Category: Home life

The day we've been waiting for

Posted on by jplatt27

January 3

The day we’ve been waiting for. No, I’m not talking about the Iowa caucuses or the return of Parenthood tonight.  We’ve been looking forward to today because today is our LAST BED BUG TREATMENT.  Hallelujah!

After today, and some serious laundry and mopping, our bed bug fiasco will. be. over! I can’t wait to put our duvet back on the bed, put our clothes back in our closet and dresser, our books back on our bookshelves.  I’m excited to have our kitchen table back (it’s been holding a bunch of our belongings) and to push our furniture back against the walls–we’ll have so much space to walk again!

So even though its back to work today after a great  4-day weekend, today will be a great day.

I’d love to know:

What does January 3 hold for you?

Overwhelmed with stuff

Posted on by jplatt27

This is what our apartment looked like when we got home from work on Monday:

No we weren’t robbed. This is how our apartment looked when we prepped for the bed bug treatment. That’s our dining area filled with stuff from our closets, under the bed, other miscellaneous things.

Yep, that’s our bath tub full of trash bags filled with bedding, clothes and shoes. And that’s our bed standing up (there’s nothing else in our bedroom aside from furniture).  And that’s our entry way filled with more trash bags filled with more clothes.

And that’s not even the half of it.  We’re using the vacant studio apartment next door to store most of our clothes.

This process totally sucked before the first treatment when we had to spend an entire day prepping our apartment by cleaning out our entire bedroom and all of our closets and washing pretty much every fabric we own. But then we went to Florida and got a break for the weekend. And it hasn’t been that bad.

But at this point we’re starting to get overwhelmed by the clutter, by the amount of laundry that keeps piling up, at the fact that we can’t find things.  A lot of my pants are snug because they had to go through the dryer and I usually don’t put a lot things in the dryer, and definitely not on high heat (recommended to kill bed bugs). And we’re only halfway through!

A bottle of shampoo spilled in the tub (unbeknownst to us) so when we pulled the bags of bedding out to wash so we could go to bed on Monday night, we ending up getting shampoo on our floor and then we stepped in it and almost slipped. Then when we got back from the laundry room, I got some shampoo on my sock which then got on my leg when I sat cross-legged on the couch.

Packing to go home for Christmas is going to be such a treat. At this point I don’t even remember what clothes I own.  We’ll spend most of the night tonight doing laundry. And at $2 per wash and $2 per dry, this isn’t a cheap process either.  (Though I really can’t complain because our building has been wonderful and is paying 100% of the exterminator’s fees.)

But there is one source of joy in our apartment:

It’s not our best Christmas effort but it’s doing the job. There are four presents under the tree: two for Mike and two for me!  I’m excited to open them at Mike’s parents house on Christmas morning.

Advice on moving in

Posted on by jplatt27

My sister and her boyfriend are moving in together for the first time next semester.  After talking to some different people and hearing horror stories about couples that move into together and then break up, they asked me for my advice on moving in together. Here’s what I came up with (in no particular order):

  • Make sure you have quality time.  Whether it’s a date night, cooking dinner together, or watching a show once a week, make sure you spend quality time together.  It’s easy to be together but not really be present with one another.
  • Make sure you have alone time.  While it’s important to do things together, it’s also important to do your own thing.
  • Figure out how you’ll pay the bills, both where the money will come from and how the bill will logistically be paid (online, check, who will do it). When I lived with roommates in college, we’d leave the bill in the return envelope with a stamp in front of the door with a post-it of how much each person owed and the due date.  Last person to put their check in dropped it in the mail.
  • Pick your battles. Most likely there will be a bunch of habits that randomly irk you when you move in with someone new.  Whether they leave dishes in the sink, leave the bath mat soaking wet, or leave their dirty socks wherever they take them off, figure out which one drives you the most crazy and choose that one. Then communicate that preference to your partner in a polite way.
  • Be patient. It takes time to merge living experiences. Heck, we’ve been living together for 3+ years and we’re still working things out.

I’d love to know (and so would my sister):

What advice would give to a couple moving in together?

We found a little Christmas

Posted on by jplatt27

I think we all have two options: you can control your mood or you can let your mood control you. I often fall victim to my moods–like a few weeks ago when I literally was in a grumpy, tired, unmotivated, blah mood until 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

This weekend I had two experiences where I decided what my mood would be instead of letting my feelings take over. It made me feel really powerful and happy (because I obviously chose a positive mood). I hope that by sharing these experiences, you may be inspired to choose your mood the next time you’re in a crappy mood.

After work on Friday I was super motivated to sit down and put the finishing touches on our wedding album before meeting friends for dinner. I walk in the door of our building and head to the elevator when who do I see coming up the stairs? Mike.  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Doing laundry.  I found another bed bug.” My first thoughts: “You’ve got to be kidding me.  Why are you looking for bugs?” I was kind of angry.

I head to our bedroom, asking Mike where he found said bug.  I’m fuming as I lift the mattress to look for others but then decide “I’m not going down this road. I’m going back to my positive and motivated mood and will finish our wedding album.” Two hours later, I sent edits and approvals to our photographer, checking off a big to-do that’s been on my list for months. I was so excited, relieved, and felt accomplished.

Saturday, Mike and I planned to get into the Christmas spirit by going to the mall, going to see the National Christmas Tree, and watching a Christmas movie while making gingerbread men.  We head to the mall to start our Christmas shopping.  Within an hour 30 minutes, I’m overwhelmed and tired and, aside from two small Haagen-Dazs ice-creams, we haven’t bought a single thing.

Instead of the holly-jolly spirit we intended to get from the mall, (I know, what were we thinking??) I feel more like the grinch. I’m ready to call the whole day off and go home. We decided to go into one more store before heading out.  We end up purchasing one gift, so that makes us feel successful but I’m still kind of exhausted.  When we start discussing the logistics of paying for our Christmas gifts like which account we’ll use, I say something to Mike, he doesn’t understand exactly what I’m saying and I snap at him in the middle of J Crew saying something to the effect of “What, am I not speaking English??” He decides to wait outside.

As we walk to the car, Mike says we can just go home if I want to, and that at this point, it probably won’t even be dark when we get there. I consider it as I pull out of the garage figure that by the time we get there and find parking, it probably will be dark.  But I’m so tired and kind of just want to go home.  And then I decide no, I can turn my mood around.  We’re going to see the tree!

We found parking pretty easily and Mike suggested we stop to get hot chocolate for our walk. “My treat,” he says. We stop at Caribou Coffee for a hot chocolate, and then walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the White House and Treasury making our way to the Ellipse, the site of the National Christmas Tree. As we were walking back to the car Marine One flew overhead and landed on the White House lawn. It was so cool!

We picked up pizzas from a place in our old neighborhood, came home and watched Home Alone while we ate our pizza and drank our favorite wine. What could’ve turned into a really sour day ended up being exactly what we hoped it would be.

We let them bite

Posted on by jplatt27

Other potential titles for this post:

  • Why my husband slept on the couch for a week
  • Operation Bed Bug (for real)

Long post ahead…here goes…

Monday after Thanksgiving we woke up with a bunch of bites.  But we had an exterminator coming on Wednesday so we I didn’t fret too much.

Tuesday night Mike did some investigating, checking our bed with a flashlight.  I’m washing the dishes, talking to my sister on the phone when Mike calls “I think I found the culprit.  And I think we have bed-bugs.” He shows me a spot on the underside of the bed skirt, where there are three little black dots that look just like bed bug tracks. (Remember Operation Bed Bug?  That’s how he knew what to look for.) A lot of pacing, sighing, and maybe a little fighting ensued from there.

Wednesday I worked from home so I could be here when the exterminator was here, shed some light on our bites, and what we thought the cause might be.  I showed the exterminator the spot Mike had shown me the night before and said we thought it might be bed bugs. The property manager saw a tiny tiny clear bug walking on the bed skirt in the spot I showed them.  The exterminator caught the bug to take to the lab because it was too small to identify.  Both the exterminator and the property manager assured me that we didn’t have bed bugs, that we would know if we did.  We’d see them in the corners of the wall and in all the seams of the bed. We’d know what the culprit was when the mystery bug was identified in the lab that afternoon.

I’m a happy camper and call Mike at lunchtime to tell him that it’s not bed-bugs.  That the exterminator had checked our bed when he was out the week before and didn’t find any signs of them.  We are so relieved.

Then at 4:30 there’s a knock at the door.  It’s the property manager.  She says I’m sorry to tell you that the mystery bug was actually a baby bed bug.

Have you seen the Jimmy Kimmel video where the kids fall on the floor and start hysterically crying when their parents tell them they ate all their Halloween candy?  Yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt in this moment.

We were scheduled for our first bed bug treatment on Monday and given a packet of what we needed to do to prep our apartment. Here’s a list: wash and dry all clothes, bedding, and other fabrics in hot water and store in trash bags sealed tight; empty all drawers, bookshelves, closets; vacuum all floors; pull all furniture away from the wall.

We were headed to Florida for the weekend for my sister’s birthday so we both took of on Thursday to deal with all of this. And I’m so glad we did.

It was a crazy 48 hours. After $75 at the dry cleaner, 3-5 hours in the laundry room, a couple of arguments, and another night on the couch, we boarded a plane to Florida happy that our apartment was properly prepped for the treatment.

But it doesn’t end there.  We still have two treatments to go, nothing in our bedroom save some sheets on our bed (which, yes, we are sleeping in finally), and trash bags of clothes everywhere. We’re both paranoid in our own way: Mike asking me to use one of my pillows after his fell on the floor in the middle of the night and me wondering if bugs are jumping off me and onto the person next to me on the bus.

Looking forward to mid-January when this will all be over!

We need a little Christmas

Posted on by jplatt27

This is our only Christmas decoration so far:

Well that and a string of pre-lit garland that only covers half of our window sill.

We need a little Christmas in the Platt household.

Mike absolutely loves Christmas and everything about the Christmas season.  He has a strict rule about Christmas music: no Christmas tunes until the day after Thanksgiving. But come Black Friday, it’s all Christmas music all the time. He’ll even make a Christmas CD for our drive back from PA. But this year, we haven’t had much Christmas.  It doesn’t feel like the most wonderful time of the year.

So why doesn’t it feel like Christmas?

Our world kind of turned upside down last week when we found out we have bed bugs.  Much more on that tomorrow but it felt like we just took a break from our real life while we dealt with the bugs.

So after our favorite Saturday morning activities we’re going to spend today taking in the season. Mike’s going to put up the tree this morning. We’re going to go to the mall to take in the hustle and bustle.  We’ll go see the National Christmas Tree.  And then we’ll bake gingerbread men while listening to Christmas music and drinking wine.  We’ll cap off the night with part of a Christmas movie.

I’d love to know:

Does it feel like Christmas-time to you? 

What do you do to get in the Christmas mood?