Indoor and Outdoor Projects

It has been a rainy, rainy, rainy month. We saw the sun on Friday and Saturday for the first time in several weeks. I seized the opportunity to go grocery shopping without an umbrella, and I also got a few yard work projects done. I trimmed up the yellow bushes in front of the house, and put down two bags of new mulch. I had some mulch left over, so I repotted a few plants that were looking a little sicky and put mulch in the top of the containers. Usually I forget to mulch the top, and water evaporates before the plants can drink it. With a crown of mulch to block evaporation, the roots get a chance to work. I also gave the sunroom a good cleaning.

Now that the rain has started again, I'm going to be stuck indoors for another few weeks. I've been plotting a remedy for my stained concrete living room floor. The stain has become chipped in several places, and was looking patchy in others. My first thought was getting one of those pens that you use to remain dings in furniture, but was doubtful about how that would work on concrete. So I went to Home Depot and just browsed around for some kind of concrete stain patching tool. What I found was rust-oleum in a nice chocolate brown. I sprayed it directly on the concrete in some places, using short, controlled bursts. For the chips, I sprayed the rust-oleum into a paper bowl and dabbed it into the crevices using a cotton swab. In retrospect I probably should have filled the holes with spackle or something, but whatever - good enough.

Right now the floor looks a million times better - much closer to the "seamless piece of mahogany" that the company had originally promised. We'll see how it holds up over time, but for a $5 fix I'm pretty pleased!

Planning for the worst - rising sea levels

You would think that an area that is three feet above sea level on a good day would have unanimous support for playing it safe and making sure that we don't all drown in fifty years. But no - lots of believe that the sea levels are never ever going to rise for any reason, and that legislation to protect us from rising sea levels is part of a worldwide conspiracy.

I love how Stacy Ritter very politely tells them that they have a right to their poorly-informed opinions but she's voting for the measure because she does not believe in their theory of a conspiracy. Check out the story in the Sun Sentinel here, and make sure to watch the video.

Personally, although I am a fan of nearly everything in Agenda 21 and do believe that climate change is real, I don't think that the points in Agenda 21 are going to help save us from rising sea levels much. The changes that they are suggesting - striving for sustainable populations, combating deforestation, etc - will not slow down climate change enough to prevent us from having a dramatic change of life here in South Florida. What I like about the blueprint for change that is being adopted in Broward County is that it acknowledges that we need to make infrastructure changes just in case, "The idea behind the planning blueprint is that the rise in sea level should impact decisions about what's built here and how, from sewers to sidewalks to seawalls." We need to stop further encroachment into the Everglades and we need make modifications to keep existing properties above water as long as possible. 

Back online, with company

It's been a while! First morning sickness kicked my butt, then nesting mania set in, then finally my little bundle arrived and proceeded to wear me out. (Sometimes she is a little bundle of joy, sometimes she is a bundle of other things.) Now Little C is three months old, and I'm slowly starting to find a routine.

Six months old. Until Little C was about two months, I didn't worry about a routine. I just let her sleep on me all day.

I've had to forge my way pretty much from scratch. It seems like most parents are either working parents with a baby in day care, or stay at home parents who are otherwise unemployed. My situation is different - I stay at home with the baby but I also work from home. I don't work for myself, I work for a company, so I have to complete all the tasks that I would complete in an eight hour day before I was pregnant, but with a little baby underfoot. I got only six weeks of maternity leave, so I've been going full speed ahead for a while now.

Here is our basic routine:

• 6:30am - I wake up and get myself ready. I don't get dressed to the shoes, but I do put on presentable clothes, tidy my hair, and step into some indoor slip-ons. I tidy the bedroom and bathroom and kitchen, clean the cat boxes, water the plants, start some laundry, and MAYBE gets a look at today's email and RSS feeds. Sometimes I'll get up at 5:30 just so I can get more computer time, but lately I've really needed the extra hour of sleep!
• 7:30am - Little C wakes up and gets six ounces of formula. If it is still under 80 degrees when she finishes, we'll go for a walk around the neighborhood. But that's only happened once so far. Usually she goes into her bassinet in the living room to play with her rattles. While she plays, I change the laundry and get some computer work done.
• 9:00am - 4 ounces of formula, followed by tummy time on the activity mat. This is basically Little C shrieking and squirming for 20 minutes, even if I'm next to her trying to be encouraging. After tummy time I hold her for about 20 minutes, patting her back and walking around the house, narrating things. Then she does into her swing for a bit, and finally goes into her crib in her room for a nap. While she swings and naps, I put away the laundry and get a bit more work done.
• 11:00am - 4 ounces of formula. Then she lies on her back on the activity mat to swat at rattles, while I work on the computer. When she gets sick of that, I pick her up and dance around with her while her music CD plays a few songs. Or I roll her on my yoga ball. Then back on the activity mat. When she tires out she goes down for another nap in her crib, this time for one hour (sometimes two!). I have my lunch and get lots of computer work done!
• 2:00pm - 6 ounces of formula. If we have any errands to run, this is when I do them. Otherwise, swing, activity mat rattles, or maybe another dose of tummy time. Another walk around the house. Finally, another nap. Computer time. 
• 4:30pm - 4 ounces of formula. Activity mat or bath time. Then vibrator chair, while I start dinner preparations. Once Daddy gets home from work and takes over, the last computer time crunch begins.
• 6:00pm - Change into jammies, then the last bottle of the night, if she stays awake for it. She falls asleep fast and stays asleep all night, thankfully. We have grown-up dinner and watch TV, sometimes with me finishing up computer work at the same time. I clean up the kitchen, or delegate tasks. Bedtime is around 10:30 or 11:00.

These times aren't set in stone. Foe example, today she went down for her lunchtime nap early and woke up after only an hour, so in the afternoon she had two naps instead of one. On Saturdays I clean the house and do any baking or cooking for the week, usually getting done by noon. On Sundays I go to church, leaving the baby home to have Daddy time. Sometimes I have to do computer work Saturday or Sunday to get caught up from the week, and sometimes Little C's daddy has to work over the weekends so I have to keep on pulling double duty. But fortunately that has been pretty rare!

"New" Terrazzo Floors

One of the big pre-baby projects on my to-do list was to replace the carpets in all the bedrooms, since they were all worn, faded, and cat stained. And extremely stinky, especially in the room we want for the new nursery. Underneath these carpets was the original terrazzo flooring from when the house was built. If you don't know what terrazzo is, basically it is chipped marble in concrete. Shiny, cool, and very easy to take care of. If we could at all afford it, why not pull up the stained and badly grouted tile in the rest of the house, and do terrazzo throughout? We pulled up the carpet in the guest room and the terrazzo seemed to be in good condition, so it was worth getting an estimate anyway.

The original tile

Unpolished terrazzo, after removing carpet

I met with a local terrazzo company representative. He assured me that the tile would come up easily and the terrazzo would polish up well, and that they would also apply a dark brown stain to our family room floor, which since it was a later addition was the only room lacking terrazzo. I pointed out my pregnancy and that I worked from home over the internet. I asked if there would be any dust or fumes generated in the project - he said absolutely none. I asked if my husband and I living in the house during the project, with the cats, would be a problem - he said absolutely not. I asked how long the project would take. He said that the stain would take about two days to dry, so they would do that room first and work on the rest of the house while it was drying. So it would probably take three days total, maybe a day or two more if there were complications. We agreed on $3500 to do our whole 1200 square foot house - breaking up the tile and removing it, polishing the terrazzo, and applying the concrete stain in the family room.

Day one, I met with the single workman who showed up, and found that the project was NOT going to go the way it was explained. The technician said that they can't do the stain first, they have to do it last. Why? Because polishing the terrazzo creates dust. Lots of dust. Enough that he spent most of that first day shrink wrapping our upholstered furniture and taping plastic over the clothes in our closets. A second worker showed up the next day, and using just hammer and chisel they managed to break up all the tile in the house and sweep it away. However, they also tested some of the stain, so that I could pick a color, and it REAKED. The fumes were so bad, I spent the rest of the afternoon outside, and made plans to board the cats and stay at a hotel until the project was finished. Which would be only a few more days, right?

Cleaned up and ready for polishing

Shattered tile, with terrazzo underneath

Over days three and four, they use the terrazzo polishing machine and worked on filling the little holes left by the carpet tack strips. Finally on day five they applied the stain in the family room. Which took two full days to dry - the one thing that the representative I spoke to at the beginning was actually accurate about. The project began on Monday and I had been led to believe that it would be done by Wednesday or Thursday. It actually wasn't until the following Sunday, double the original timeline, that we were able to move our furniture back into place and get the cats from boarding. I'm positive that we'd stayed in the house, as we'd originally planned, the project would have taken at least another two days longer, as the technicians worked around us and left us access to the bathroom and the kitchen. Altogether, we spend an additional $1100 on hotel, food, and cat boarding. When I called to terrazzo company to complain, they agreed to refund us $110 for one hotel night, but that's it.

Concrete stain in the family room

Pretty polished terrazzo

When we got everything moved back into the house and arranged, I was pleased with the appearance of the terrazzo in the main part of the house, and that it would be so easy to clean - just mopping with warm water. But there were signs that the workers did not have especially high standards. In many places, the terrazzo machine made long, deep gouges in the baseboards, which would have to be sanded and repainted. In the family room, when they applied the stain to the floor they were not at all careful with the walls. The stain was splashed up three and four inches in most places, with the occasional smear at waist height, so we'll have to repaint that room too. We also found out, after the fact, that you can't polish certain stains out of terrazzo. So in the nursery, there is a shadowed area along one wall, where cat urine had soaked in. In the bedroom, where apparently the old carpet had a green padding underneath, the terrazzo was stained a much darker color than in the hallway. When the workers repaired holes in these areas, they used the same terrazzo fill as in the unstained areas of the house, which stands out quite obviously against the stained terrazzo. And I'm still finding chalky terrazzo dust in my cupboards and on the walls.

Line of demarcation from bedroom to hallway

Now that it is all said and done, I am glad that I have my terrazzo floors. But I wish that I'd gotten more in writing from the company in the beginning, so I could hold them to their promises. If I'd known we'd have to stay in a hotel, I'd have waited to tackle this project until I could more easily afford it. I didn't find much on local terrazzo companies online. This company had only one review and it was a positive one, so I had thought that we'd have a better experience. I'll be writing my own review on Yelp - that's the only form of retaliation I have open to me.

Lovely Manatees!

This beautiful short film was shot in the Crystal River, which is packed with manatees according to Wikipedia. I'm much further south in Florida, but we still get a lot of manatees in our little canals and rivers. Sadly they are often cut up by irresponsible boaters.

Watch the video on YouTube here.

One more perk of a ceramic tile roof

This one comes with a built in mosquito removal system.

Newton's first law of housekeeping

A body in motion stays in motion, and a body at rest stays at rest, unless acted upon by an external force.

Here it is, another beautiful day! You’ve just completed your morning routine: breakfast, exercise, personal hygiene, etc. But instead of jumping on your first task of the day, you find yourself sitting in front of your to-do list, dithering over which task is the best one to get done first. Since you can’t decide, you go to check your email, “just to get it out of the way,” and find yourself on Reddit for the next three hours.

Getting started on a task, aka overcoming your body at rest

It is hard to get moving without a push. What works for me: virtual dice. I make a to-do list of six items, and then pull up any of the virtual dice Flash tools on the internet. Or if you actually have real dice somewhere, that’s fine too. Roll the dice, and let the fates pick what task you start with. When you finish, roll again and move on to the next task. Keep going until your to-do list is done!

This works best if you plan your tasks carefully. I find that tasks that take 15-30 minutes are best. Definitely nothing that takes more than an hour. I try to also mix them up a little, so I have both mental and physical tasks, and at least one that is kind of fun but still something that you'd pat yourself on the back for completing. Here is a sample list:

1. Create lesson plan for Thursday
2. Finish reading library book
3. Round up and hand-wash all drinking glasses
4. Take notes on chapter 8
5. Sweep and mop front room and kitchen
6. Balance checkbook and pay bills

I will list the same task more than once if it is very important and has a time limit. If I have less than six items, I fill up the remaining spots with “roll again.” Keeping a six-item to-do list handy means that if you have a spare half hour, you can roll the dice and get something done, rather than puttering around until time is up.

Keeping your body in motion

According to Newton’s first law, once you are moving you will keep moving unless acted upon by an external force. What are the external forces in your house? The couch? The TV? The bathroom mirror? The phone? If you have three hours to get odd and ends done before your next scheduled appointment – stay away from these danger zones! Email is a dangerous one for me – I always want to respond to new emails the second they come in, and write a new email as soon as a thought occurs to me. I have to remind myself, if it can wait an hour then it should wait an hour.

When you start working on tasks, don’t stop until the list is done or your time is up. Don’t “reward” yourself between tasks. You will have an even harder time getting moving again if you stop for a little snack or a chat with the neighbor or that episode of Santuary on the DVR.

Sometimes the tasks on our list force us to take a break. We have to wait for the laundry to dry before we can put it away, the toilet cleaner to soak in before we can finish cleaning the bathroom, and the pots to finish soaking before we can scrub them. For these situations, set a timer on your phone or in the kitchen, and move onto another task in the meantime. Timers can also help if you are working on a task that allows you to daydream. Some times when I’m working on a report, or a lesson plan, or a blog post, I’ll find my mind drifting off-topic, and the task will take much longer than it needs to. Setting a timer to go off every few minutes keeps me focused and productive. (If you have a roommate or officemate, be considerate with your timers! Set them to go off quietly and shut them off right away, so that the constant beeping doesn’t drive them insane.)

By rolling dice to start a task, and refusing to stop between tasks, I can cram a lot of activity into a short amount of time.

New Healthy Habits

So I know I've been MIA for several months, something that I intended to avoid when I set up this blog, but I had a really good excuse - morning sickness! Not-so-fun fact: morning sickness does not just happen in the morning. From the end of September to the end of December, I feel horrible all day long. To keep my sanity, some things had to go, and regular blog posts was one of them.

I've been spending the last two weeks trying to get back into a routine, while developing good pregnancy habits. Fortunately, I had a lot of healthy habits already:

• Cooking from scratch, or as close to it as possible
• Buying organic produce and hormone-free meats
• No carbonated beverages
• No deodorant with aluminum as the active ingredient
• Very limited caffeine (no coffee or tea, just the occasional chocolate beverage or dessert)
• Very limited alcohol, no smoking
• At least seven hours of sleep at night

Unfortunately, there are a few healthy habits that I've failed to develop. I'm trying to work on them now, but it is not easy! Here are my current health goals, and what I'm doing to make them as painless as possible.

1. Exercise - I hate it. I don't mean physical activity in general. I am totally enthusiastic about tackling yard work or painting a room, and will work at it six hours at a stretch without a break. What cannot become enthusiastic about is the boring hamster exercises that I'm supposed to do every day. I feel like a klutz doing them, and when I finish there is no visible benefit from them. The solution: water aerobics classes, three days a week. They are relatively inexpensive, much less expensive than a personal trainer. But because I'm paying at least something I will be less inclined to allow myself to skip a day. And because they are underwater, so my lack of coordination will be hidden from view. 
2. Substituting water for juice - Yes, juice has vitamins but it also has as much sugar as a can of Coke. What I'm supposed to be doing is drinking water instead, but water is so boring. I can have a bottle of it next to me all day long, and I will just forget it is there. Adding tea bags, Crystal Light, or fruit slices doesn't help. My birth center suggested watering the juice down, but that tastes even more gross than just plain water. The solution: I allow myself 8oz of juice in the morning to wake up, and 4oz in the evening while I'm cooking dinner. The rest of the day, I drink water. When I pour myself a glass, I immediately chug half of it, and then I top of the glass again before leaving the kitchen. That way I get at least some hydration before I get a chance to forget about it.
3. Multivitamin - Pills, in general, make me throw up. It isn't the swallowing of them. I did an experiment in which I swallowed jelly bellies whole instead. No problems there. But my body has always been very sensitive to medication, so when I swallow pills it can be too much for me to handle. Before I realized I was pregnant I was taking kids' Flintstones chewable vitamins and a folic acid pill, since I figured it was better than nothing. But now I have to shallow a humongous and smelly prenatal vitamin every day. The solution: At first the prenatal vitamins made me throw up too. But I found that if I took a pill after dinner and then immediately ate a little bowl of ice cream, or something else really cold, it sort of numbed my stomach until the pill was digested. After a few weeks, the ice cream became unnecessary and now I can tolerate the multivitamins without a problem. I've moved the jar from my kitchen to the bathroom, so that I see it while I'm getting ready for bed, and remember to take one.

I'm only halfway through my pregnancy, so I still have a long time to pursue these habits. I'm hoping they can become second nature by the birth, so that I can concentrate on the baby instead.