Self Created Bumps

We're working through new sleeping arrangements this week: as in, getting Mattias and Noah to sleep in the same bedroom.  Our timing is something like: "Hey, Mattias' sleeping couldn't get much worse, so let's mess with it some more."

On Night Four, it was 9:30 pm - two hours past bedtime - and Mattias was sitting on Fritz's lap in the office. It was a new low point in our project, and Fritz wasn't helping by talking about how cute Mattias looked sitting on his lap. Yeah, that glassy eyed stare is adorable until you walk in the direction of the bedroom and it morphs into squinty-eyed-wake-my-brother-up-screaming.

But guess who had volunteered for night duty!

And that was good, because I'd been on night duty for the last three nights and it was starting to catch up with me.

The next day was Mattias' Well Child appointment and the three of us: Mattias, Noah, and I all got flu shots. Now, I'm not really a flu shot person. In fact, this is only the second time that I've had it: the first was during the Swine Flu (scare), while I was pregnant with Mattias. I don't get sick very often, even with the boys. I don't know why I decided to get it: peer pressure, solidarity with my boys? And today? Well, I feel kind of flu-y. Fritz tells me, based on his scientific reading of the medical literature that there is NO WAY I have the flu from the shot. But I bet I'm not the only one who feels this way. Stupid flu shot.

It feels like things spiral out of control so quickly when we make changes - or have bumps - in the routine. I don't know if we have ourselves stretched too thin, or if that's just part of life with children. But there are huge piles of laundry, floors that need to be vacuumed, plants that need to watered (desperately), counters that need to be cleared, never mind the BIG list of things like finish staining the fence, planting those two trees, winterizing the irrigation system, and cleaning (really, really cleaning) out the fridge. Somehow, I miss a few hours of sleep and feel a little flu-y and....

I don't know why I'm sitting here whining. I have work to do!

Brainstorming

Over here, on the right, under PAGES. Gift Ideas.

Es zieht!

One of my projects this summer was to install six ceiling fans. It seemed to take forever, although Fritz will tell you that's because I did it the wrong way. Essentially, I would carve out five minutes of time (during naps or quiet time) and scramble to put in a couple of screws. As a consequence, there was perpetually a breaker off and tools and hardware lying all over the room - up high, so that boys wouldn't use a real tool as a toy tool.

Fritz would have done all the ceiling fans at one time, systematically, and then, CLEARLY, it would not have been so much work.

The ceiling fans were part of our energy saving plan. We had the ceilings reinforced for fans when the house was under construction. The thing that really motivated me to get the fans installed was Our House the Oven Well Insulated With Sunlight Streaming in West Facing Windows. We were really toasty. But fans are nice in so many other ways: I find air movement to be physically de-stressing (think: beach), visually relaxing (think: branches gently swaying), and even acoustically soothing (think: white noise). 

Germans don't generally agree with me. Open a window on non-airconditioned public transit and older Germans are prone to yelling "Es zieht!" with the intensity of "I'm melting! Melting!" (I'm sorry, I still like you, but it's TRUE.) The actual translation is more like, "There's a draft!" and the embedded meaning being, "I'm going to catch a nasty summer cold because I'm not wearing a scarf and there's wind on my neck and it already feels stiff!" Needless to say, we didn't have fans in our German apartments. 

After I finished painstakingly hanging all 6 fans, my mother told me that on ALL the DIY-interior-home improvement shows they ALWAYS take the ceiling fans out.

Yup. No cable. Didn't know. Clearly, I'm uncool (ha ha). You know what? I'm okay with that.

I could lecture about passive cooling strategies. But do you really want that? Didn't think so.

Instead, I'll just tell you that air movement lowers the perceived temperature of a space by as much as 7 degrees. That's pretty significant. And to appease the draft-conscious, let me break that down a bit: the faster the air velocity, the more significant the perceived drop in temperature. Most people will be okay with an air velocity around 100 feet per minute; it will cause a temperature drop of about 3-4 degrees. Interestingly, the WARMER the velocitized air is, the faster it can move and people will still be 'comfortable.'  Inversely, if you have COLDER air - say from an AC (that would be about 55 degrees at the source) - then the faster the air is moving, the more 'UNcomfortable' people report being. For this reason, ceilings fans and AC generally don't work well together. Interesting, right? Maybe that's why DIY shows tear out the ceiling fans: the clients already have AC so fans are actual 'uncomfortable?' Doubtful: most importantly for TV, there are a lot of ugly ceiling fans out there. Also, the DIY shows I've seen don't strike me as being particularly...savvy about these things?

In our house, here's what those ceiling fans are LOOKING LIKE these days. Because:

1) Seeing someone else's house is always fun.
2) You deserve it after reading/skimming/hopping all the way to here.
3) I need a chance to show somebody these fans. It was painstakingly tedious, even if it was my own fault.

1. Noah and Mattias' room. This particular fan has 38 screws in it. You know what? I bet it could have been designed  with fewer freaking screws. Bunk beds recently debunked due to toddler climbing skills.

2. Office space sans the usual piles of confiscated 'toys' that comprise my work. We're still not fully setup here; most of my books are in boxes in the basement. But thank you Ikea Expedits for solving some of our storage problems. They're like pseudo-built-ins! There's also a whole house fan in the ceiling. 

3. Loft space and the hottest area of the house due to all the windows. The solar shades helped as much as - if not more than - the fan. More save-me-Ikea-Expedits. Did I mention I put those together this summer, too?

5. Guest room. Most of the house plants live here most of the time and they ADORE the fan. One member of the family adores to dig in the soil of the plants. Said family member is not allowed in the room, usually. You might see some soil on the floor in this photo, and, well, sometimes I just close the door instead of cleaning it up AGAIN. 

6. Our room, to which we've done almost nothing since moving in. Good thing we have a fan, or it'd be kind of monkish. Wait a minute...