Floors, Baby, Poop Palace
When we found out that my wife was pregnent, we decided that it was time to redo the floors in our home. They were the original 30 year old carpets and tile that the original construction company had installed and just during my time in the home had been well loved by over a dozen cats and dogs, many of whom were fosters and had made many messes. You can only wash a carpet so many times before it starts to fall apart, which is where we found ourselves. After the absolute horror of a project was done, we were making some rather large payments on the balance to pay it off before the zero percent APR expired and last week decided it was worth using some cash we had in reserve to pay off the floors. So now they’re paid off! The grout is coming up in the high traffic areas and one of my cats is enjoying scratching at the brand new carpets, but it’s a far better state of flooring than it was just a few months ago.
Speaking of why we needed do this, my son is now 4 week old and I had my first day back at work today. As a father I’m only allotted 2 weeks of “bonding” time, then I’m expected to be back at work full time. It sucks, I don’t like leaving my wife alone to handle the kid all on her own for 8+ hours, but it is what it is. Maybe one day I’ll be financially independent from the capitalist rat race, but this definitely isn’t the time. I have more than just floors to pay off!
To add some insult to injury, on the last Friday of my parental leave my neighbor was having some trees taken down and the company neglected to have the power lines taken down by the city. It would have inconvenienced us for about an hour, but instead what happened is they dropped a tree on the connector pole, knocked off the street light, the transformer, the internet, and cable to both the houses. I tried to stay cool about it, but man was that a stupid decision. The owner of the tree company was able to get an electrician out that day and we were powered back up about 5 hours later. Unfortunately Metronet / T-Mobile made me wait until the next day to get my fiber reconnected. I’m happy that I have the tethering on my phone, it definitely saved the day.
The final thing, a poop palace for our furry family members. Right now I have their poop trays in the guest bathroom, but that’s about to be turned into the baby’s bathroom and I’d rather not mix the baby with poop particles. He makes his own! This little bit of furniture is cheaply made, won’t likely last very long, but it’ll serve it’s purpose until we can figure out a better solution. But look, here’s Miles trying to convince me to open some of those cans for him!
