Can someone explain why you would ever put carpet in formal dining rooms? I don’t get it. Of all the rooms in the house you would NOT want carpet in, the top two I can think of are bathroom and—dining room. The two rooms most likely to end up with messes on the floor. (Note: I was just looking at a $1.2 million real estate listing, which prompted this moment of befuddlement.)
Speaking of real estate listings, I’m getting a lot of them in recent months as we’re looking for empty ground to build on–or a plot of land holding some run-down trailer we can dispose of and start fresh. We took the cap off our MLS request so we could see how much it would cost to get the piece of ground we’re looking for, but I’m starting to think what we’re looking for almost doesn’t exist in this school district. In the meantime, I’m getting more savvy about eliminating listings by looking at one line on the detail: “HOA.” If the word following the colon is “yes,” the listing is off the table. We’ve had enough frustration resulting from the very low-cost, low-maintenance HOA we’re part of right now. In sum: We have a standard 2-car garage and no unfinished storage in the house, and storage sheds will get you sued by the HOA, which means our garage looks like this (Laura F, hide your eyes):
Incidentally, the above mentioned house with the carpet in the dining room? Their annual HOA fee is $1500. I shudder to think what nonsense is wrapped up in that.
Also speaking of real estate, I’m noticing a pattern: the more expensive the house, the less character it has. That’s not a 1 to 1, but it’s close.
On another topic, I sometimes think I’m just not a very nice person. Without getting into too many specifics, I had a really frustrating late afternoon and early evening yesterday, trying to deliver kids to two different activities starting simultaneously yet located a twenty-minute drive away from each other, and then getting home in time to grab a bite and get Michael to his first baseball game ever. There were some…shall we say…hiccups in the process. Some with my kids. Some with…other people. And I was kind of a butthead to an adult I’d never met before. I had some provocation, and I didn’t say anything nasty, but I sure gave him a lingering nasty look that let him know exactly what I thought.
And the trouble is, it really wasn’t important. I was just in a bad mood because I feel like I’m running helter-skelter through my days a step behind control and half a step ahead of a complete meltdown.
I know so many people who roll with the punches and when other people screw up or display massive incompetence, they’re so gracious. They say, “Oh, that’s okay, don’t worry about it.” I don’t know if those people are just suppressing their annoyance/anger/frustration/irritation, and will vent about it in a safe space later, behind the back of said Screwup Causer, or if they are genuinely better people than I am. I only know that I seem to be almost completely incapable of NOT displaying whatever reaction I’m actually having inside.
This feels Confession-worthy.
We are now on Week Four of activities every single night of the week, including Fridays. Spring is always ridiculous in this household because we do baseball and it’s intense, but this year it seemed less so. I didn’t realize it felt that way because our kids’ coaches were not giving us a schedule laid out for the entire season, they were doling it out it week by week for quite a while. By the time I realized what was going on, I was deep in the middle of it. I was not mentally and emotionally prepared. Overnight I went from thinking, “Oh, this is so much better than it has been the last few years!” to holding-on-to-the-edge-of-a-cliff-with-my-fingernails.
There has not been a single block of time since Spring Break, which began March 26th, when Christian and I could have a date. We think the last time we went out was to see Hidden Figures. But we aren’t really sure, and we really hope we’re wrong because that was deep in the winter sometime.
Such is the state of my world. How ’bout you?
Kathleen M. Basi 
1. Million $ houses require (presuppose) you
Will hire housecleaners, nannies, to pick up, clean up and have enuf money to replace carpeting every few years.
2. Too many nights out in an insane activities schedule. Our society puts too much stress on excellence in these activities and if the kids are good there are just so many more levels of involvement possible. Makes it harder and harder the more kids you have, and the more you want opportunities for them to learn new skills and excel.
Bottom line: no time for family togetherness at home…ie…family eating together around dinner table every night, talking, sharing, then praying the rosary.
Solution??? Helps if you and husband can agree on when and where to cut back.
We actually keep the kids to a much lower threshold of activity than most people do. Quite a lot of people think we’re draconian about it, actually. Our problem is we have not stopped all our own activities to accommodate those of the kids. And May is problematic because everybody has to do their end-of-year showcase, and it happens to overlap with baseball. I chafe at this all the time because I feel like we lose the spring, but my husband grew with spring being defined by baseball, and so far we haven’t come up with a middle ground.We normally do eat dinner as a family–until the last few weeks. This too shall pass, but it’s not much fun in the meantime.
On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 9:31 AM, Kathleen M. Basi wrote:
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