The Housewarming Party: D DAY and the woodchuck fiasco

Saturday, June 5th: 5:30am

I was up. Ohhh of COURSE I was up. I never even took a chance to say, change out of my pyjamas, or put in my contacts, or brush my teeth for God sake! No I literally hit the ground running, ponytail, glasses and all as today was the day that 50 or so people would flood our unfinished and unfurnished home. I had S@#! to do! I can't even remember where I start, I think it was sweeping our new beautiful floors in all the bedrooms and living room to get them ready for presentation. I then, waking MB in my mad dashings around, began moving random things in our "bedroom" backroom into the real bedroom. I was freaking out about by now. The backroom is where we were to have everything set up for the party as people could transition seamlessly from outdoors to inside. By 6:30am it was already hot and I was sweating my butt off. I had a lot to do and people were slated to arrive by 1pm. Great.

I think somewhere in this MB picked up on my panic and he set to work immediately as well, I'm not sure doing what because I didn't see him or pay much attention to him but I'm sure it was useful. I started putting felt tips that I had purchased on one of my more recent trips to the beloved Home Depot, on all of the furniture that would be going in living room and bedroom. MB helped me do most of this and at around 8:30 we began moving stuff into the bedroom. I put our beautiful new nightstands that MB had built prior to us buying the house 1st (picture included, taken by my mother).

I believe these were the product of pent up creative energy on MB's part. I had gotten a call one night when I was about to go to bed, MB: "I think I'm going to built night stands." Me: "Uhm OK." MB:" Yeah. I'm gunna build night stands." You just don't question it.

After those we moved our silly little yard sale dresser, the bed frame, and eventually the bed. I started throwing sheets on this somewhere in between random trips to and fro the basement. I put my beautiful shaker table in the living room first as I am shamelessly proud of it (picture also included courtesy of me :D). Then the couch. This took a little finagling with felt cups but it was there and that was it. We have a big chair, the Lindsey chair as I'm often to be found curled up in it sound asleep with half a glass of wine on Friday nights, but we did not have time to move this from the basement. I then set about cleaning the couch, vacuuming my life away around 10ish?
I made a cake somewhere in there. I swept the floor in the kitchen and cleaned it as best I could and then set about vacuuming the backroom and setting it up. This took forever. It was so hot, already about 86ish degrees and there I was, sweating my butt off in a tee shirt and pyjama shorts, glasses, a sloppy pony tail and in desperate need a shower. And I had people coming in about 2ish hours. I set up the two tables, put table clothes on them and began trying to set things up. It was an hour from my mother's arrival so I literally, and this is probably the funniest thing looking back, took to cleaning my bathroom before jumping in the shower, spray bottle and scrub brush in hand and literally, cleaned my shower while I took a shower. I was still straitening up my bathroom and finishing making the bed while dressed in a Velcro towel and a towel on my head. I'm sure it was quite the sight. My mom showed up just I finished dressing myself and slapping some pathetic make up on my face.
Now, my mother is not use to seeing me so harried before a party. I LOVE to throw parties and plan them and all that good stuff. Yet here I was with almost nothing done and people coming in an hour. We had moved furniture in THAT MORNING, I still hadn't even had a change to admire the effect. I set her to work cooking bacon and hard boiling eggs, for potato salad and I started setting up the things she had brought.
Now while all of this was going on, MB was smoking a brisket. If you have never had one of these, and are not of the vegetarian persuasion (full respect here) you NEED to have one. They are amazing. Now, I had noticed a small woodchuck hanging out under our back room addition a few days earlier. While I was in there setting up I heard a commotion. MB had been attacked my said woodchuck. He sprayed it with the hose he was using but was a bit concerned. This woodchuck did not look so good. He sauntered off, a little wet and very sick looking at a slow pace into the garden. I told MB to call animal control. He said it wouldn't be animal control it would be the EPA that would handle it. I told him to call the EPA. He said no, they wouldn't do anything. I was pretty pissed off to tell you the truth but I was very quickly distracted and didn't get a chance to even FIND my cellphone let along use it. The next time I saw the sickly little woodchuck he was laying in our hill garden in the sun, very strange and looking half dead.

Meanwhile, people started filing into the kitchen as I was trying to finish the things I was making. I had my cousin making pudding for punch bowl cake, my mom on the bacon and someone else, doing I can't even remember. I have NEVER been that unprepared before a party, especially of such magnitude. However, I think it came together well.
People camped themselves in our garage due to the relative lack of shade in our yard, something I did not understand not ever having a garage before but hey, they seemed happy. MB entertained the folks outside while I entertained inside getting things put together. It was HOT. Like tropical humidity hot. It even threatened to rain once but somehow, split and missed us.

People came in two waves, most of the family around 1pm and our friends mostly at 5pm. As I had barely been outside someone asked me how I felt about the woodchuck. "What woodchuck?" APPARENTLY, as MB had not called the EPA, as some of his family were arriving the woodchuck charged MB for the 2nd (3rd?) time. Well he, for reasons unbeknown to be, had a shovel in his hand and therefore, to protect himself and his family, proceeded to whack the thing in the head and kill it. I, needless to say, was pretty furious. especially that I seemed to be the last to know of this! Now, I realize that the thing was obviously not OK. It was sick. But I was convinced, and proceeded to ream MB out for this, that the poor woodchuck probably had babies under our backroom and it was just trying to protect them and now they would die and if I happened to find said babies, MB was crawling under there and rescuing every damn one of them. Turns out there were no babies but still, I was mad.

The party went incredibly well and everyone seemed to love the house. Our friends were there most of the night and two friends stayed behind to help us clean up (one really. The other was for entertainment). At this point, MB was fairly drunk and so was AC (the friend/girlfriend/coworker from my last post). As AC's fiancee was so generously helping me clean, they decided, having been seated around a large fire in our backyard for the past 2 hours drinking beer, that it would be fun to sneak on top of the roof of the garage and 'scare' us. Ashley caught them before they even made it to the window. You see, when your drunk you think your being incredibly cleaver and stealthy. Not so much. Anyways they finally left around 1:00am and it was finally over. I have included more pictures I took the next day of a reluctant MB (he's not fond of pictures for some silly reason. He's very photogenic so I can't understand WHY) in our living room. This was the defining moment in our journey so far and yet, there was still so much to do. I was SO excited to go to sleep in our actual bedroom that night I can't even tell you. And to actually sit in my living room?! SWOON! It's lovely :)

The Mad Dash!

There we were. 4 days in counting until the big day. D Day. The Housewarming Party. Now let me explain a bit here. We had originally set this date back when we closed on the house because the only plan was to re do the master bedroom. Oh we would DEFINITELY be ready by then! The house would surly be presentable. (snigger) You see, we have big families, MB especially and his family is very prevalent in our lives and EVERYONE wanted to see the house. Not to mention we have a large group of friends we often entertain with and we were convinced their social lives were ruined because of us.

Well instead of entertaining a stream of people every single weekend while we were trying to work on the house, we deiced to stave them off by having a big reveal party! Now, 4 days before the party MB had JUST finished the floors. Something, that until it was done, I hadn't realized was causing me such an ucler. But now, I was faced with the fact that we still needed, what was it? 14 coats of paint overall? Yeah, not gunna happen.

I decided to prioritize. I literally sat down at work one day and made a list of all of the projects. #1. heat registers (the metal thing that covers the pipe of heat that runs across the exterior walls for those of you lucky brats that do not have this), they were out. There was no way they would be sanded, primed and painted twice before the party. #2. spare bedrooms? Nope those definitely weren't going to be done. luckily, although I can't remember the time line for this as it's all a bit blurry, MB had finished priming the spare bedrooms but there was no way, wall, ceilings or closets would be painted for the party. OK so this left the living room as the "big to do" (heh. Drive By Truckers Album. tehe.)

Now by this time i had been desperately calling all the people who "LOVE to paint" short of the Home Depot "Paint Girl" (but don't think I hadn't considered it). I was faced with painting all of the trim around the windows and doors, painting the ceiling white (again), cutting and PRIMING the walls and then doing two coats of paint...in a mere few days. Now I work full time. That doesn't leave me with an awful lot of time to do these things. I had spent my whole previous week up until almost 11 every night painting. looked like this would be a repeat. Plus we had nice new beautiful floor to protect upon pain of death. So poor Mary (see girls weekend 2 days earlier!), who is self admitted not a good painter, showed her cute little face to help paint ceilings on Wednesday. Matt took painting trim, I took babysitting Mary and cutting the primer into the walls. Mary worked very hard but i ended up finishing. I finished priming the walls on Thursday and then Friday, I left work early. I HAD to. I was out by noon and had to, of course pick up MORE paint.

Now i was always told paint is the cheap thing. 'Oh it's a cheap way to change a room around/spruce it up.' HAH! Tell that to me nearly $400 deep in paint with still 2 more rooms worth to buy. Well any who, we had very smartly gotten what we needed for the party on Thursday night so I could get stuff done for the party Friday. I had a room to paint, a few dishes to make (we thankfully made it a pot luck because I knew there was no way I could make food for 60ish people given the circumstances) and a whole house to clean. Somehow, I got it in my head that, why of COURSE i could finish the second coat on all the trim and cut and paint the entire living room and hallway that night and have plenty of time left. I start at around 2:15 painting trim. Somehow, MB had to work this night. Of course. He would be home at 9pm. No biggy, i had plenty of time.

I finished the trim and got my paint. Now up until this point I had never been the one to put color on the walls. Everything else had been the same color (white) and MB had given me only a quick lesson in cutting in color by hand without tape. I took a big gulp and C-A-R-E-F-U-L-L-Y slid the angled brush into the crevice between the upper wall and ceiling in the hallway. I think my heart stopped. this was by far the most terrifying thing I had done yet. you get paint on that ceiling and your screwed. There's no going back. I jumped that hurdles and stood back and was assaulted by a whole new litany of fears. It was YELLOW. I mean YELLOW! Insert panic attack here. Now, in the scheme of things, this was nothing to panic over. But I did. It was just so striking to actually see color on the walls. And yellow is a very tricky color. Suddenly i was panicking that we had picked the wrong yellow. There was nothing I could do so I plowed on at my painstakingly slow rate.

As I did so I began to silently fume. At some point, I had stopped to attempt and prep my potato salad. I had boiled and strained potatoes and hard boiled eggs. I had attempted to cut up some vegetables. I may have fed myself but then again I may not have. the panic was starting to seep in even before i realized it almost in equilibrium with the fading light. The darker it got, the later it got and the less I seemed to have gotten done. This turned to annoyance and later anger that stupid MB and his stupid work were leaving me to do this all by myself. We hadn't moved anything in. I had so much cleaning to do. I still had a million things to cook. I do NOT like to be unprepared darnit! I'm a professional! I have things done when people get there, I have it together! Yet here I was faced with the realization that maybe I would have nothing together. There were also a million stupid little obstacles I hadn't prepared for. Like I forgot I would have to cut the paint in around all of the windows and doors and outlets. That took forever. It got to be almost 9pm and by this point, I was murderous. I began 'fantasizing' that MB would walk and the first thing he would say was that he hated the color, it was too yellow. This, in my fantasizing nightmare, was then followed by a complete storming rant from me and a karate chop to the face. By the time 9 o'clock came and went, in my mind, this is EXACTLY what was going to happen. MB was going to hate it and when he told me such, he would get a earful from me. This never happens. I'm a very peaceful person, very anti combative but I'll admit, the pressure was getting to me.

I started rolling the paint on the walls, feeling almost like it was starting over and it was now 9:45pm. MB was NOT answering his phone. His friend AC (and I can't believe I called him, I NEVER do that!) was not answering so I called the only person I could; AC's fiancee and my buddy Ashley. She too was painting (I will back her up here, she offered to come help me paint during the week but the poor girl was already doing the same thing and working so hard to help her brother that I turned her down) and she had no idea where the boys were. AC (her boyfriend or as I like to say, MB's boyfriend (he's married to his job, I'm just the mistress)) hadn't called her either so I gave up.

When MB sauntered in a little after 10 I was poised and ready, waiting for the line so I could take my paint roller and run it right up his body. I was nearly done rolling at this time. I had one wall left (rolling takes FAR less time than cutting). "This looks awesome huh?!" were the words uttered out of MB's mouth. I deflated, although, I will be honest here, there was a part of me that was a bit disappointed I didn't get to let him have it. I nodded, put down the roller and walked away saying I had had enough and he could finish which he did. I walked into the kitchen and deflated again. There was so much to do, the kitchen was a mess, I had about 1/3 of a potato salad done, a dessert with multiple parts still left, a house to clean and oh yeah, we STILL hadn't moved our stuff out of the back room where we were suppose to be housing all the food for the party the next day!

Now this, this is where a lesser person would have burst into to tears. But ohhh no, not this girl! I sucked it up, finished cutting the vegetables I needed, tossed everything for the potato salad in a bowl and stuffed it in the fridge, took a quick shower and went to bed. I know myself well enough to know that I was of no more use to anyone that night. I would be up at the crack of dawn. I would have it done. It would be awesome. I didn't really get a chance to stand back and appreciate my hard work (although since then I promise you I have, many a times, gloating most of it) in the living room. I actually LOVE the color! We got it just right. It looks amazing in every light but if you had asked me that night, I would have told you to got take your yellow and stick it where the sun don't shine! :D