El presidente

I mentioned awhile back that SpyDad’s company gave him a substantial raise because, to be honest, he’s pretty damn good at what he does.  He works for a small company, and the majority of the workers sit in the office all day spending a lot of time goofing off.  About a year ago, a few of the guys were given new titles that included the word “executive” while SpyDad’s title remained unchanged.  I found it very odd that these executives had worked there less time and had less experience.

But if you know anything about SpyDad at all, know that he doesn’t give a damn about what title he has as long as the job gets done. SpyDad came home one day after the office guys hatched a plan to start a training program with SpyDad leading the helm.  He said that they accomplished nothing that day except the decision that SpyDad should have a new title and what that title should be. 

You have to love corporate America.

Since I am now officially self-employed, I figured that it’s only fair to give myself and GadgetGirl some new titles in honor of SpyDad.  Just to be fair, I spent all day thinking about them. 

From this day forward, Gadget Girl shall now be referred to as the

Master Poop Scheduler II

It’s quite appropriate given her potty training prowess of late.  I’m so proud of that little turd. 

Mine was a little trickier, but I think I’ve found the perfect one:

Grand Poobah of  ”Can I watch a movie now, I’d really like a cookie, let’s just cook some, I can do it myself mom, I need someone to wipe my butt” Infinite Requests and “Stop it that’s not a toy and no I don’t think your toys, pillows, and draperies really need a slathering of hand sanitizer to keep them from getting the flu, and ohmygod is that pink eye, yes you need to go to school/dance/grandma’s and no you cannot pretend to sleep when I asked you to pick up your toys” Constant Reminders.

Or was that just a job description? 

The waiting game

It’s 7:30pm, and SpyDad is still not home from work. GadgetGirl and I had some crackers to tide us over until he arrives. I know that when he gets home, he will first strip off any clothes he’s dirtied in the course of the day and then head over to his sweet daughter with open arms. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!” he will say enveloping her in his arms.

Yesterday, we stayed up past 11pm just to witness that event. It’s a part of us, just like SpyDad is a part of us, I am a part of us, and GadgeGirl is a part of us.

The life we lead now is so different from anything I’ve ever imagined. If you told me three years ago that I’d be sitting in a camper with my daughter, listening to “Flushed Away” for the upteenth time today, and waiting for my husband to complete his 90 minute journey home, well then I would have said, “Boo.”

Boo. He’s still not home, but it’s worth the wait.

Rock and roll

I forgot how thereaputic blogging is. When your only contact on most days is a three-year-old who likes to play house, you tend to bottle up a lot of your thoughts. By the way, right now I’m the baby and our 12 year-old-dog is the mommy. “Mommy” was just put in time out for curling up on a makeshift pallet on the floor. Naughty mommy. She looks really comfortable. Maybe I should join her.

One thing about living in a trailer is that it’s great when the weather outside is 68 degrees with a south wind of 5-10 mph. You can even open up the window and enjoy a little fresh air. Right now, it’s 32 degrees with a northwest wind of 30-40 mph with gusts up to 50 mph. The air outside is swirling in little weird circles, and frankly, it’s freaking me the fuck out.

When the trailer’s a rockin’, get the hell out of Dodge.

I forgot that I scheduled a contractor to come out and tell us how much it’s going to cost us to flush our poop, i.e. install a septic system. The phone rang at 11 this morning, and his secretary was on the other line telling me that he’s running late. When you’re wearing nothing but underwear and a pajama top, and your breath smells like it needs to be flushed as well, that could easily become the best news of the day.

Yesterday, I dropped GadgetGirl off at her dance class and sped off to stalk, er, look for a brick contractor that I couldn’t find in the yellow pages. My brother-in-law’s friend builds homes, and I asked him for a referral. He conveniently forgot to tell me that the brick contractor doesn’t have a home phone, so I was on a mission to find him. Luckily, I knew where a new addition was going in, so I was off (with only 20 minutes until the dance class finished). It must have been my lucky day because I drove right up to a house that was getting the final brick put on. There were about five or six guys outside working. There was a portly fellow on the ground looking up at the guys working, so I figured that was him. When I walked up, I could see all the guys look at me like I was an alien or something. I heard a couple of snickers and what I perceived to be jokes about the ex coming to get a check for child support. I found the gentleman I was looking for (not the self-appointed supervisor as I first thought) working on the scaffolding with his men. It was very awkward talking to him given the situation, but he was very nice. He offered to drive me around the neighborhood to look at some of his work, but I didn’t feel really comfortable doing that. Besides, I only had about four minutes left on the clock.

Perhaps the next time I decide to go running around town looking for a contractor I’ve never met, I’ll send SpyDad instead.

Antacid and pain reliever

Hello, and welcome to the semi-annual installment of the Undercover Mutha blog. I’m not sure why I haven’t been updating. I think I feel a lot of guilt to write something when I don’t catch up on my regular blogs. Well, my bloglines counter is at zero, so I’m at peace now with my blog guilt and anxiety.

Speaking of anxiety…

The house is coming along nicely now, and the camper is, um, driving me freaking insane. When the water isn’t freezing, it’s leaking right into the carpet. Yuck. It’s small and claustrophobic. There’s no place to hang clothes or handle the laundry produced by a family of three. Insane, I tell you! I’m insane!

I’ve been in denial about how much we’ve spent so far, so I finally tallied it up. See that pretty new page tab up top called “The House.” That’s where I’ll put our expenditures. I’m not totally sure on two of them, so that may change if I run across those two bank statements. Right now we’ve spent $29, 679 just to get the house shell up. That doesn’t include the extra $46,000 we’ll have spend to the company we where we bought the steel framing and roof. So, that essentially puts us at $75,679 spent. We still need to pour the concrete for our porches, pay for roof and wall sheathing, insulation, brick and siding, cabinetry, windows, front door, interior doors, electrical wiring and fixtures, plumbing piping and fixtures, stain for the concrete, HVAC unit and plenums, drywall and finishing, paint, and I’m sure I’ve left out something insanely expensive, too. Oh, a porch railing and fence for the damn dogs.

This house is driving me to drinking…or at least an overdose of antacid tablets. Combine that with SpyDad building the damn thing himself (and needing much, much pain reliever), you’ve got a recipe for disaster.