What's going on with you?

I had a lengthy conversation with a dear friend last night with whom I don't get to talk to as often as I'd like.  I have campaigned pretty hard to get her to move her family into our neighborhood so we can have dinner together on any night that the dinner pot is overly full.  My efforts continue to fail and I have to take comfort in the instantaneous connection we have when we to make time for girl talk.

She had a grown-up issue to discuss, which I'm happy to a) keep to myself and b) be a sounding board.    I forget myself and offer my opinion (apparently) a lot more than people want and it is nice to be asked as it good to know I'm not the "you know what you should do.." lady.  (in your head that should have sounded nasally.)

Anyway, she asked me "what's going on with you?" and my initial reaction was to say 'nothing'.  After all, we had finished dinner, the baby was in bed and we were watching America Thinks It Can Dance or some crazy thing like that.  Jason is very entertained by those shows and I do love to hear his belly laugh, but I think some of the contestants are truly mentally 'off' and feel like it's wrong to laugh openly at them.  I much prefer to laugh behind their back...wait, that's not what I meant to say.

Actually, there are a lot of things brewing in TP land.

We re-jiggered our world in order to pay off our house in fifteen years.  There are many things about this that are pleasing, the primary one is that we'll have the house free and clear before we're 60 and before the Peanut heads to college.  The impact to our disposable income rather sucks, but it will only really bite until Lucy gets into real school.  Well, unless we go the private school route.  I kind of hope we don't but, I don't know enough yet to make a blanket statement like "oh it won't happen."

The other big news on the house front is that we are going to deal with our kitchen counters.  Our builder installed nice-ish granite-ish, tiles in the kitchen.  From a distance they are very pretty but the grout situation is bad. We've only been here about 3 years and the grout at the sink already needs to be dug out and replaced.  Because we don't love the color or style we're going to invest in a re-do.  We've saved up some money and have obtained three bids and have made a decision.  We meet with the back splash tile lady this Friday and we should have some kind of a timeline soon.

The bid process was all over the board.  One guy came out, measured told us all the things he COULD do and then emailed his bid to us seven days later.   The other guy, from the neighborhood place that specializes in kitchen re-models, came out, measured and then finally CALLED me with some figures 10 days later, after I called twice to get the bid.  The third person came out, measured, drew up a version of our kitchen and then emailed us the bid before he was in his car.

Thankfully, not only was the fast bid guy the lowest, but the bid included details such as a line item to repair the drywall if the removal of the builder installed tiles damages the wall.  If they don't have to do it, the price goes down.  NICE.  We stopped off at their showroom and picked some samples and now we're on our way.  It is supposed to be a simple job that they say they can do in 3-4 business days.  Ideally, we'll start work on a Monday so we can avoid being without a kitchen on a weekend.  I can do 3-4 days of microwave cooking for Lucy (dinners only) but a whole weekend would seriously suck.  We'll see how long it really takes.

In other news, I've arranged for a babysitter to come TWICE in June so Jason and I can go out and mingle with the other adults without the Peanut.  She is fun, but it's just not the same as a regular date night.

Other than that, I'm feeling a little off kilter.  I'm being especially over sensitive this week to silly things that don't normally bother me.  I'm taking innocent jokes very personally and obsessing about small nuances of conversations.  My brain tells me that this is very likely related to that certain time of the month, but the emotional little crybaby doesn't like that rationalization.  However, when I look at the calendar, the timing is right.  Sigh... stupid hormones.  They shouldn't make you mentally ill.

We're off to celebrate dad's birthday this weekend.  By celebrate we mean, driving over, providing free computer support and grilling meat.  Well, we found out yesterday that the new bbq is still in a box.  Jason loves a puzzle and will happily put it together, but his 'honey do' list is pretty long this weekend and I can't really help because of that whole - keep the baby alive thing.   Thankfully, the weather is supposed to be lovely (over there) and we're bringing the sprinkler to keep our girl (and her mom) busy.