Life is good again. Complicated, but good. The train is back on the tracks.
First, we have a new kitty litter box. The kitties are using it exclusively even though it is NOT in our bedroom. It cleans itself. Washes, rinses, and blows itself dry. I'm not kidding. It's hooked up to the toilet's water supply, and whenever the kitties do their business in it, as soon as they are done it scoops up any solid waste and grinds it up into slush, then sprays water on the inside and washes and rinses the tiny plastic litter bits, and then spits all of it out into the toilet through a tube, and then blows itself dry with warm air. All we have to do is push the flusher on the toilet and whoooosh, away it goes. Our bathroom smells like fresh linen when it's done. Since we got it, they've used it religiously and we haven't had a single incident outside of the litter. But that's not the best part. You'd think it would be but it's not. The best part is that we no longer have a litter box in our bedroom. Which, prior to getting The Cat Genie (yes, that's its name), was the only room they would go in, despite the fact that we also had a kitty litter box in the laundry room. And that means I no longer have a floor littered with litter bits (pun intended), or little dusty paw prints. And our bedroom does not smell like cat pee or uncleaned litter. We have reclaimed our bedroom.
We have also reclaimed the space in the laundry room previously occupied by the unused litter boxes. Tim's built in a floor-to-ceiling pantry area where it used to be. Which means I no longer have Costco-sized econo-packages of toilet paper and paper towels sitting on the kitchen floor or stuffed into random cupboard space. They are now sitting on the pantry shelves.
Secondly, we have finally, FINALLY solved our after-school child care woes. For two days a week, Bobbin will get picked up by her old pre-K school and transported back to their place where she will spend the afternoon with the teachers she has gotten to know and trust over the last two years. And I am in the process of shifting my schedule so that one day a week I am off. Yes, O-F-F off. I'm going to work 10 hrs/day 4 days a week so I can stay home one day a week. I'll be able to get household chores done in the morning (read N-A-P) when she's at school and then I'll get to spend the rest of the day with her when she gets home. I'm already leaving before she wakes up at least 2 days a week. What's 2 more? Tim will cover the other 2 days a week that remain. there will be a rare exception where he'll need to work but we now have a couple of sitter options available to us.
Which brings me to number three. There is hope for real date nights in the near future. And possibly girls days out too. I have at least 2 babysitter options to try out for occasional evening and weekend sitting needs. I may get some semblance of a social life back again.
Number four: I finally have a new doctor. One who is 100% covered by my current medical insurance. Which means no more phone tag, snail mail tag, or heated discussions with my insurance provider over what they consider a reasonable reimbursement amount is for each procedure code. And she's got me on new meds, that only require me to take 1 pill a day and seem to be more effective as well.
Five - I've got a new calendar system to manage the crazy schedules for Bobbin, Tim, me, and the babysitter / child care. It's called Cozi - a free online calendar service that takes feeds from just about any calendar solution you can think of (Outlook/Exchange, gMail, iCal, Hotmail/MSN) and even has built-in feeds for most school districts and professional sports teams, and aggregates them together into a single place where you can view, manage, and even change/delete appointments for the whole family. I highly recommend it. It's so central to our household that I even bought a new flatscreen monitor, mounted it on the kitchen wall where my old paper wall calendar used to be, and keep Cozi up, running, and displayed on it full screen 24x7. I am SO on top of it I'm returning school paperwork before they even send it home to be filled out, because Cozi tells me to go to the district website to download the forms and send them in.
Six: We have finally opened an official college savings fund for Bobbin; something that we kept meaning to do but putting off. She will actually be able to afford college in 13 years when she graduates high school. Oh good lord. It seems like that is coming way too soon. But at least we're ready and have an actual plan for it :-)
Lastly, I am finally back on the household finances horse. After a 5 year hiatus from dealing with all things bank and bill related, Tim and I finally concocted a working system that lets me share the account balancing and bill paying responsibility. Which, like the Kitty Litter Box Cleaning Tim had been kind enough to have handled completely and very capably, while I worked through my Very Different Life after having Bobbin.
And then, the icing on the very organized layer cake that I now have happening in this house, Tim went and bought some old highschool lockers (in excellent condition) for a steal of a price and installed them in our laundry room as a place for us to hang our coats, bags, hats, stash our reuasable grocery bags and shoes, etc. He's a genius. I would never have thought of this. They look WAY cool, mod, hip... whatever the kids are saying these days... they were CHEAP, and they fit perfectly and work great. And it solves one of the minor pet peeves I've had essentially since the day we moved in.
So... life is still very complicated, but it is more organized and predictable. It's taken us a long long time to get here, but we have arrived.
And now that I've said that, I'm sure somewhere a shoe has dropped. Murphy's law, and all that. I just hope that it fits in the lockers and doesn't smell like cat poop.
