Horrible April is Over

The flurry of activity for the month of April is over, and the month is nearly over as well. Russell’s birthday was yesterday. He’s a full decade old now. Wow! I’m ready to just stay crashed for awhile, and try to get into some sort of pattern for education with R. and V. in particular.

I really want to get a good B-Day out for R. every year, and it seems that it’s been the hardest thing always, and I meant to do things early this year but was sidelined with two unplanned trips to Florida. I could have done more, but really it’s rather just part of Introverted me to drop down to minimum nothingness to the most possible degree when odd things happen that are not super-crisis-power-creators. For me it’s one or the other. This month was all about power-stealing-crisis. Ugh. I am so tired, so very tired. I have wanted to post here and other places, but have done little. So I’m forcing myself to type this, one more record for April 2006.

Tomorrow is May First. Time sure flies. That’s just it for aging adults (children also are aging, but it’s nothing much at that time, to them), at least the miseries of life are fleeting, but that just -/+ as the reverse is fleeting life overall.

We did get a couch this month though. It’s lovely. IKEA EKTORP Corner + 2 Hillsand Blue. We’ve had various furniture pieces to sit on in the past. Only two of them were purchases on purpose, others were “gifts” 😉 The last one we had, I picked out. I liked it in the store, and disliked it at home, more and more until we finally trashed it. I had a slipcover for it and it was a major pain to get it on and it never stayed put, no matter WHAT I did.

The IKEA couch we have is a full custom slip cover type couch. Each cushion is individual and reversible. The base is slipcovered in one large slipcover. The cushions are, of course, individually slipcovered. The process to put the whole thing together was time consuming, but not hard. The slipcoverput-on session was super time consuming, but worth every sweat drop. 🙂

Getting this couch set-up has given us an instant family room. We still need to finish paneling the walls, and have some work to do on the ceiling, then need to finish the floor by installing something, but not sure what yet. As it goes though, we have the functionality of space to sit with our laptops, soft and comfy, not too soft though. We can sit here to read a book, talk, watch tv or movies, listen to music. Ah, it’s good. We’ve been without this ability for so very long. I can say without a doubt that it’s a healing thing for a family to get a good couch that they are happy with and fits the whole family, larger families may want more than one piece, of course, to get the same effect. We are a family of three children, two adults. This couch can comfortably hold us all, sitting up, and leave room for more folks, for now. As the children grow it’ll be big enough for sure, with visitors fitting in but not many. Let’s just say it depends on how big each person is. I can fit three or four of me on one section of the couch, there is a mirrored section just like that on the other side, and then the corner, which makes for more seating. My hubby is the largest, two of me can sit with him on one side. Everyone else in our family is currently smaller than me. So it’s a laying down/sitting up paradise for our family.

I am very happy to have the couch and find that it’s really and truly just what I needed to get through this time. I’ve been longing and aching for family room functionality, and it’s finally here. It’s just something that you can’t appreciate unless you’ve lived without a place to relax, except your bedroom, for months/years with your family in a house.

Our tv armoire is down in the space, and the desktop computer. We installed new lighting (a fan/light combo) in March. Recently we got new cables to install a 3×4 multiswitch. We have had DTV since 1997, turned off service for a couple of years, then turned it back on, then upgraded a box, then finally got a DVR late last year, and then got another … replacing the two regulars we had. We have two tv’s, yes. The DVR’s we have are the DirecTivo boxes, R10’s, just the 70 hours of recording version, on a dual LNB dish. The R10 is a dual tuner. The Tivo-able-ness of them with one line into each box is a nice upgrade. We bought that multiswitch not long after the boxes were installed, but we didn’t install it. Dh was not wanting to, thinking it too difficult to tackle easily, not worth the effort, in otherwords, something for the future. I got him interested again when we moved the TV down to the family room and we now have full dual-tuner tivo functionality for both tv’s. It’s great!

We’ll leave things as are until a better “something – whatever it is” arrives. I’ve wanted to do the HMO (Home Media Option) which is a Tivo Networking feature, it allows you to connect your box to your home network, and you can view what is recorded on box A via box B, for instance, if they are both connected to the network. DirecTv doesn’t have that option enabled. In older DirecTivo’s you can hack fairly easily. The Series 2 that we have can’t be easily hacked, it needs a new PIM and that’s not plain hackable easily. So it’s up to DirecTv to allow it, and they just haven’t so far and won’t, IMVHO.

Alas, it all goes bad sometime … DD wasn’t feeling good, apparently and just you-can-guess-what-ed on the couch. 🙁

I was about to publish this post and !wham! I’m having to pull pieces of the couch apart and get them in the washer to rinse off and get the other parts airing out and have to wait for the whole thing to dry and be put back together. AUGH!!!!!!!!

It was only the corners, the corners of three edges of three different cushions. Yah, she was laying in the corner part of the couch and nearly didn’t get it on the couch but did in the end. I have a thing about this: sickies should stay in bed and if they have to you-know-what, get to the bathroom and do it there!

So my rules are in effect still, but were ignored by some. Here they are so that the ones who need them can read them:

Those are the basic rules. Live by them and have a happy family room, and more imortantly, a happy Mama.

April was good and bad, but horrid overall, and this couch sickie thing just takes the cake.