use and everything they put in is free, however, the contractor’s labor fee is up to us. With our project, which I guess would be a four episode show (!), it looks like we’d be talking at least 10K or so. Huh?! Not exactly something we’ve budgeted for! And for a downstairs bathroom and laundry room? Don’t get me wrong, it would be SO cool and I’m sure they would do an amazing job….but that’s a lot of dough-re-mi that we just were not planning on spending.

Emily seemed to be really excited about us and our renovation, which was very coo–and she said she wanted to do whatever it took to make it happen. Well, we shall see. I’m not getting my hopes up on this one. What a bummer! Those damn spiders and centipedes are probably down there wiping their little brows with one of their many legs in relief–the bastards. (do bugs have brows? Inquiring minds want to know…) Ah well, it was fun to see how that all works and certainly nice to be desired on a television program. I did give both ladies a Feminine Hijinx business card, so, all is not lost.

When I was doing a pic search for an image of a ’spider in the bathroom’ for my blog entry below, I came across a photo of a room in a cabin at Spider Shores Resort. Considering it made my stomach hurt just to view all of those horrid spider photos, (see what I’ll go through, just for you?!) it’s just beyond me how anyone could spend a week at some place called Spider Lake. That conjures up images I just don’t need to have in my head. The only thing that may be worse is Vomit Lake. Ug. I don’t think I’ll look up images to pretty up this blog with that search, sorry. I do draw the line at that one.

I was just sitting here checking out the web site of Edelman Productions, trying to figure out which TV show we may actually be on. Yup, you read it right. Shall I explain?

A while ago Cory was doing his daily Craig’s List search and came across an ad from Edelman Productions, a local company that specializes in producing television series–most of them being of the Home Improvement type, it seems. This ad put a call out to people who may be interested in having a bathroom or kitchen remodel, free of charge, and have it be televised for one of these shows. Uh…sha! Who wouldn’t want to do that?!

Of course a kitchen can NEVER be big enough or have enough space, in my opinion, but we re-did our kitchen a few years ago when we moved into this house, so that is not really an issue for us. However, our downstairs bathroom is quite a mess. The plastic tiles are falling off the walls, the people who lived here before painted weird multi-colored squiggles all over the top half of the walls that do not have decrepit falling tiles–pretty horrific. I painted some white over the squiggles but of course never got any farther than that. Our whole bathroom/laundry area could definitely use an overhaul. In fact we’ve planned on doing just that, but somehow the downstairs bathroom just never quite gets priority over all of the other things that constantly need fixing up around here. Plus I’ve deemed it ‘The Scary Bathroom’, mainly because there always seems to be a spider or centipede in there. Shiver!!!

So, needless to say Cory was very interested in this possibility and can you believe, after a few emails and photos sent back and forth (one of them being the one at center above), at least one producer is actually coming to our house Monday at noon to check it out and to meet us?!!!! Eeeek! (do you think Dot and John would lend me Esther for the weekend?!) I don’t want to get too excited, because of course it’s no sure thing yet. But it’s looking damn good. Wish us luck! (no more Scary Bathroom!)

(there we are at Elio’s in NYC, having a wonderful meal with Dot and John Levy!)

Life is great today. Oh, there’s nothing really exciting going on. (although I did get to sleep in until 8:00 AM for the second day in a row, which is quite amazing, actually!) I dropped Vivian off at her art club class she is doing all week, and Sullivan and I went to the gym. We came back, and Sullivan requested to play over at the church in the nursery. He’s obsessed with this new tub of cars they have in there. He doesn’t even play in the nursery anymore–we make him sit with us boring adults, poor guy–but apparently he’s been in there enough to set his sights on those cars and therefore be obsessed with them. No big deal, with church being a few steps away, it’s a nice alternative to the same old cars around here. Nice for me, too, as I get to gab with various nice people over there.

As for the rest of the afternoon, I have no idea what’s in store. I wanted to take the kids to the pool, but alas, the clouds rolled in and what was a warm sunny morning has turned into a chilly, cloudy afternoon–well, maybe not chilly, but if you are standing around in a wet pool it becomes downright frigid. But even thwarted pool plans can’t ruin my mood today. I’m still on a New York City high. It was a bummer to leave the good life of Park Avenue with my friends having not a care in the world, don’t get me wrong….but I feel like it totally refreshed and recharged me in an amazing way. I’m so appreciative of my dear husband, who loves me enough to let me go have all the fun and in fact encouraged me to do so. I’m appreciative, of course, of my wonderful friends who shared it with me. How many people are lucky enough to have friendships like that?? Just like men, I’ve been through my share of weirdness with friends, and I’m extra appreciative of a good friendship when I see it. And it may not be on Park Avenue, but I am very appreciative of my lovely home in this lovely state and my lovely kick-ass car to drive around it in. And heck, I got on that plane! I haven’t been a fan of air travel for quite a few years now, but I stared anxiety in the face and got on one anyway. Two, to be exact.

It’s amazing what a little gratefulness and empowerment will do for a person. Makes an ordinary day an extraordinary one. Ahhhh. Remind me of this when I’m getting my mammogram and serving jury duty. And the next time my kid throws up.