December c/rush..

 I am missing my December opportunities. I think I just needed a break. But of course, after a week or so I realize I need to diarize again.

It’s a frantic season this year. We took a few precious days and went to Chicago. We spent a couple of days with my daughter and celebrated her birthday at an amazing breakfast place in Oakbrook called Pulp Kitchen. Fabu food! And tons of it.  We then took the boys to a children’s museum in Naperville, into Chicago to the Dutch Consulate to apply for their Dutch passports (before the winds of immigration blow a new direction and dual citizenship is no longer possible), and then to the Shedd Aquarium. They were decidedly not as impressed with the aquarium as I thought they’d be. When I asked Q what he liked best, he mentioned a toy firetruck we didn’t buy him at one of the little gift shops! Oi, boys.

We then came home (no snow storms this time, yay!) and tore into the kitchen literally seconds after our coffee Tuesday morning.  Demo went well except for the friggin’ wallpaper. Took HOURS of scrubbing and steaming to get the shit off the walls! Painting went ok. Frank got the holes cut and drilled for the new recessed lighting. The "tiger-orange" color I chose is a perfect modern accent color. Tile backsplash popped off easy enough. The adhesive behind it, however, did NOT. Left poor Frank no choice but to rip out 2 walls to the studs and drywall them. Plus taping and mudding. More shitty work. And pushed us even further behind. Killzing the walls  that didn’t need ripped out and the ceiling nearly killed all of us! OMG, the fumes!! Both boys have serious colds/ coughs. I truly hope it isn’t due to the dust and fumes from the tear-out. The cabinets are due to arrive this week but won’t be installed till the first week in January. The floor has to go in first. Again, another set back: the kitchen and living room/dining room/hallway floors differ in height by about a quarter of an inch. Best solution would be to lower the smallest room, right? Wrong. Whatever the previous owners put down does NOT want to come up. So for less frustration but higher cost and labor, Frank has opted to raise the other floors instead…which he can only do in large quilt blocks of space due to our inability to empty the living/dining room.

Please, dear reader, never attempt a renovation during the holidays with toddlers.

The boys are stressed and I am ready to cry every other moment. It will be beautiful once it is done but horrible, horrible right now. Our poor tree, shoved as it is between furniture, isn’t even decorated yet.

Adding to my stress my mother’s tumor markers are suddenly elevated (she has a CT scan on Thursday and an appointment with her oncologist to discuss the results on Friday). Her twin had surgery this last week for colon cancer and sadly look like it is stage 3 or 4. My younger brother miraculously had a precancerous polyp removed though the doctor poo-pooed him for coming in for a screeening colonoscopy at 45 yrs. Another doc told him to go by a lottery ticket since he was only 6 months from getting a stage 3 diagnosis himself. I feel far obsessed with my ass-end these days. I prefer navel-gazing..instead of constantly looking behind me every bathroom visit. Mundane reality bites.

Frank cannot make much progress this week since I am working late. It’s going to be a long weekend of crunching to get the bamboo floors installed. We want it done so the boys can have a peaceful-ish Christmas morning. And so the cabinet install can be not delayed!

I’ve also been crying many a tear over the CT shooting. The poor children and their parents! I am weakly glad to see something (anything!!) good may come of this re: better assault gun control laws, perhaps better mental health solutions. But still…I am having trouble absorbing the magnitude of grief and shock over this incident. It never leaves my mind. Or my heart. There are no words, no ceremonies, no money, no laws, no hugs, nothing that can lessen the horror and the pain. Makes one want to literally withdraw from the world and barricade the front door. I can say no more.