Ten things I need to do before we move into our house. On Saturday.

There are seven-times-ten things I need to do for the house and would like to do before we move in, but I believe in setting reasonable goals for myself.

1. None of the windows in our house have screens. Buying screens is not on my list of things do to any time soon. I'm all about screens and open windows. For the three pleasant weather days we have in Louisiana in a year, I do not feel the need to invest in screens where there currently are none, when I had to sacrifice things that were really important to me. One of the few requests Corey made was about the refrigerator. He had specific qualifications for that. In order to give him what he asked for, I had to use what I had budgeted for another very important appliance. I've always dreamed the day when I would not have a microwave sitting on a counter, but would have one installed above the stove or hidden in a cabinet. This house has room above the stove for an over-the-range microwave, but I postponed that for a French door refrigerator. I'm not worrying about screens until I get my damn microwave off the counter. BUT, Jake and Landen are very enthusiastic about windows they can lock and unlock and climb in and out of. This includes the window on their second-floor bedroom that opens onto the roof. So, before I put children in this house, I have to get additional security gadgets to keep those windows closed. I know what they are. I just can't think of the name. I have to put them on eight windows.
2. I have to paint a section of our bedroom wall where the contractor patched but did not paint because the owner (me) did not get him the paint in time and took it upon herself to paint that section of the wall. One of the owners (me) has never painted a wall in her life. The other owner probably has painted a wall before but we can't ask him right now because he traveled 48 hours to get here today and he's asleep on the couch right now. It's 4:25 AM Baghdad (and his body) time, but he said he would feel bad going to bed.
3. My mother has a thing about bleaching toilets and bathtubs. I've never really considered the importance of this, but I know it must be something you're supposed to do, else my mother would not insist on it being done in every apartment I've ever moved in to. She won't be here to bleach my bathtubs, which means I'm going to have to do it myself, before anyone can bathe in the new house.
4. I have to clean my floors. I have selectively cleaned them already. Only the sections I needed to clean before I put rugs down. So I need to clean the hardwood floors (especially the corners), scrub the tile and vacuum the bedrooms and the stairs.
5. I need to move my clothes. And my art. And my KitchenAid mixer. These are things I do not want/trust my professional moving company to move for me.
6. The lawn needs to be mowed. Please note that I did not begin this one with "I need to" because I have no intention of doing this myself.
7. I need to put locks on the attic doors. Homeboys are DYING to go fuss around in hidden places like attics. We either need doorlocks that need keys to open, padlocks or chain locks way out of the boys' reach.
8. Which is incidentally what we're going to put on the front and back doors. I'm not convinced that miniature Allbrittons who share 50% of their dad's genetic makeup will never let themselves outside without our knowledge.
9. I need to get the water put in our name. They're not going to deliver the bills that have my name on it, and eventually the water people are going to notice that the water at our address is not being paid for. Then they're going to cut that shit off. I know because I used to forget to pay my water bill all the time in college. And when they do decide to not let you have water any more, they shut that shit down on a FRIDAY, so you have to be dirty all weekend. They punish at the water company.
10. Oh yeah, and I need to finish packing this apartment.

Corey gets a reprieve from some of this stuff, because it took him 48 hours to get home to us, because his body clock is eight hours ahead of me and because I've refused to get up at 6 AM to get the boys up, ready and a half-hour down the road to school for the entire 15 days he's home. Also, because when the movers show up at our apartment at 9 AM on Saturday to move our shit, I'll conveniently disappear and leave him here to supervise the entire thing by himself.

I'll be at the new house completing items 1-9.  The move is predicated on our completing Item 10 before Saturday at 9 AM.

A quick note to say how completely different I feel tonight, September 8 at 8:49 PM, than I did last night at 8:49 PM. The boys are upstairs asleep. Everything is laid out and ready for tomorrow morning. I am in my nightgown watching today's DVRed Oprah rerun, fiddling around on the computer. Murphy is resting on the floor. Lily is chilling in the window. The difference is that my long lost husband is snoring on the couch beside me.

(Speaking of Oprah, I may die with an incomplete life if I never meet Cher. You can say "ha!" all you want, but I did sit fourth row center at a Barbra Streisand concert and meet her backstage. Cher, Bette and Barbra is a playlist on my iTunes.)

And somebody, the dog or the husband, is making unpleasant noises with his hiney.

Everything your husband does is precious when you haven't seen him for four months and seven days.

You know that nothing as major as moving into our first home is going to go down without at least one incident of jackassery. Plus, I will fall down or break something.
.....