Stressed Out But Things Are Looking Up

The last couple of days have been so frustrating. I am so new to everything that I am finding out quickly how very little I know about anything. I keep making stupid mistakes that's costing us time and money and I am completely overwhelmed by all the work to be done in such a short amount of time.

You would think painting ceilings would be a no brainer but it's much more time consuming than I thought it would be, much more difficult physically than painting walls and extremely messy. My step-dad brought over his paint sprayer and that is going to help incredibly. I finally got to use it last night and got the living room and front hall done in about an hour. I am going to get a mask and goggles though before I go at it again. I was choking on paint and blinking out paint eye boogies all night.

Yesterday my sister-in-law asked me to watch my niece which really cut down on what I could get accomplished at the house. I shouldn't have agreed because I am still not sure if I am going to get everything ready for the paint party on the 19th but she was desperate and I just couldn't leave her in a lurch.

Then I had the bright idea of having T. help me out last night, she is almost 14 after all. I thought she could help me tape trim, put down drop clothes, and wash walls to get ready to paint. Unfortunately my mommy sense didn't tingle (probably out of exhaustion) when she wanted a friend to come help out. BIG MISTAKE! She was goofing off with the friend and dropped a full can of paint, spilling it all over the driveway, then proceeded to track paint all over the house because she stepped in it. She was doing the think where she pretended to listen but wasn't hearing a thing I said so I ended up sending her off to the local mini mall just to get her out of my line of sight before I got really nasty with her. She Isn't a bad kid at all, just a teenager. Teenagers can be such a joy but at the same time they can be total pains.

I went outside and had a good cry over it all and decided that wasn't helping anything so I bucked up and headed back into the house to roll up my proverbial sleeves and get back to work. That's when I finally got to use the paint sprayer and everything started kinda smoothing out a bit. J. went over this morning after work and removed all the ceiling fan blades so I can just trash bag and tape over the ceiling fans so I don't get paint all over them when I go back over. That was also a hold up on me getting started on the other rooms.

I decided to take today off to go up to see my other sister-in-law. She majored in interior design and I have always loved what she has done with her homes so I went to go over paint schemes, and flooring and counter top options. Still house related but at least it was a lot less stressful and let me rest my poor muscles and emotions. We got a lot accomplished. She helped me so much, I don't know what I would have done with out her advice. I really think the house is going to look fantastic once we get it painted.

I know we aren't going to have the money to do the counters or floors for awhile but I really wanted to have some idea of what I was going to do before painting so I won't have to repaint later.

Money is yet another thing stressing me out. There just isn't enough of it. We weren't planning on buying a house right now so just before this whole house thing came up we dumped our savings into fixing up the truck we bought from my mom so we would have a couple of dependable vehicles. Then all the money we spent closing on the house and now we have to pay to get all the utilities on so I can work over there, buy paint, paint supplies, cleaning stuff, new trim, and who knows what else. This whole thing is a just huge money drain and I am not not sure where it is going to all come from. I think I will try to have a yard sale to get make some money next weekend and I can always go pawn my wedding jewelry (all though, I will only do that if we get really desperate). It's times like this I wish we had cultivated at least a little bit of credit.

We weren't very responsible with our credit when we were younger so to remedy the situation we just haven't used ANY credit in almost 11 years. We have no credit cards, and we buy our cars with cash so we haven't had to worry about being irresponsible. Unfortunately, there are negatives to this in that we have nothing positive on our credit so it caused a few problems with getting the house loan approved. We were thinking about applying for a Lowe's card or getting furniture on credit to help build up our credit (less chance of getting in trouble that way since we can't just go get a withdrawal here or stop off there for dinner with that kind of credit). I do think we have grown up a lot since then and would be more responsible but it's scary to us, being in debt for any amount and we don't even know if we would be approved for anything due to lack of credit.

And to top it all off, I miss my husband desperately. He is working almost everyday to get more money and I haven't seen him in almost a month. We finally got to spend last Sunday together because he wanted to be well rested for the closing but it's really hard to not have him to talk to and decompress every day. I am the decision maker in our family but I still like to talk things over with him beforehand. We haven't had time to talk about finances, the kids, what is going on with the house, anything but it's more than that, I just miss him.

I know things are going to get better, money can be made if your willing to work for it, we will get moved into the house and J. won't have to work so much, and the stress level will go down. For now though I am just going to have to suck it up and get through it. J.'s mom is coming over tomorrow to help out and that will be huge. She is so wonderful to us, I don't know what I would do without our family.

Anyway if anyone has been wondering, that's why I haven't posted in a couple of days. Hopefully I will be more on top of the blog this week and have some before and after pics of the ceilings to put up as well as pics of the front door I got painted. Oh, the boy statue is gone now and I did get some of the spackling done as well as the final coat on the front door.