One and a Half Months

As of this writing, I will have been in my house for about a month and a half.  I’m still getting used to it.  It’s weird being alone after being in a house that often was full of people and not just the MMC and my two girls, but other family, in-laws, friends, and neighbors.  Now I find times where I keep expecting someone to walk through the door.  Or while watching television, I go to say something about whatever I’m watching and realize there’s no one there to tell it to.  Not that that stops me anyway.  Maybe someone passing on the street far down at the bottom of the hill wants to know my TV musings.

Having an entire bed to me has been an adjustment I haven’t made.  I still sleep on one side, almost at the edge.  As I explained in Making the Spare Bedroom Your Bedroom, Spare, the girls used to sleep with us and most times I could never get comfortable enough due to all the kicking and hands in my face in the middle of the night.  So I would either be almost falling off the bed or I just went into the other room. I still think this was a defensive maneuver by my wife allowing the girls to sleep in our room.  Nothing like adding two warm bodied people to help fortify the emotional wall you’ve built around yourself. 

Anyway… now that I always sleep on my own, I don’t take advantage of having a queen sized bed by sleeping in the middle or diagonally across it.  I sleep on the edge, sometimes teetering off of it as if I was being pushed out by my sleeping children.  Primarily I think it’s just because the edge is closer to the night stand thus easier to do things like reaching for books, turning off the light or turning off the alarm in the morning.  If I was in the middle of the bed, I would have to struggle to get over to do any of those tasks.  I also think it is just habit.  I’m used to being on the side so that’s where I am most comfortable.  I have no idea what I did when I was single but I probably stuck to one side then too. 

Of course this makes me feel like I’m wasting my bed.  I was going to buy a new king size bed when I moved in but they’re freakin’ expensive so I have been using the bed that was in our spare room only I put a pillow top cover thing on it to make it more comfortable as it was a very firm mattress.  That made a huge difference so I have temporarily ceased by bed search.  Now I’m thinking that if I am only using one edge of the bed, maybe I should just get a twin mattress.  That way I would be using ALL of the bed, there just wouldn’t be that much of it.  Wouldn’t THAT be impressive when I finally reenter the dating scene and reach the point where I bring a woman home? (This is far, far, far into the future and quite possibly an alternate reality, by the way)  “Hey, baby…here’s my twin bed.  We’ll need to decide who’s on top right now.  Let me just pull back my Spider-Man sheets and my blankie.  Do you want the night light on…or off?” 

No, I guess I’ll stick with the bed I have and eventually get a new one.  I still need to put furniture in the spare room so that’s the ultimate fate for the bed I have.  It came from the spare room and will ultimately die in there.

Outside of the previously mentioned spare room, I pretty much have settled into the house.  All of my pictures are up (although I could use more), living room, dining room, breakfast nook, kitchen, girls bedroom and office are all decorated and squared away.  My bedroom is pretty bland though.  Yes, I have the half-used queen sized bed but the only other things in it are a small nightstand and a tall dresser.  I really don’t need anything else, but the room looks pretty empty.  I guess a king size bed would help fill it up and maybe if I got a new dresser set where I had a tall dresser and a long one, that would do the trick.  Just not sure what I would put into these pieces of bedroom furniture.  As part of my 1.5 months, I took out the pathetic lone wire rack in the master bedroom closet and put in a nice “closet organization system” that gave me two racks for hanging my clothes, a long shelf along the top and a single set of shelves going from the top of the closet down to the floor.  I also put in a set of hooks for belts, hats, etc. so I am set on clothes storage.  Having more furniture to put clothes in isn’t really needed but it would help fill up my room.  I guess other options would be an easy chair or something like that but you know what that ultimately means don’t you?  Just something to pile my clothes onto.  And when am I just sitting in my bedroom anyway?  If I want to sit, I’ll do it in the living room.  I just got a brand new leather couch that reclines.  Yes, I said reclines.  I may cheap out when it comes to getting new bedroom furniture but I will make my living room as comfortable as possible.

I still have to get the basement settled but I’m not in a big rush to do that.  As it is, I do need something down there to put an old TV I have on it. This is the TV I mentioned in Moving Daze Part 4.  It’s like 300 pounds since it’s the probably one of the last tube TV’s but it has a flat 38” screen.  Perfect for down in the basement until I upgrade the TV upstairs…which would probably be a long while.  I don’t have a 3D TV but if that is still a thing a year or so from now, maybe that is what I would upgrade to.  I still think 3D TV is a fad but maybe it’s a fad like the internet is a fad or toasters are a fad.  I dunno.

I guess when I look back at the 1.5 months and the fact that last night, I didn’t have any pressing unpacking or “settling in” to do, I should be proud of where I am.  A lot of people in this same state would still have boxes to unpack, rooms still unsettled and an array of pictures on the floor perhaps by the wall they are to be hung on but still unhung.  I guess it’s also easier for me to be settled in since I only have my girls with me every other weekend but still.  I think I opened up a can whoop ass on the house and came out looking pretty good.  I do still feel, however, a bit unsettled or uneven…like there is still stuff to do and while there are some small things, it’s nothing major.  Perhaps that unsettled feeling is something more than just unpacked boxes or an undecorated wall.  Perhaps it’s a sense that I need to make this house my home.  To do that, I need make my single life something more than every other weekend visitations and house settling but what should I make it?  Let’s explore that next time.

Meanwhile, I will try to become more centered by sleeping in the center of my bed but it won’t be easy.  I threw my shoulder out trying to reach the alarm clock this morning.  Oy.

 

Lawn Moaner

I did not want to mow my lawn.

As I looked down from the front porch onto the steep incline that was my front yard, sweat trickled from my forehead, down my nose and onto the painted steps on which I stood.  My eyes darted back and forth from the trees to the rocks randomly peeking up from the high grass that covered the slope.  This was a yard for skiing, not mowing.  I glanced ever so carefully to my left and when I did, I knew it was a mistake.  There along the edge of my property line, the yard dropped down into my neighbor’s yard, each plot divided by boulders and more rocks.  I gasped audibly.  I turned around and headed back into the house.  I had a marathon of The Office I could watch instead.  The yard…and my fears…would have to wait.

While perhaps a bit dramatic, this basically summed up my thoughts on mowing the lawn at my new house; steep hill in the front, continuing along the sides and rocks surrounding all of it.  The house I lived in previously was on a hill as well, but it was a much bigger hill with a noted but gradual slope that was easy to navigate.  In my old house, I had a yard tractor (or a riding lawn mower but “yard tractor” sounds much manlier).  I loved mowing that lawn because I would just plug in my iPod and ride around the yard for about an hour or so.  When my daughters were younger, they used to love to ride on my lap while I was mowing the lawn which I had no problem letting them do as long as I wasn’t going up or down the hills. 

In my new house, however, the CPS would be called if I let my daughters ride with me while mowing that lawn.  Heck, there’s no way I would use the lawn tractor at my new house.  Even without the steep hill in front and on the sides, the yard is much too small for something like a yard tractor.  I needed a push mower but with that type of mower there came a clear and present danger.  All of my thoughts on the matter were around my fear of trying to cut the grass, slipping, rolling down the hill, bouncing off the rocks and into an oncoming UPS van.  Below is an artist’s depiction of me mowing my new yard.  This picture was made using nothing but the finest graphic artist software available to me:

As you can see, it’s pretty steep and the lawn tractor would have been useless trying to get up that hill unless my goal was to be crushed underneath the tractor.  Then it would have been perfect!  And as I said, the yard is just not big enough to justify using a riding lawn mower even on the flatter areas of the yard (primarily in the back).  No, using that tractor would have been like trying to convince a Republican to vote Democrat purely by posting things on his Facebook wall:  useless.

I put off mowing the lawn for well over a month from when I moved in and even then, it needed to be cut.  I kept using excuses like moving in, getting settled, having the girls over for the weekend and taking naps as reasons not to mow it.  Finally, however, it needed to be done.  Fall was approaching and soon that tall grass would be entwined with leaves making the mow that much tougher.  In order to mow the lawn, however, I needed a machine with which to mow said lawn. 

You see, with a lawn like mine, your typical (and cheaper) mowing option wouldn’t work.  The mower had to be self-propelled but the wheels in the back needed to do the propelling, not the ones in the front.  Rear wheel mowers are probably around $75-$100 bucks more than front wheel ones.  Then I needed to decide what type of starter:  normal prime-choke-and pull, no prime/choke, or electric start.  I decided on no prime/no choke and pull although I seriously considered the electric start but I read most of the starting mechanisms go out within the first month or two and then you’re left with a normal pull start, so I just fast forwarded to having that.

Then there was a litany of other options to consider: how much power; does it include a place to screw in a water hose on the mower deck to easily clean the blades; is there a mulch kit included (I never bag); and how many cup-holders does it have?  All of these are very important things to consider when buying a new lawn mower these days.  The only problem is that I used my “consumer research” as yet another excuse to not get out there and mow the damn lawn.  I just didn’t want to face that Everest like front lawn!  Meanwhile, the grass is growing higher than most of the hair styles of 80’s metal bands. 

Finally, I bought a new mower and yesterday evening, I went out and tackled the task that has been taunting me for the past month.  After putting in oil and gas into the new lawn mower (and it had that new lawn mower smell everyone likes), I fired it up (on the first pull, no less) and started mowing.  I decided to take the flatter areas down first.  No need in killing myself so early in the process.  This way, when the morgue came to collect my body they can comment on how nice MOST of the yard looked. 

The mower bogged down a few times as it choked on grass that really could have used a scythe rather than a mower but Craftsman didn’t make a powered scythe so I kept restarting the mower.  I finally got a feel for when it was about to start bogging and tilted the mower up to clear out the clogged up grass.  I have never had a rear wheel drive mower and let me tell you something, I had to hang on for most of the job.  Again, it’s probably just something I need to adjust to but that thing was dragging me across the lawn in some spots.  I couldn’t believe how fast it was going. 

Okay, enough was enough; I needed to tackle that hill.  I started making passes along the edge, trying to get a feel for it.  Well, when I felt the mower starting to go almost 90 degrees downhill, I had to adjust.  The rear wheel drive was mainly aiding the mower in getting downhill faster at the angle I was trying to cut.  No mower based propulsion system was going to overcome gravity it appeared.  I then started pointing the mower straight ahead and went back and forth in swatches along the hill.  This worked better but I wished my mower had a powered reverse. I don’t even know if mowers come with that option but it would have been helpful.  After getting most of the top and sides done but without getting to the really steep parts, I stepped back, took a look at what I had completed and thought….

Good enough! 

I then went back in and watched Steve Carrell's final espisode on The Office.

Entertainment Tonight, Today, and Always

As I was preparing to move into my own house, I considered the entertainment options available to me.  I am not much of a habitual TV watcher anymore.  I used to be.  I used to love television and had a set of shows I would watch each night.  I could tell what day it was by what shows were on.  There was a time when a certain show caused a lot of talk in the office on the following day (i.e. Lost) so I had to be up to date or out on the office chatter. Consistent TV watching has waned since I stopped working in an office   It got even worse when I was a frequent traveler (I rarely turned on the TV in a hotel room) and even more so with recent events (and if you don’t know what those are, welcome to my blog!  We’ll wait while you get caught up…start at Why? and work your way up.  Done?  Great!). 

Since I was on my own I didn’t need to be concerned over what the MMC (Mother of My Children, please see What to Call The Woman Who Is No Longer My Wife or in the side bar for more info on that) wanted to watch and I only need to be mildly concerned over what the girls wanted to watch when they came over.  We generally stick with movie nights and maybe TV in the mornings as they wake up and we get the day rolling. 

Even though I had become more of an occasional TV watcher, I was still a big TiVo fan.  Recording the shows I really did want to watch (mainly Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, The Daily Show, Storage Wars and Mythbusters) always meant I had something to watch at any given moment.  But since this has been the Summer of Divorce, most of these shows weren’t first run so I burned through them rather quickly during the rare moments that I actually wanted to watch TV and even during those times, I was only half paying attention. Thus when it came to making the entertainment choices for my new house, I pondered the latest thing in television technology:   On-demand.

During the time that I had control over the devices to feed my need for entertainment, I’ve experienced the Atari 2600, Nintendo, a VCR, cable, DVD player, the aforementioned TiVo, the Wii, Xbox and my latest device, the Playstation 3.  I got the Wii and Xbox mainly for the games … some for me, some for the kids but I discovered the other options available to me:  Netflix, Hulu, Amazon On Demand and a plethora of other assorted services.  We got Netflix at first as our on demand movie choice but I was always frustrated with it because there would be a movie I wanted to watch but it was never available on Netflix.  I found Amazon On Demand to be a much better choice for movie rental or purchase.  I also found it inconvenient to use Netflix because you had to add a movie or TV show to your queue on your PC or smart phone application and then fire up Netflix on your desired device to actually watch what you selected.  During the separation, I either discovered the functionality or there was a functionality change that allowed you to start selecting movies directly from the Netflix interface on the PS3.  This made Netflix a lot better in my oh-so humble opinion.

With this discovery and the fact that Netflix had a Kid option, the girls were able to browse through the movies and TV shows to select what they wanted to watch.  Of course, after watching a Disney movie called Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure sixty-eight times, I'd like to know if there is a way to block certain selections.  

On Netflix, I did find several TV shows that I either stopped watching or have never watched before.  It was magnificent and furthered my desire to go only on demand in the new place.  There was a period a time after the MMC and the kids moved out when all I had was my PS3 to get TV and I started watching episodes of The Office since I stopped watching it a few years ago. Again, I was thrilled and I started thinking, “Man, I should just do this all the time.”  More reasons started to collect in my head:

·        Money savings – We were paying for the premium cable package with HD channels that went up to around a $125 a month, although that included the internet connection.  I still needed that but I figured I could cut the cost in half by not having the cable channels.

·        Not paying for something I wasn’t watching – Related to the money savings is the fact if I’m not watching the TV, I’m not paying for it (well, not as much at least).  With cable, if I didn't turn on the TV for a month, I wasted that month’s cable bill whereas with on-demand, I would be paying much less but have a lot more available to me at any time I wanted it.

·        Always something to watch – Whether it’s seeing some old movie I forgot about (a lot of those I have rediscovered thanks to a buddy’s blog, Tales from the Queue) or watching the entire run of Cheers from the beginning, it didn’t seem like I could run out of things to watch.   Add into the fact that I also had the other outlets like Amazon On Demand, Hulu and stream directly from web sites, my viewing platter was full and never ending.

So when the day came to get connected, I called the cable company and I said I wanted internet only!  Unfortunately, THEY said, I needed at least the local channel cable option along with the internet connection.  They also proceeded to go through the other packages and by the time I got off the phone, I had the cable plus package along with internet.  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t pull the trigger to go on demand only.  I thought about sports that I would miss and how I would get two TVs running under this system.  You see, I had a TV in my living room and one in the basement.  No, I didn’t have one in my bedroom.  I hate having a TV in the bedroom and especially going to sleep with it on. This was a difference between me and the MMC and could very well be the main reason we got a divorce (I mean, I really don’t know other than what I have speculated on…again, go back and read my other blogs for more information on that).  If the girls wanted to watch TV in the basement, I needed a device to stream the on-demand content and I know there are plenty I could get but when it came down to it, I just went with cable. 

Maybe someday I will live the on-demand dream but for now I’ll just the change channels until I find something I want to watch.  Truth is, I still have access to on-demand so I can finish off the episodes of The Office I haven’t seen. 

And as I write this, I see that all that is on regular cable right now are infomercials and ESPN Sports Center updates I have already seen twelve times.  Hmmm...maybe I should have just made the switch to on-demand after all.

Then again, I could just stream Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure one more time...

Next time:  The small moments