Walking Backwards

Some days I just have to wonder why my baby is so grumpy. Today is not one of those days. I know why he is gumpy. With my being sick and his coming down with the same illness in combination with the holidays, Nico's schedule has gone totally and completely insane. He slept until 11:30 this morning. The only reason I allowed him to sleep this late is because I was still asleep, totally exhausted from fighting to keep him in bed all night long. Hopefully, he will want to go down for good at 11 tonight. I won't hold my breath because he snuck in several short naps today. I thought he was playing in his ball tunnel with the cat, but I check on him after I put up the laundry and he is fast asleep. He fell asleep in his stroller while I was cleaning out the garage and he passed out in the middle of his late lunch. I finally let him lay down for half an hour from 6:30 until 7 while I got ready to go to the grocery store. He was not overjoyed to be awoken. I have to get him back on track as his class is Friday. I have a feeling that it is going to take me all week to do so.

The cat got out today and decided to take a tour of the neighborhood. She normally just runs out and hides under one of the cars until someone drags her out and takes her back inside. Today I let her wander between the cars before trying to get her and felt like exploring. She has never really been outside in her whole life. Joe and I have been debating whether or not we want to let her outside on a more permanent basis. She decided that for us today. After she had been outside for about forty-five minutes and I had lost track of her, our neighbors from down the street called us to pick up our "aggressive" cat. I found it quite strange to be called to get my cat from less than fifty yards away, but I guess they assumed she wasn't supposed to be out. Who knows? The people who got her were really nice, but I didn't understand why they took her into their house. Most of the time you see a cat wandering around that looks as well fed as my cat with a collar on, you just assume that its exploring and you let it wander on. She didn't like being in a strange house it seems, because she wouldn't let anyone hold her. I guess that is why she qualified as aggressive. For now she is happy to be home, but I imagine by tomorrow she'll be fighting to get out again.

As I said earlier, I spent quite a lot of the day cleaning out the garage. It had become storage for all of our Christmas trash and stuff that had been dumped from the attic. I bagged all of the trash up and crushed all of the stuff for recycling. This is quite a pain because Austin has one of the most difficult waste-management set ups I have ever gotten to participate in. First, they only pick up one 60 gallon trash can (that they rent to you for a big fee) once a week. Anything that is over that you get charged $4 a bag. If you buy extra trash stickers its $2 a bag. It is supposed to encourage recycling, which is fine, but their recycling set up isn't user friendly either. I had to break down a ton of boxes today into a maximum of 3x3 ft. squares and bind them all together with string. Whenever you have to recycle paper it has to be in a separate brown paper bag and all lawn clippings have to be put into a specific 'lawn clipping' bag that you have to buy at Home Depot or the like. The list of recyclable items is also limited. I never knew that I would ever spend so much time contemplating and organizing trash. You should see my curb; 10 extra bags of trash, tons of sorted, crushed, and washed recyclables, and lots of cardboard. My neighbors must be wondering what we've been up to.

In other news, I found a feature on how to do the paint treatment I have decided on for our bedroom. I want to do our bedroom paint in Morning Surf with a linen finish. I'm also going to refinish our retro furniture in antique white and silver. It should come out nice. Hopefully we can get this done while Joe is on vacation. Our room drives me nuts. The people who lived here before us painted it grey and it might be nice, but it is in disrepair with chips and such. I said I was going to do our front room first, but we spend so much more time in our bedroom that I think that it gets more of a priority. The paint is going to take three days according to the site so I am going to have to figure out where we are going to sleep around that. It shouldn't be too hard. Tile is so comfortable after all :)

Tomorrow we are going to look at landscaping supplies at one of the places down the street. I have to find a place that will deliver. All I am going to get is the railroad ties, the barrels, and the soil for my vegetable garden. I want to look at all of the borders that they have for gardens. Sheryl recommended limestone, but I am thinking about using brick to match the house. I might take home a few of our options and decide when I see them in the yard. I wish I could find one of the companies that sells recycled landscaping materials, because they have such cheap stuff and I want it to have a lived in look to it. I can't wait until at least some of it gets set up. I'll post pictures as soon as anything gets into place. Right now it just exists in the boring planning and measurement stage.