house stuff
J spent the week in Las Vegas at a hacker conference, but my parents and I spent the week painting the bedrooms in our new house and performing other random acts of homeownership... We can't move in until the fumigation gets taken care of (tomorrow through Wednesday evening), but we were able to hang out and make lists. I spent the night with the kids, the cat, and one of the girl's friends who is visiting from L.A. one night--discovered that the girl was very allergic to the lavender plants under the living room window, probably because they were old and filled with mold and dust. My mom tore them out today since we needed to get any plants next to the house pruned back for fumigation. The boy also woke up with a rash on his stomach after we spent the night, but I'm blaming the brand new air mattress we were sleeping on--it also gave me a chemical headache. There was a finch nest with three babies in it under one of the awnings. We were stressing like crazy over them, worrying that we would have to move the nest for fumigation, but the babies fledged yesterday! One is a little runty and had to be put back in the nest after one failed attempt at first flight, but even that one was managing to fly around the yard this evening. We went and introduced ourselves to our new neighbors to let them know about the fumigation and they're very nice--especially the woman who has a pool *g*... We got our new washer and dryer delivered during the week and they are HUGE. I didn't appreciate how big they were in the shop. I can only imagine if we'd bought the pedestals to go with them! Fortunately, the laundry room is its own actual space in this house so the machines aren't blocking a vital exit or anything like they would have in our old house. The old owners were very fastidious with the cleaning in general, but the house got pretty dirty over the last month while they were moving out, I think (especially the floors), so I'm hoping to get a cleaning company to come give it a deep cleaning Thursday after fumigation and before we unload our containers. Meanwhile, this coming week is filled with orientation/registration stuff for the kids' new schools. The girl is super stressed about starting high school not knowing anybody, but I have faith that she'll meet nice people quickly. Maybe even during the four hour orientation tomorrow morning, right?! The boy is also stressed, but his anxiety is less paralyzing for him--so far. Anyway, in a week we should be pretty well settled in the new house--hard to believe! And in two weeks both kids will be in school, hopefully with most of their nervousness behind them.