Up at the crack of dawn

Waking up before six am on ANY given day of the week is what happens when I have way too much stuff on my plate to do.

And here it is, 5:50 am and I am wide awake.

Yesterday was a pretty crappy day, I don't mind saying. It started out with me getting a lightning claim that I had NO business whatsoever getting, a long drive out to it in the country and getting lost, twice, a huge argument with my boss over the fact that he's not keeping any semblance of control over what assignments I'm getting at ALL, getting yelled at by the guy on my lightning claim over things that happened at the hands of the after-hours adjuster this weekend that I had no control over, and just loads and loads of tears all day. I can't believe how poorly I am handling things lately. I'm sure it's just pregnancy hormones, but it just is terrible right now. I am SO due for a vacation. It was amazing that working on the house actually helped me unwind a bit, but now I'm up very early to get some work done today and get my "work" house in order before I stop for four very much needed days off on Friday. I'm exploring some options of trying to take another position within our office until I go out on maternity leave, but it doesn't look very good, I'm afraid.

We heard back from the flooring place, and the quote for our floors is doable, so we're moving forward there. We've narrowed it down to two choices...Cherry Rose (my first choice) and Mesquite (his first choice). Here is the product palette if you want to see what we are debating. It's not really much of a debate at this point since Cherry Rose is his second choice and Mesquite is my second choice, so we're just trying to figure out which one would look better. I'm leaning towards giving in and going with Mesquite because the Cherry Rose does have a very distinct blush color to it that would look quite excellent with the paint color we chose, but might not be the best color to go with our furniture, new couches (and those are coming since the dogs continually destroy ours more every day) and decor, not to mention that when we sell this house in five to ten years, we are counting on these laminate floors to be a big selling point since Wilsonart has a twenty year warranty. I'm going to chew on it today and then later this afternoon or tomorrow I'm going to head down there to sign all the papers so they can order the materials.

I called the contractor again and forced him to pin down on a time when they can start the work since the flooring place DID tell us they can't lay our laminate until the vinyl is installed in the kitchen, which can't be done obviously until the kitchen is done, which means that we're going to be living with a torn-up house for at least another one to two weeks. He finally agreed that he will have his crew come over and start the demo on our kitchen Thursday afternoon, which is great, but I have to really be productive the next two nights. Our painting of the main areas is going great...all we have left is the living room half of the ceiling and the beam, which P has to do, and then the trims, mantle, exterior door and support posts, which I am going to work on tonight. I got the first coat on a great deal of the trims and doors last night, but everything needs a second coat, and then I want to go through and install all the outlet plates. Before we start working, we decided that we need to go ahead and move everything out of the dining room since we are definitely getting new floors now, no question, and we need to start making room for the stuff in the kitchen. Which brings me to tomorrow night...that night will be spent packing the kitchen contents out into our nursery, office and master bedroom, which aren't going to look so clean anymore now that we are going to be using them for storage bays. I also want P to install our new dining room light fixture, but we'll see how far we get. I just want to be ready for the contractors when they show up Thursday afternoon so they can finish the demo and drywall repairs by Friday afternoon, and then I can spend the weekend painting the kitchen. It would make my YEAR if I could have my house back to normal by the next weekend. Having it in this state of clutter now that I have tasted what it is like to be organized is making me crazy.

I guess that's it for the time being. I wish I had some positive stuff to report, but quite honestly my life is just in chaos now. My father and stepmother are coming into town to visit this weekend (not staying with us, obviously) and I'm really looking forward to seeing them and glad I have some time off so I'm not tearing my hair out with work all weekend. I just can't wait to get stuff in order.

Thanks for reading.