H o u s e

So, I thought I'd post about the last 2 weeks of insanity.

To start we are now totally moved into our new (to us) house.  The house it's self is by no means new and shows it's age in new ways almost every day.  It also shows the bad decisions by the former owners, both in design tastes (brown paisley wallpaper going all the way up the stairs), and in the planning of the house.  It was someones brilliant idea to take out/move a stairway that was weight bearing and not bother to replace it with any other load bearing system.  Someone later attempted to fix that issue by putting in some floor jacks.  Too bad they didn't put them in the correct place.  And then they later allowed someone to re-plumb parts of the house and cut (yes, cut) through a couple floor joists, without really putting anymore supports down there. . .  Needless to say someone payed some idiot to make part of the house look better, 40 years ago, and the person did that while weakening some of the structure of the house.  Making a problem that the inspector should have noticed but failed to do so.  This is the reason that one side of my living room floor is 1 1/4" lower than the other side of the room.  So before we can put the ceilings back in we have to jack up the floor so that it's at least kind of level.  This is the point where having friends who also buy crazy houses that others think are tear downs comes in handy.  My Mom was able to bring us a number of floor jacks, but we'll need a few more in order to totally get the job done right.

But, while we've found a number of problems we have also made some progress in terms of making the house more liveable.  With the help of DH's parents we painted the kitchen ceiling, making it look much less like a mine and more like an actual kitchen.  Our couch, which turned out to be more broken than we though, has been fixed by my awesome Mom.  The brown paisley wallpaper that made the stairway feel like a black hole is now in garbage bags waiting to go out to the curb.  AND we successfully painted and reorganized L's room so that instead of the pealing wallpaper that was there when we moved in (along with VERY BADLY patched walls) it is now a very nice shade of blue and most of his things are organized into the closet to make the room bigger.  The upside of the floor jack problem is that we now KNOW what the problem really is and can therefore take the needed steps to fix it.  So the overall result is a positive one!

And for the last week while we figured out some of this mess, DH was in Baltimore for a conference.  Good thing my Mom was here to save my sanity! (Or whats left of it.)

In the midst of all this chaos, we had an IEP meeting with L's teachers and therapists.  The meeting went really well and all the reports that we were given definitely sound like my kid.  The only thing that was a little bit concerning was that he's been having some coping issues at school, something like the same type of issues he's been having at home.  The going theory is that since February, when L had his tonsils taken out, the little guys world has not really slowed down to the pace that he's been accustomed to it moving at.  For a kid who has a really hard time with change this end result is a little predictable.  We have seen some improvement since we changed his allergy meds, but I think when things slow down he will do better.  He is on pace academically but he is still having a lot of communication issues and because of that his teachers recommended that he be put into some kind of full day kindergarten with a normal class in part of the day and therapy classes the rest of the day.  While I'm a little torn on the idea of full day kindergarten, I think it's probably the best idea.  It would also make the transition to 1st grade a whole lot easier.  Good thing the elementary school is right around the corner! 

I know that usually I have some sort of witty/snarky comment about current events or some talking head saying something I don't like in the news. . .a the moment though my brain is a little too full of plaster dust and paint fumes to come up with anything really good!