a weekend in December

Usually we break out our family pajamas on Christmas tree decorating night but we were waiting on a delivery. Only Nicky needed a new pair this year (thank goodness, next year he AND both girls will need some) but due to the only-recently-resolved postal strike there’s a big mail backlog and we were worried they wouldn’t arrive in time. The finally showed up last week so I spent Friday afternoon wrapping them all, as well as the new holiday Legos, for some festive fun family Friday night. Taylor accidentally ordered this set of holiday Duplo but it worked well to keep Nicky entertained until bedtime, and then Taylor the girls and I opened the regular sets and got to work. Gwen and I built Santa & Mrs Claus while Taylor and Sym worked on the firehouse, and later when Sym’s two friends came over to watch Riverdale they ended up getting into the Legos instead and finished the whole thing!

Since we didn’t want to all be in matching pajamas while Sym’s friends were over (that would be a little weird) instead we all got up early-ish on Saturday and had a pajama brunch. Taylor made waffles and we had them with maple syrup and fruit salad. After I took Gwen to Robson Square to go ice skating. She loves it and I never have cash to pay for skate rentals so a few weeks ago I bought her a pair of secondhand skates of facebook marketplace. I also have my own skates, which I found in the garbage room a couple winters ago. I also love ice skating but I am truly terrible at it; it’s actually funny to me how much fun I have doing in in spite of my complete lack of skill. I’m hoping to sign Gwen up for lessons in January and I might sign myself up for some as well.

In the afternoon while Nicky was napping Taylor and I left Sym & Gwen at home building more holiday Legos (we have a lot ok! Other than the firehouse we haven’t even started any of the big sets) while we went out and ran errands, picking up some wrapping paper, a few small gifts and hooks to hang our Christmas stockings. Usually I hang them above the window over the tv but I have decorations on that windowsill and I was worried it would be too cluttered, so this year I elected to stick some Command hooks to the wall between the living- and dining room windows. There’s used to be some art there but I took it down when we repainted and it was a big blank space that needed filling.

Sunday was a much more lazy day, or at least was spent closer to home. We tidied up around the house, I took some stuff out to the storage room and cleaned up our messy mudroom. The day before I had an inspiration on a way to make a no-sew felt leaf garland so I spent the afternoon on that. I just used supplies I already had around the house so it’s quite short but I really like how it turned out. I’d like to make another, longer one as well as do a DIY tutorial post, but cutting out 43 felt leaves for just this small garland was ABSOLUTE MURDER on my carpal tunnels and my arms are still killing me so I’m not sure if it’ll happen.

the end is hopefully near


Me prancing away from anything that DARES to go wrong for the rest of the month.

The end of the year I mean, because I am READY to move on! I was hoping for an easy breezy December but I guess 2018 just couldn’t let us go without a couple more setbacks…

First of all, in early November I FINALLY replaced my very, very, very old phone with a new model. It was great at first but after a couple of weeks the accelerometer & proximity sensor crapped out (how??? why???), which disabled a lot of features and also basic functions, namely the one where when you hold the phone to your ear during a call the screen goes to sleep so you don’t accidentally hang up on people! This was very frustrating and after spending half an afternoon on the support chat I was informed the phone needed to be replaced. Unfortunately I couldn’t exchange it through my cellphone provider at the store because it was 3 days past their return window so this morning I had to ship it back to the manufacturer for repair? Replacement? idk, I just want a phone that works, and for now I’ve had to switch back to my old phone which only has about an hour of battery life left at a time and it tends to die unexpectedly. This morning when I was out with the daycare kids it died at 60% battery and I couldn’t even get it to turn back on until I got home and plugged it in! It’s not great! And ‘m going to be stuck with it for 5-15 business days.

Second, my dishwasher, my very old and decrepit dishwasher that is at least third-hand and pre-dates my relationship with Taylor and also me even living in this apartment, the one we almost replaced a year ago, has finally died. Seems like when we tried getting a new one (about which I will be forever bitter) we had the right idea, because over the past few days it started having a new and very uncool problem in that the start button didn’t work. Like I can select a wash cycle and a delayed start and all the other buttons light up when I press them, but I can’t make it go. Taylor did some research and it could be one of about three different problems, all of which would require replacement parts, and some of which we can’t get because the machine is so old. So I’m pretty loathe to spend money on it, especially when it doesn’t ACTUALLY wash the dishes well. It’s just really frustrating because between my family and the daycare kids we go through a lot of dishes and because of the daycare kids, the dishes need to be sanitized. Without a dishwasher with a sanitization setting I have to sanitize all my dishes in bleach solution, and it’s going to take me months to save up for a new dishwasher so like… these next few months are going to be loooooooooooong. I have two different dishwashers picked out for when I CAN afford one, the first is the cheapest one you can buy that has sanitization (need) and the second is the cheapest one you can buy that has sanitization, hidden controls and a stainless steel tub (need, want, want). SO I’m really being practical here, since last year splurging on the fancy, expensive, highly recommended dishwasher was such a disaster.

Finally, yesterday I was doing some laundry and my washing machine started making a weird noise. Not a loud noise or a thumping noise, a kind of quiet whiny noise, like a small car engine that won’t turn over. I was like NOT ANOTHER PROBLEM but thankfully I had accidentally turned the water temp to warm/warm instead of cold/cold and the hot water was turned off! This was because the other week Nicky threw up all over his bedroom and I stuffed all his bedding, some stuffies and the bedroom rug all in one load. The rug is just a flat woven roadway play mat which I had washed before, but only ever by itself. Having it in with everything else caused the washer to go super unbalanced and it shimmied the whole stack around in my laundry closet. I moved it back (not easy as it is a washer & dryer stack that is very heavy) but I didn’t realize the wiggling and jiggling had cause the hot water hose to loosen just enough to start dripping down the wall. The drips somehow got under the vinyl flooring planks and for a few days we had mystery liquid oozing up between the planks whenever we walked down the hallway. I eventually figured out what was up, shut off the water, tightened the hose, dried everything I could dry and waited out everything I couldn’t. Luckily we have heated floors so once the leak stopped it dried in about a day or two, but GOD. ENOUGH ALREADY.