Monday, September 08, 2008

One thing leads to another

We decided it was time to paint the boys room this weekend.  We've lived here 11 years now & apart from slapping some moon & stars decals on the walls & hanging a couple dragon posters, we've done nothing to their room. I'm not the sort of person who goes in for creating nurseries.  To me, they have a short life span & then the child who lives in them expresses their negative opinion on Baby Bugs & Company and the whole thing has to be redone. (a friend of mine's 2.5 year old is regularly peeling the Winnie the Pooh decals off the wall because 'they keep looking at me') I'd rather save the money I'd spend on doing up a nursery and then use it decorating the room for the 5-7 year old to his tastes. The boys have each selected a color & we'll be doing 2 walls in a flame red and 2 walls in a blue gray. They haven't said much about decor - no preference for sports or a cars theme yet. They'll be getting bunk beds and new bedding in a couple months and I suspect when they pick out sheets then a theme will emerge.

Saturday we went looking for our power rollers & other supplies.  The search for the roller heads led to the discovery of a significant leak in a pipe over the electrical box. Another 24 hours or so and the damp would have soaked through to the box. Why is a water pipe T joint almost directly over the electrical box?  We've added that to the long long long list of things we have to ask the hippies who built this house (probably while high) should we ever meet them.

We have drop ceilings, so to repair the leak DH had to remove a bunch of them and get up into a part of the ceiling no one has disturbed since the house was inspected before we bought it in 1997.  OH MY GOD THE DUST!! Dust everywhere, dust coming down like rain on a summer's day. The dust triggered my almost dormant allergies, which, after a humongous sneezing fit and a long hot shower, settled into my eyes.  Burning, itchy, watery eyes. When I woke up Sunday morning my left eye was swollen and caked shut.

The eye problem led to my cleaning out all my bathroom cabinets. Almost every single thing of medicine in my cabinets was expired, some had been expired since January 2006. Fortunately the Visine AC is still good for a couple of months.

Cleaning out my cabinets led me to discover I have the world's largest collection of barely used hair supplies.  Bottles and bottles and tubes and pumps and jars, all of stuff I have used once on twice on my hair & not cared for the result enough to use again. Hundreds of dollars of hair care product. Wasted.

The knowledge of all that money wasted led me to sit down with the budget and rework the amounts to better reflect just how we spend money.  After realizing that we barely manage to watch 2 movies every 6 weeks with Netflix, I canceled the account.

So you could say that we no longer rent movies as a direct result of painting the boys' room.

6 comments:

Nikki said...

LOL, isn't that how it always goes? Starting with one thing and ending up at a place where you never expected.

I hope the "theme" of the room goes easily. I get nothing but fighting here! :)

Athena said...

Ah, cause and effect. Lovely little bastard, isnt it?! ;)

Miss j aka mixedclawzz said...

That's how it always is. If you want to see piles of unused crap well then come on over to my house. I am slowly getting better, BUT IT'S HARD. I see something I want, and I really think I NEED and will USE it so I BUY it only to bring it home to put it away and never touch it.

Jennifer said...

Oh, wow! Hope it all comes together! :)

Channah said...

Yeah, we recently realized that netflix isn't a worthwhile expense for us, either, right now.

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Rachel said...

WOW -- I'm glad you found that leak in time!

I'm glad to hear that comment about Netflix -- Hubby is all in a dither to join.