Until Laurel and Rachel move out...

Ching and I saved for several years for our home.  Almost two years ago, we finally sold our outgrown condo and moved just a few blocks away to a nice but modest home in the desired school district.  While our names are on the mortgage payment, this house isn't ours and it won't be until Laurel and Rachel move out.

The kitchen is the first room that I see as I walk in the house--the room that I most frequent and feel shackled to on a daily basis.  While I used to love to cook, every mealtime is sapping my culinary prowess since every meal now consists of angel hair pasta, nuggets or mac and cheese.  My refrigerator is covered with both artwork that I was too scared to throw away, and the freakin' pick up/drop off calendar (yeah, that's a topic for later).  Currently there is a narcissus on my island.  Laurel brought it home from school--a recent product of a growth unit. Secretly I have stopped watering it.  I am hoping its going to die--the flower smells like pee.

My dining room..you look to the left and see a cabinet of beautiful china and crystal, you look right and there is a tiny art table in the corner with a mound of some sort of project and scraps of paper everywhere. (Look down and you will probably see remnants of last night's dinner that Rachel shook her head too.  Obviously I missed that spot.)

I went to the dark side with the living room.  I always thought that people who have the "look but don't touch" living rooms had to be assholes. Well, now I am an asshole. My point of this room is to just mark a small territory with nice furniture that is not juice stained. Maybe just a small part of the house where one would have some quiet time reading a book or just appreciating the quiet. (I rarely get to use this room.)

Our family room is a room for everyone but it is overrun by toys..of all size--small MacDonald's Happy Meal crap toys, to medium toys that Laurel just had to have because Ching is a softy, to the large ones sent by Ching's family trying to overcompensate for the fact that the girls' birthdays were three months ago..months before the gift was sent.

As you head upstairs, the den/guest bedroom does have toys (that are hidden when we have guests).  Of course the both girls' rooms have toys.  I am close to using my mom's technique of making Laurel's room look neater by just closing the door.  The room that gives me the most frustration is the bathroom that they use.  There is always a dried toothpaste gob in the sink, toothpaste staining a fresh towel, toilet paper touching the floor and bath toys all over...Granted that's an easy fix, just shut the curtain.  I know it is just a matter of time when I am trading in the toothpaste gobs for gobs of glitter make-up that I will deem inappropriate. (And Laurel will shout that she hates me.)

There is only one touch of Laurel in our bedroom but it's pretty distinct.  A couple of years ago, she went to Plaster Fun time with Ching.  For Mother's Day, she painted and gifted me a Diego (yeah, from the show). He has a bright pink face with blue hair.  It sits nicely on my dresser.  It took me several months of getting used to that thing. There were plenty a morning when I would rollover and it would scare the shit out of me.  (But Laurel made it with love..that's what I tell myself.)

Explaining the finished basement would seem redundant but I do have a nice corner of it that is my second most frequented room..it's for laundry.  I am the only one that uses that room.  Just a little spider is in this room but that freakin' spider has a couple of webs.   My laundry room isn't mine either...son of a bitch!