Mission: accomplished

Cruise countdown: 312 days.

The floors are in. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

I have been comprising a lot of "before and after" photos, so I will post those soon. We're still putting the house back together, which means my computer is still out of commission, which means my photos are still trapped on my camera. Trust me when I say, they look mahvelous dahling. Simply mahvelous.

But, mahvelous came with a catch -- what am I dealing with now that I never saw coming? Stress about the new floors. I foolishly thought my life would be running-through-daisy-fields-type happy once I got rid of carpet. Instead, I spend my days running around behind my dog with a towel, cleaning up water drips that fall from his giant, floppy lips every time he drinks water. Or I get up at 3:00am to clean the floor after I hear the cat puking in the living room, because I don't want it to sit there until I get up at 5:45am. Or I sit around weighing the pros and cons of ever getting a new puppy once our old-man dog has died, because I don't know if I can handle the stress of what a new fur-child might do to my floors. The beauty and relative ease of carpet cleaner has been eliminated from our lives, and it's all on our shoulders to preserve our giant investment. How scary and stressful is that? What were we thinking taking on this level of responsibility? I never anticipated being blind-sided by new forms of stress, but I keep telling myself this will subside after the sticker-shock has worn off. Maybe. Hopefully.

[cringing right now at what my dog could be doing while we're not home ... praying he will just stay snoozing until I can get there to let him out ... ]

A friend of mine recently blogged about results she received from a silly astrological birth chart analysis. Purely for fun, I found a free one online, and found the following observation a tad interesting & relative. (I bolded the pertinent sentences.)

"You have an instinctive need to help others. You should also have a fine sense of discrimination & a strong analytical ability. For example, you have a natural ability to separate a problem or situation into its component parts, and then see how they relate to each other. In this way, you can be of help to others. However, there may also occasionally be a tendency to worry too much (like when I install new floors), or to be overly critical if others don't come up to your standards. You're a naturally tidy person, but this can be taken to extremes." (Like when I install new floors.)

I am going to now try and re-focus on my ever-growing workload, and hope this little venting session on my blog will help bring my anxiety level down a notch. More soon ...