In my foray as an internet sailor, I have met some really cool and awesome people.  I’ve met people who were good enough to help me open my mind and to make sure that a stick is not always so far lodged up my ass.  These people have blessed me with perspective and understanding.  They have shown me how acceptance and the ability to mind my own goddamned business can make me a better and happier person.  I love those people and I hope that they know who they are.

On the other hand, there are the people who spend a lot of their time writing things that make me slam my face into my desk.  People who are snarky and judgmental towards other people.  People who are deceitful about their lives and their children so that they can come off as looking better than everyone else.  These people make me crazy.

Here’s the thing: we live in an age of information available to the masses.  There are many good things to come from this.  But, there are a lot of bad things that can come from this as well.  Misunderstanding, hysteria, denial, vindication for the wrong reasons…just to name a few.  But this information is also used by some as a way to be judgmental towards other people.

The thing that has my hackles up right now is this study which states that the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants is bad for 4-year olds.  I’d like to start by saying, “DUH!”  How many times in our lives have studies like this come out that in 10 years mean nothing?  I’ve got to say, I simply rolled my eyes at this and moved on.  What started getting on my nerves were all the parents posting things on social networks saying things like “THIS is why I don’t let my kids watch Spongebob!” or “To all my friends who let their kids watch Spongebob, READ THIS!”

OH MY GOD PEOPLE, REALLY???

CALM THE HELL DOWN.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE, IT’S A STUPID CARTOON!

This article pretty much sums up my perspective.  I’m pro-Spongebob, and I can’t believe I have to take a stance at all.  Here’s the thing: my son watches tv.  OMG!  He loves Spongebob.  OMG!  He also loves to play restaurant and play Fancy Waiter and serve me fancy food along with the occasional Krabby Patty.  He loves to play with cars and balloons and balls and play-doh and noisy annoying toys…..just like any other kid his age.  He’s not a zombie in front of the TV.

Also, I’m stunned that someone saw fit to do a study on Spongebob.  I know it’s annoying and I would love to be free of it, but REALLY?  Can you researchers think of nothing better to study?

(Add-on: While discussing the hilarity that anyone even had the thought to do a Spongebob study, my darling friend had this little rant for me.  This is copy/paste from her direct rant on Google+:  “I heard that story last week and just about fell off my chair laughing. I’m totally w you about WHO does these researches? Do they sit around one night, hitting a bong, flipping through TV channels, come to Nickelodeon, and think, “Damn that SpongeBob! He has to be bad for 4 year olds!”
My thought-what about fucking Wonder Pets w speech impediments? I like Wonder Pets, but that seems more harmful to me! And the missing parents on the rabbit show-wth? I need to smoke up and just start writing down frivolous garbage and call it research, lol.“  She’s awesome.)

But here’s the real thing, it’s a TV show.  That’s all.  It’s not a reason for you to feel that you can stand over other people simply because you don’t allow your children to watch it.  I applaud the foresight of banning it because once it’s in it never gets out, but SHUT UP.  Please.

I could give you explanations as to why I let my son watch Spongebob, or even TV at all.  But I’m not going to.  Know why?  Because I don’t owe ANYBODY an explanation.  He’s MY son and as his mother I know best.  I am the first and last stop in the authority on how to raise that little boy and it’s nobody’s business how I choose to do that as long as he is healthy and happy, which he is.  It should be that way for everybody.  You don’t owe the world an explanation about your parenting decisions as long as those little ones are smiling and thriving.  End of story.

Every parenting situation is different and as long as you are doing your best by those kids and you love them and they are fine, you are a good parent.  That is all there is to it.  Even those of you who feel the need to judge.  Calm down and enjoy your kids and stop worrying about what other people do.  Please.  Before I finally break my head open on this hard desk.  Thanks.

(NOTE: This “judgmental” thing I keep referring to doesn’t pertain to judging people for horrendous things towards their children.  Although I don’t care for busy-bodies in general, you have the Merry Wife of Canon’s blessing if you choose to judge people who harm or are mean to children.)

I want to prepare you all that for a time on this blog, I am going to be giving a tour of my house and the things that we have done to improve it.  I love my house and I am proud of the hours that we have put into it to make it the still rough-cut gem that it is.

I also want to talk about my house because it will help me get back into the habit of blogging with some regularity without forcing me to think about whether or not I want to discuss something personal.  My house is pretty neutral territory as far as I’m concerned.

I’m also in my house a lot.  We only have one car that my husband uses to commute to and from his job.  I go weeks at a time without leaving this house.  Yes, I go crazy but it does help that I am a homebody at my core.

Today I’d like to start with my bedroom.

After a long day of being stuck in this house with my two precious little boys and their millions of toys, I look forward to when I can go to my room.  My room is my happy quiet place.

When we first toured this house with the realtor, it was that finished attic that made me really fall in love with this house.  It looked terrible back then, but I knew with a little imagination and a lot of hard work it could be a great room.

We started the work not long after we moved in in November of 2009.  We got it cleaned up and had started painting doors.  Then I started feeling sick.  Then I found out I was pregnant.  Painting stopped.

In my sickness I was forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor in a room that eventually became our office.  At the time, it looked like a hoarder’s room, stuffed nearly to the ceiling with little things that cannot be placed until the large things are unpacked.  So my husband and father-in-law bust their kindly asses in getting that room finished for the poor, depressing, sick pregnant lady.  And I am so grateful.  I love that room.

For me to properly explain how it is awesome that my bedroom is basically on it’s own floor (story) of my house, I’ll need to explain my house.  I’ve never seen such a strange layout before, although I am admittedly inexperienced with this.  My house is like to smaller houses pushed together like a “T”.  Each of the two smaller houses is two-story, but when pushed together, the stories don’t line up, so I technically have 4 floors to my house, but each floor is small because it is part of one of the smaller houses.  Does that make any sense at all?  The bottom floor of my house only has the laundry room, family room and a small powder room.  The next floor has the living room, kitchen, dining room and sun room.  The next floor has a bathroom, the boys’ bedrooms and the office.  The last floor is my bedroom and bathroom.  When I say it in terms of floors it sounds like  I live in a mansion, but I don’t.  It’s just a quirky layout that I actually adore.

Now it’s picture time!  I’m going to show before and after photos.  The before photos were taken before we actually bought the house, so you can see it as we saw it then.  The after photos I just took about 10 minutes ago, so they are very recent.

This is a before image of the stairs that lead from the “third floor” up to my bedroom.  Notice how there are only 7 stairs?  All the flights of stairs leading from one “floor” to the other in this house are about 7 stairs.

Yellow paint makes for a happy Somer.  Almost all of the main living areas of this house were gray when we bought it.  Now they are almost all yellow and this is a much happier looking home.

This is looking into the room before.  Those curtains were infested with spiders (I nearly died of a heart attack) and the walls and ceiling were painted the same dirty peach color.

My bedroom.  I love my sleigh bed.  It’s like actually being IN a bed rather than on it.  I also love that quilt more than any piece of clothing I own and it is the reason for the splashes of pink around the room as I am not normally a fan of pink.  the color on the walls is called Pink Chocolate and I adore it.

Also, I did not make my bed just for the occasion of photographing my bedroom.  Making my bed is a sort of mood thing with me.  I am happier when my bed is made and my room is clean.  At the end of the day I can go to my room and slide into the crisp sheets like I am in a hotel almost.  It’s a small pampering thing I do for myself.

And yes, that is a treadmill in the back right.  And yes, it does get used…sometimes.

There was this weird padding velcroed to the wall covering an access panel to a tiny storage space.  Since it was so tiny, we covered the space and dry-walled the space so it is a normal wall now.  These panels were also infested with spiders.

The angled door to the left is a small closet with shelving.  The door to the right is a walk-up to the small attic space.

A little white paint makes a big difference.

Here is a look inside of the small closet.  I have not yet dealt with that hideous wallpaper.  This was originally going to be a linen closet but….

..it has transformed into the “present closet” where I hide birthday presents and Christmas presents.  I have two birthdays coming up so that is why the closet is currently stuffed.

This is the space where there were two small sliding-door closets facing each other.  These closets are useless and provide no really useful storage.  Although we regretted losing the light of that southern-facing window, we closed it in…

……and…..

….made it a small walk-in closet.  It is stuffed with organizational shelving and hanging rods.

There is a small bathroom attached to this bedroom.  It has a sink, toilet and stand-up shower.  It is tiny and ugly, but it is also clean and fulfills it’s purpose.  We haven’t done much to it, but there are big plans in the future for it.

I had never seen a corner toilet before this.  It is old and you need about 20 lbs. of pressure to push the lever to flush it.  And, yes, that is a stainless steel painted plastic toilet seat.

Now for a few other picture of my bedroom as it is now.

I think it is always neat to see what a person keeps on their bedside table.  Here on mine I have the remotes for the tv and cable box (I go into a psychotic froth when Jessie uses the remotes…he goes TOO SLOW), hand lotion, hand sanitizer, lip balm, a book, a clock, a baby monitor, a box of tissues and a vintage-looking phone.  Is it just me, or do cordless phones start to get ugly?  I love old looking phones and I loved this one when I saw it.  I almost got the white one because, as I’ve said, I’m not really a fan of pink, but the pink somehow struck me as looking more antique-y.  You can also see my grandmother’s cheap green cross draped over the edge of my bed in the top left.

I keep a shadow box I made of Lukas’ first birthday.  I will be making another for Ruegen after his birthday in October and hanging it beneath this one.

This is my dresser.  In this area, among other things, you will find a Nintendo 64, a can of mace, a stereo, and a bottle of linen spray so my sheets and pillows smell fresh every night.

I put those masks on the wall originally as a joke on Jessie.  He gets creeped out by faces looking at him at night.  They were things I used to hang on the walls of my bedroom as a teenager.  There is also a fake plant, my great-grandmother’s sewing box painted green, and my jewelry box.  The big picture…

..also belonged to my great-grandmother.  Don’t let that fool you, it had a Hills sticker on it.  So technically it is junk, but I am still very fond of it.

That’s about all there is to that room.  Next I’ll entertain you with a story of terror, painted over wallpaper, and IKEA furniture that made me hate allen wrenches more than I previously did…which was a lot.

SO….

Hi there.  It’s been a while, right?

It’s been quite a while.

A blog-gabby person went totally silent for quite a while.  But I’m talking again.  Which is a good thing.

I was quiet because I was having a little bit of a quiet battle with depression.

I don’t want to talk about it.

I don’t want to divulge how it affected me or how I am getting through it.

I don’t want to talk about my feelings.

I am stonewalling and that’s all there is to it.

And I need you guys to all be okay with that.  I need you, my friends, to understand that I don’t like talking about things that I view to be a weakness.  (The weird thing is, I don’t see depression as a weakness in other people, just myself.)  I don’t want to be one of the many brave people who battle something hard and come out of it ready to talk and be a beacon of hope for others.  Not on this.

I love to be helpful and I hope that at least once in my life I have made someone feel better about themselves because of something I wrote.  I hope that discussions I have had with people have made them feel more secure and steady on their feet.  I hope I’ve made you smile.

But on this, I need it to be my business.  And I need you to be okay with that and forgive my pig-headed ways.  I need to be able to at least half-believe that my super hero cape is still waving majestically behind me and not torn to shreds and muddied up by this something.  This SOMETHING.

I adore you.  All and any of you who come here to read and converse with me through this sometimes oh so cold medium.

And I’m back.