State of Affairs: Mildly Frantic but Relatively Optimistic; Not Much Is New

So yeah.  Nothing too much to complain about, but I've been feeling a little frantic.  I feel like I haven't had two minutes to myself in the past two weeks.  Here's what's been going on:

Weekends are spent painting at the new house. We are doing a lot of light paint colors over dark paint colors, so everything has to be primed.  The walls are plaster, so there's lots of texture, which means even with primer it takes two coats to ensure full coverage.  I was supposed to paint the master bedroom tomorrow, in between having people come over to give us quotes on the floors.  The first floor needs to be resurfaced but shouldn't require sanding and refinishing; the second floor has hardwood under the carpets and we're debating pulling up the carpets but need to know what it would cost to determine when that will happen... we also might replace the carpet because I like soft carpet in bedrooms but all of these things cost a lot of money so we also might live with deep teal carpet for a while.  Yes, I said deep teal.  Same color as the walls in the master bedroom.  It was like a deep teal cave.

I will have Zuzu home with me all day tomorrow, so I'm not sure how much painting I will get done.  She was supposed to go to day care but she ended up going to daycare yesterday instead because I was in charge of a special event on campus and David had to attend DARE graduation (evidently the fact that the program has been proven entirely ineffective had no bearing on his required attendance).  My event was a HUGE source of stress that has sucked up many hours of work over the past two semesters.  (It went well; I'm glad it's over).  So Zuzu spent the afternoon at daycare and the evening with a babysitter (thank you, V!) and she did just fine.  I don't know whether it's a direct result of many hours without mama yesterday or just a coincidence, but she was a clingy little crab apple this morning.  She's usually perfectly happy to play on the floor while I get myself dressed and ready in the morning, but today if I wasn't holding her, she was screaming.  I do not exaggerate.  I was starting to get worried because she has NEVER acted like this before.  It's also possible that she's teething (I know--I always say that.  She'll be ten months old on Monday, girl still has zero teeth).  At any rate, she managed to be simultaneously endearing and incredibly frustrating and my morning was pretty hectic.

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My students are getting all end of semester worried/whiny about their final grades and I'm all, "Should have thought of that back when you were blowing off the reading quizzes and not doing the optional extra credit."  But it means a lot of visits during office hours, which means I can get very little done in terms of grading OR blogging while in my office.

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Oh--and this happened:  We went to dinner at our friends' house last Saturday.  I've mentioned before that Zuzu is not a spitty baby and she has barely ever spit up anything substantial.  My friend gave me some soft chunks of squash for Zuzu to eat and she LOVED them.  She was going to town on them.  I didn't cut them up small for her, thinking they were soft enough for her to gnaw and gum on them just fine.  However, I think she got too big of a bite, or maybe she was overstuffing herself since she'd just eaten a big dinner at home.  Either way, just as we all started to eat, Zuzu blew chunks everywhere.  Barfed up squash and baby puree at the dinner table.  Like gianormous gagging and vast amounts of puke.  I managed to catch most of it in her bib, and our friends barely even blinked and were totally cool about it but I was still kind of mortified.  I mean, we had JUST started eating and even baby puke is gross.

Zuzu recovered quickly and still wanted to eat squash, although I then cut it up in teeny pieces for her.  So we're finishing up dinner when she starts grunting and getting all red-faced.  Totally dropping a deuce at the table.  Like, could you be a little more obvious, Zu?  I guess maybe we need some etiquette lessons because I'm not sure where she got the idea that puking and pooping at the table is the way to make friends.   (Of course, I was the one who pointed out that she was working on a project in her pants so maybe I'm the problem.  So crass and rude.) We still managed to have a great time, but there was more cleaning up of semi-solid bodily fluids than I generally like to have during the dinner hour.

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In addition to buzzing about the Veronica Mars movie in the works, I'm pretty excited about The Great Gatsby movie that's coming out soon, and Joss Whedon's version of Much Ado About Nothing.  A friend passed along the number of a reliable babysitter, and we're working out a babysitting co-op with other friends of ours who have a baby girl a couple months younger than Zuzu, so maybe David and I will leave the house on our own sometime in the foreseeable future.  It could happen.

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Little Mac appears to be adjusting quite well to life at my parents' house.  In fact, while I'm relieved that it's an easy transition for everyone, I might be just the slightest bit annoyed that all it took was A NEW FAMILY for Little Mac to quit peeing and pooping in the house.  It really feels like she was truly acting out because she HATE US.  And that makes me sad.  But it also makes me sad that she's the kind of dog who bites kids.  So far things are good in both places.  It's weird adjusting to being a one-dog family, but Cooper and Mac don't actually seem to miss each other at all and life is much less stressful with the crawling baby, so I guess it's a win-win.

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The crawling baby is ON THE MOVE.  She did find Cooper's water dish the other day and she managed to make an enormous mess in the 1.5 seconds it took for me to get across the room and get her out of the water dish.  I put the dish up on the bar and then forgot about it entirely until I watered a plant and Cooper tried drinking the water out of the plant pot.  Poor doggie.  (No wonder Little Mac hated it here.)  Actually, Coop is getting much more attention now that Little Mac is gone and he's allowed to go back into the bedrooms.  It's really sweet when I read to Zuzu and rock her each night and Cooper curls up at my feet.

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I have so many projects running through my head for the new house but I'm also in the putting-out-fires stage of the semester at work, so I feel really scattered and disorganized, which I don't like.  We have packed exactly nothing at the old house.  We have moved over outgrown baby clothes, holiday decorations, and maternity clothes that may or may not ever get worn again by me.  David keeps wanting to move over furniture and I'm always like, "No!  I NEED that here!"  But, yeah, eventually it's all got to go.  Which means we need to get busy.  Like yesterday.

Speaking of which, I've got to try to get some papers graded before I head out of here.  I'm going to close my office door and hope no one knocks.