I went to see “The King’s Speech” today.  It’s that time of year when I attempt to see the movies that are nominated for an Academy Award.  (I try to see the movies featuring the actors nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, too.)

Seven gray-haired couples were in the theater with me, including one couple that came in late, said, “HAS THE MOVIE STARTED?” even though it clearly had started, and then talked in the very loud voices characteristic of the hard-of-hearing. Fun times.

The movie deserves the accolades it has received, by the way.

(I’ve also seen “The Fighter” and “Black Swan” and “True Grit” . . . all good movies but deserving of their R-ratings, so beware.)

After the movie, I drove to my home-away-from-home, also known as Home Depot.  Today I purchased two small containers of walnut-colored paint for the scarred windowsills in two bedrooms.  I also picked up a floor lamp for the Boy Cave.  Then it was time to pick up Grace from school, cook dinner (homemade spaghetti sauce) and help Grace make a photo collage of her life since she is Student of the Week, an honor she’s been waiting for all year.  They go in reverse alphabetical order.

After dinner, I attempted to put up a curtain rod in the Boy Cave.  Their window had been covered with battered shutters.  I removed those and thought I’d simply put up a curtain rod and some tabbed curtains.  Easy peasy, right?

No.  No, because the curtain rod hanger-things (what are they called?  hooks?) that were installed by the previous owner are 84 inches apart.  I don’t know if you’ve purchased a curtain rod recently, but the adjustable size goes up to 84 inches.  I bought one but it was too flimsy and fell apart when stretched to 84 full inches.  (Mind you, the window itself is probably 72 inches.  An 84-inch curtain rod should work fine, except those dumb curtain-rod hanger-things are spaced so far apart.  And since the walls have already been painted, I don’t want to remove those things and move them closer.)

I thought maybe I just need a sturdier rod . . . and stupidly bought another 84-inch rod.

I spent some frustrating, sweaty time trying to get that thing to work.  I even pulled out the duct tape.  It doesn’t have to be permanent.

But no.  That did not work.

I resorted to duct taping a roll of cheetah-print wrapping paper onto the window itself.  It’s very classy.

Tomorrow I guess I will buy a very very very long curtain rod . . . which will probably still sag in the middle because it’ll need a center curtain-rod hanger-thing which I do NOT want to screw into the wall because I don’t have a drill anymore because someone lost the drill-bit a few years back (and by “someone” I mean someone other than me).  I am |<- – – ->| this close to stapling the curtain to the wall.

And now it’s almost 1 a.m. and I’m so sad about that because tomorrow a different painter guy is coming here to pain the family room ceiling and the master bedroom ceiling at 9:30 a.m.  And I will be tired when I wake up.  Again.

This house is trying to kill me.

Last night I could not fall asleep.  At 2:30 a.m., I turned the television back on and watched an episode of “House Hunters International.”  A Canadian couple was searching for the perfect vacation home on a Honduras island.  I think.

I fell asleep some time after 3:00 a.m.  My iPhone alarms were set for 6:05 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.  The first time I woke up, I checked to make sure my 12-year old was up for school.  Then I went back to bed.  The next time I woke up and got dressed so I could open the door for the carpet-installer guy.

At 8:17 a.m., while in the middle of writing a snide comment on Facebook about the lateness of the carpet-installer guy, his white van pulled into my driveway.  He was due to arrive between 8 and 8:30 a.m., so he was right on time.

I welcomed him into the echoing Boy Cave.  Last night, we had to move all the furniture out of the Boy Cave into the family room:  2 twin-sized beds, one full-size electric piano, two end tables, one computer desk, two IKEA chairs, and a small kitchen table holding an enormous old television set.

(Yes, moving all that stuff from one room to another was just about as much fun as you are imaging.)

After the guy had a good look at the room and I explained where the various doors led (storage room, laundry room, family room, closet, heat pump), I told him I’d be upstairs, probably sleeping.  And that’s what I did.  I went upstairs and made my bed and then sort of slept under the spare comforter we keep on the bed.  The noise from downstairs sounded like he was hammering off the roof of the house.

By noonish he was done and gone.

So, I got out my newish vacuum cleaner so I could vacuum all the bits and fuzz from the new carpet and the brush wouldn’t rotate.

I’ve had this trouble before and it’s weird because sometimes the brush rotates and sometimes it does not.  This problem is quite maddening.

I had the good sense to turn to the Internet where I learned from a Google search that there are TWO BUTTONS on that vacuum cleaner.  There is a red power button and right below it was another button in a shade of gray that perfectly matches the handle all chameleon-like.  I never, ever noticed that particular button before.  And do you want to guess what that button does?

It turns on the rotating brush.

Sometimes, unbeknownst to me, I accidentally turned it off and other times, I accidentally turned it on usually while turning the vacuum on its back and smacking it around and growling in annoyance because the brush wouldn’t turn.

In due time, the room was vacuumed and the furniture was returned to the room only slightly rearranged.  (My teens were adamantly opposed to moving anything from its original position and lucky for them, the television had to stay in place because of the cable connection and thus, everything else had to stay pretty much the same, too.)

(Oh!   Did I mention that the door to the heat pump won’t open at all because it is now obstructed by the height of the carpet?  Oh, yes, real fun.)

This was the final big household improvement, so now the real estate agent comes on Thursday to take a look and very soon the house will be on the market and then I’ll be bobbing in that curious space between terror that the house won’t ever sell and fear that it will sell too soon because then what will we do?  Negotiate a closing date, sure, but what if, what if, what if . . . we’ll live in our KIA van?

Adding to the delight of this day (during which I worked nine hours), my 8-year old was home sick.  She has a cold and was sick enough to stay home but not sick enough to stay in bed, so she interrupted my work-day a hundred million times and then tried to convince me to take her to McDonald’s for dinner.

And tonight, even though she seemed so bored all day, she asked if she can stay home from school tomorrow.  And I said no, but even as I looked at her while saying it, I noted the dark circles under her eyes and her reddened nose and realized that missing another day of second grade probably won’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Plus, that would mean I could sleep in.  So, there’s that.

On a day when I’m feeling sorry for myself (for perhaps a ridiculous reason, though maybe I’m justified), I hear horrible news about someone’s personal tragedy.

And how can I complain?

But I still feel pretty gloomy so I eat cookies.

And then I feel worse because . . . well, cookies make you fat.

Circling around makes me dizzy, but unfortunately does not make me any less fat.

(And then I think who cares if you’re fat . . . at least _____________________ [insert super awful occurrence] didn’t happen to you.  You should be happy!)

But thinking that doesn’t actually work very well.  Reverse self-pity fails again.

I started babysitting when I was ten years old.  I was left in charge of children younger than me and paid with a pile of coins on my dresser.

When I was fourteen, I rode a twelve-speed bicycle from Seattle to San Francisco.  (My stepmom accompanied me, my brother and a sister.)  For vast stretches of Highway 101, I was utterly alone, pedaling on the shoulder of the road as cars and trucks whistled past, sometimes blowing gravel into my face.  We slept in sleeping bags . . . and didn’t even bring a tent along.

When I was seventeen, I spent a night alone in the Miami airport while waiting for my connecting flight back home to Seattle.  (I’d been in Jamaica on a missions trip.)  I can’t imagine my boys in the same situation.  (I do remember some scary moments encountering overly-friendly men, but I simply set my chin and strode away as if I had somewhere important to go and something important to do.  Seventeen.  Imagine.)

So, I suppose it’s no wonder that when I was eighteen, my dad bought me a bus ticket and drove me to the local Greyhound station and sent me off to college.  I rode that bus for days and nights, traveling totally alone to Missouri from Washington state. I’d never even seen the college before I arrived.

I can’t believe how loosely my parents held me as I grew up.  I was allowed to circle my neighborhood on my banana-seat bike from the time I could ride without training wheels.  As a teen, I had a curfew but also  the freedom to ride around with my friend, Shelly, in her old yellow Volkswagen bug whenever I wanted to go.  I rode public transit into Seattle.  I rode my bike miles and miles and miles without ever telling anyone where I was going.

Now that my own kids approach the age of eighteen, I have no idea how to act.  My own upbringing offers no helpful hints.  I would never have allowed the young me to have the freedom that I was granted.  (Or maybe no one ever really noticed me since I was never any trouble.  That’s a possibility.)  On the other hand, nothing bad ever happened to me.  Aside from a few scares from weird people and a lot of catcalls from passing cars, I was able to navigate the world without harm.

How do parents do this?  How do you know whether to throw your kid into the pool and let them thrash around or whether to cradle them in your arms as you inch slowly down the steps into the shallow end?  When do you let go?  How do you let go?  Clearly, there is some middle ground and that’s where I’m trying to stand.

But it’s hard.

Hard to let go, hard to hold on, hard to imagine my kids in the big wide world without me right there whispering suggestions in their ears and reminding them to flush the toilet and brush their teeth.

I don’t know how my dad did it.  He gave me the gift of independence.

He was brave to let me go.  (I didn’t know until much later how much that cost him but that’s a story for another day.)

The painter never showed up today.  And he never called.

I know he will be back tomorrow . . . I think he will be back tomorrow . . . I have no reason to believe he will not be back tomorrow.  (Will he be back tomorrow?)

I will be relieved when the painting is finished.  My room has one unpainted wall and then the Boy Cave is the final task.  And it’s a pretty big task.

I have spent so much time in that room removing items, cleaning, moving things.  Paint, carpet and then we’re ready to put the house on the market.  I think.

In keeping with my insidious plan to drive myself crazy, I have scheduled another appointment for myself tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m.  I wish I’d stop making Monday appointments.  The precious hours between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Mondays are my only “free time” anymore . . . and I keep squandering them on grown-up things like eye appointments and dental appointments.  It’s maddening, really.

And now, it’s almost 2 a.m. and the eye doctor is going to scold me for having bloodshot eyes but it’s NOT MY FAULT.

Last night, I checked my phone messages on the land-line and found that the appliance store had called to let me know that the electrician was scheduled to install my new dishwasher between 7 a.m. and 1 p.m., but close to 7 a.m. since I was the first delivery of the day.  [Reminder: I work until midnight six nights a week.]

It seems like a lifetime ago that I woke up at 6:50 a.m., donned my glasses, a sweatshirt and sweatpants and tried to look alert.  I made my bed, then lay back down, listening for the doorbell.  I watched Good Morning, America and thought again what a cute pocket-size guy George Stephanopoulous is.

At about 7:30 a.m., the phone rang.  The voice informed me the driver was about twenty minutes away.

Forty-five minutes later, he arrived.

The new dishwasher was installed before I left at 9 a.m. to take my daughter to school.

When I returned, I lay back down on the made bed and listened for the painter to arrive.  He hadn’t told me he would be late, so I figured he’d arrive by 9:30 a.m.   I fell into one of those half-sleeps where you dream crazy dreams that seem mostly real but also disturbingly loony.  At 10:15 a.m., he has still not arrived.

I fell into a deeper sleep with even more bizarre real-feeling dreams.  At 10:55 a.m., I woke with a start.  Had the painter come, knocked and gone away?  Had I missed a phone call?  I went downstairs, opened the door and peered outside.  No painter, no painter’s van.  (Had the Rapture occurred?  What was going on?)

At about 11:15 a.m., from my spot on my made bed, I heard the front door open and the painter’s voice:  “Good morning!”

I sprang from the bed and looked down the stairs at the painter.  “Were you here already?” I asked like a complete lunatic.  “I fell asleep and worried that you’d been here and gone?”

Then he told me that he was late because he had to clean out the chicken coop.

Now, that is an excuse you don’t hear every day.

At noon, I signed on to work on my computer . . . and realized that I don’t work until 1 p.m. on Wednesdays.   So, instead, I drove to Value Village to drop off yet another small load of stuff we had that we don’t need, including four size 4T dresses that have been hanging in the laundry room for approximately four years.

What?  I was busy “cleaning my chicken coop.”

So, we’re getting our house ready to put on the market.  I’ve had the kitchen counter-tops redone and new vinyl put in the laundry room.  I bought a new kitchen sink and a new toilet.  A few days ago, a guy installed a new stove.  There’s a new dishwasher sitting in the living room waiting for a guy to hook it up on Wednesday.  A nice young man installed two new light fixtures.  A long-suffering friend came over on very short notice to help us put up the new hood over the range.

And for a couple of weeks now, I’ve had a man here painting the interior walls.

He was due to arrive this morning at 9 a.m.  I worked last night until almost 2 a.m. . . . went to sleep at 2:30 a.m. . . . and woke up very reluctantly on a non-school day at ten minutes until nine.

The painter finally arrived at 10:20 a.m.  No, he did not call and let me know he would be late.

He was here until almost 7 p.m.  And while he’s a great guy and a meticulous painter, I am weary of having strange men in my house.

Spiffing up the house to sell it is a pain in the neck and also makes me wonder why in the world I didn’t spiff it up earlier.   Other than the fact that it’s a huge ordeal and inconvenience.

Next up?  Making arrangements for an appliance store to come and pick up my very old freezer.  But first I have to defrost it and clean up the Coke explosion that resulted from two of my kids forgetting cans of Coke in it last week.

Yes, it’s fun to be me.

Last year was a year of uncertainty.

This year has a little more structure . . . but much of it remains shrouded in a giant cloud of the unknown.

Frankly, I’m not fond of being unable to see what’s going to happen next.  I’m more of a planner.  I like to line things up in alphabetical order and sort things from tallest to smallest.  And this year is a gigantic ball of tangled yarn that is too big to hold, let alone untangle.

Well.  So.  There’s that.

Meanwhile, the painter will be here at 9 a.m. and I’m so very sad about that because as it turns out, tomorrow there’s no school (still?) and it would be a perfect Sleep-In Day but since I thought there was school until a short while ago, the painter has already received permission (from me!) to come at 9 a.m.  He’ll be painting the upstairs bathroom and possibly my 8-year old daughter’s room, a fact that makes me want to cry because her room is in complete disarray and that means that tomorrow morning not only will I be unwillingly awake but I will be sorting through the debris on her floor, wondering what kind of mother allows a child to have such a sloppy room.

Good night.  More tomorrow unless I am dead from lack of sleep.

Driving down the road with teenagers, I had the following conversation with one teenager:

Teen:  ” . . . so I was thinking we could use that song as a platelet for our song.”

Me:  ” . . . a platelet?  Do you mean a template?”

Teen:  “Uh.  Yeah, template, whatever.”

Me, smiling:  “Do you even know what a platelet is?”

Teen:  “Yeah . . .  It’s a really small plate.”

Me, instantly hysterical:  “A really small plate?!”

Teen:  “What?”

Me:  “A platelet is a kind of blood cell . . .”  [Note: Slightly inaccurate, but still, close enough.]

Teen:  ” . . . ”

I had begun to laugh so hard I was crying . . . I couldn’t breathe.

Now, days later, all I do is think . . . platelet, really small plate . . . and I am amused all over again.

That is all.

Dental visit.  Ouch.

Hair highlighted.

Husband returned.

Left on a late jet-plane for New York City.

Room service.

Working online in hotel.

Wednesday meetings, meetings, working, office party, cab-ride, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, John’s Pizzeria, cab-ride.

Thursday home but not before meeting an amazing car-driver.  Then work.

Friday, husband gone.

Santa!

Saturday?  Blank spot.

Sunday?  Church, nap . . . what else?

Today?  Sister, shopping, traffic, painter, nap, work, lunar eclipse.

* * *
I will be back to fill in this post with actual writing and details.  But tonight I am too tired and at 10 a.m. the painter will be back to paint my kitchen, entry-way, hallway and living room.