Ad Nauseum
Since I'm not terribly busy at work (for the first time in several weeks), I have time to obsess over our upcoming move. That's right--we're moving. To another house. Across the street. I'm not kidding.
Right now we live in what is commonly known as the "mother-in-law's quarters" but what I like to think of as the "bitch barracks." It's a ramshackle "house" that someone built around the existing garage of the main house. So the lot goes something like this--big house faces the street, with a driveway next to it that runs into the garage, which is directly under our bedroom. Sweet. If the occupants of the big house were to exit their back door and walk through their back door, eventually they would run into our deck.
How we came to live here stems from Ben's past life as a frat boy. He lived in the big house with a few other dudes--one of whom is the son of the landlord. When that dude's girlfriend and daughter came into the picture on a full-time and reasonably permanent basis, the other dudes got moved out when they moved in. Ben moved into the bitch barracks because, well, it was cheap, and considering he was well-familiar with the occupants of the big house, it wasn't a bad arrangement.
Until I moved in. The bitch barracks, aside from being painfully small and awkwardly laid out (the kitchen and dining rooms are on the main level, everything else is upstairs), can also be clearly visualized from the big house's kitchen windows. Consider the big house occupants are bored and therefore nosy, and you can see what I'm getting at.
So when the cute pink stucco bungalow across the street came up empty, we jumped on it. Our rent will go up by about $250 a month, but when you consider we've been shelling out $102 a month to keep my entire stockpile of shit in a storage unit, it's not a bad deal.
The new house we've affectionately named "the pig house" because, well, we think it looks like a pig. It has hardwood floors, new appliances, a dishwasher, a yard (with no other dwellings in it), a front porch, a back deck, a driveway, a basement, and an attic. Oh, and a fireplace. No garages under our bedroom. No neighbors staring at us through their kitchen windows. No more missing my stuff because it won't fit in our living quarters.
The downside to this (aside from having to get rid of our dog) is the actual moving part. I hate moving. Chaos and disorganization make me nervous. And of course I want to make the place my own through decor, but I suck at decorating, and I've lost touch with all of my gay male friends, so I'm fucked. I've ended up buying the same rugs and slipcovers as I had in my apartment--which is fine, because they actually looked nice--but I'm stuck on window treatments, which have never been my forte.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
And on to other rambling crap, because I'm bored and sick of working...
Bob's therapist mentioned this week she thinks Bob may be bipolar. So I've started reading up on bipolar in young kids, and it's very eye-opening and disheartening at the same time. Bob fits the description to a T, much moreso than ADHD. All this time I've been fighting against the ADHD label--it's too damned convenient for them to look at him and say, "oh, he's bouncing off the walls, he must have ADHD." Yes, he's bouncing off the walls now--but tomorrow he may be sitting sullenly on the couch looking like he hates the whole world. Tomorrow morning he might bounce out of bed at 6:30, but a few days later, I'll be hard-pressed to wake him at 7:30.
The problem with this is what to do about it. The medication options for bipolar kids are even scarier than the ones for ADHD. And the whole thing is so trial and error because no one, obviously, wants to volunteer their kids as human guinea pigs to test mood stabilizing drugs. I don't want to volunteer mine, either--but what if my resisting only forces him to have further problems?
I know that he does better when he's with Ben and me--everything is very routine, there aren't any other kids at home, he knows what to expect and when to expect it--but I doubt I can keep him away from DB forever on the grounds that "he's making our kid crazy."
I wish I could go back in time to that moment when I thought, "having a kid can't be that much more difficult than having a dog" and kick myself really, really hard.
Right now we live in what is commonly known as the "mother-in-law's quarters" but what I like to think of as the "bitch barracks." It's a ramshackle "house" that someone built around the existing garage of the main house. So the lot goes something like this--big house faces the street, with a driveway next to it that runs into the garage, which is directly under our bedroom. Sweet. If the occupants of the big house were to exit their back door and walk through their back door, eventually they would run into our deck.
How we came to live here stems from Ben's past life as a frat boy. He lived in the big house with a few other dudes--one of whom is the son of the landlord. When that dude's girlfriend and daughter came into the picture on a full-time and reasonably permanent basis, the other dudes got moved out when they moved in. Ben moved into the bitch barracks because, well, it was cheap, and considering he was well-familiar with the occupants of the big house, it wasn't a bad arrangement.
Until I moved in. The bitch barracks, aside from being painfully small and awkwardly laid out (the kitchen and dining rooms are on the main level, everything else is upstairs), can also be clearly visualized from the big house's kitchen windows. Consider the big house occupants are bored and therefore nosy, and you can see what I'm getting at.
So when the cute pink stucco bungalow across the street came up empty, we jumped on it. Our rent will go up by about $250 a month, but when you consider we've been shelling out $102 a month to keep my entire stockpile of shit in a storage unit, it's not a bad deal.
The new house we've affectionately named "the pig house" because, well, we think it looks like a pig. It has hardwood floors, new appliances, a dishwasher, a yard (with no other dwellings in it), a front porch, a back deck, a driveway, a basement, and an attic. Oh, and a fireplace. No garages under our bedroom. No neighbors staring at us through their kitchen windows. No more missing my stuff because it won't fit in our living quarters.
The downside to this (aside from having to get rid of our dog) is the actual moving part. I hate moving. Chaos and disorganization make me nervous. And of course I want to make the place my own through decor, but I suck at decorating, and I've lost touch with all of my gay male friends, so I'm fucked. I've ended up buying the same rugs and slipcovers as I had in my apartment--which is fine, because they actually looked nice--but I'm stuck on window treatments, which have never been my forte.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
And on to other rambling crap, because I'm bored and sick of working...
Bob's therapist mentioned this week she thinks Bob may be bipolar. So I've started reading up on bipolar in young kids, and it's very eye-opening and disheartening at the same time. Bob fits the description to a T, much moreso than ADHD. All this time I've been fighting against the ADHD label--it's too damned convenient for them to look at him and say, "oh, he's bouncing off the walls, he must have ADHD." Yes, he's bouncing off the walls now--but tomorrow he may be sitting sullenly on the couch looking like he hates the whole world. Tomorrow morning he might bounce out of bed at 6:30, but a few days later, I'll be hard-pressed to wake him at 7:30.
The problem with this is what to do about it. The medication options for bipolar kids are even scarier than the ones for ADHD. And the whole thing is so trial and error because no one, obviously, wants to volunteer their kids as human guinea pigs to test mood stabilizing drugs. I don't want to volunteer mine, either--but what if my resisting only forces him to have further problems?
I know that he does better when he's with Ben and me--everything is very routine, there aren't any other kids at home, he knows what to expect and when to expect it--but I doubt I can keep him away from DB forever on the grounds that "he's making our kid crazy."
I wish I could go back in time to that moment when I thought, "having a kid can't be that much more difficult than having a dog" and kick myself really, really hard.
posted by Mitzi Green at 2:53 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home