Misery Loves Company

Yesterday was spent in the house being "chased" around by no less than 5 different people. In a 1300 sq. foot house, that leaves you approximately 1 room that you can hide in. Unfortunately, I had to "hide" in that room with a unhappy, rambunctious 5 year old and 2 highly aggravated cats. It was almost enough to make me wish I was secluded in the small downstairs bathroom with the obnoxious parrot - that's where I hid him for the day.

There was nothing but bad news yesterday it seems and by the time 5pm rolled around, I was overwhelmed. Actually, by noon I was overwhelmed and by 5 pm, I'm not sure what state I was in. Probably closer to hysterics because when I did finally sit down and attempt to watch tv over the din of noise and the circuit breaker tripped, due to all the loud equipment that is on in the house, I just sat there in the dark and started laughing. And not really a good sort of laughing.

The bottom line is that in I.'s room, all the flooring in the bathroom and bedroom has been ripped out and today part of her walls will be removed. Here's what it looked like last night when she went to bed:

Behind the plastic is a huge dehumidifier and 4 big fans trying to dry the place out. It's a mess.

The downstairs bedroom took a direct hit. Here's what it looked like after Day 1

Today they are going to tear down all the walls in this room. I can't even imagine the amount of noise that will be added to the already loud din of air purifiers, dehumidifiers, and industrial fans. It's sensory overload.

The reason for this post's title, "Misery Loves Company" is that V. couldn't comprehend the amount of chaos that was in this house yesterday. But this morning, he was wandering around the house muttering about "clutter" and "claustraphobia" and this is before the 4 guys get added to the mix and before the pounding, ripping, and yelling gets started. Oh yes, he will feel my pain of yesterday and I have to say I will get a sick pleasure of some sort from it. Last weekend I threw a mini tantrum about the level of clutter in this house and the couple of mini projects that he has put off for years that would help with the clutter. He had no idea where all this was coming from and reluctantly did one of the projects (it took all of 20 minutes). Yet after just one week of being home in the evenings (a very rare occurance), he is stressing out today about the clutter. It's not that I don't keep a clean house. It's just that the amount of pieces of paper, crafts, stickers, and Shrinky Dinks multiply daily and I. is like V. in that neither of them likes to throw things out. Better to just put them in a pile in the corner "just in case". This behavior drives me nuts and now it's driving him nuts.

So, we'll see how everyone fares today. Maybe more pics tomorrow.