It’s funny how much can change when nothing has actually happened. After months of anal retentive house cleaning and not being able to plan more than two weeks in advance, we’re second guessing our desire to move.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be in a position for my wife to stay home with the kids. I guess I always appreciated the fact that I never had to go to day care, and wanted to be able to be in the same position when I had kids. It’s funny that I still feel this way. Back in high school, my friend Cristina called me sexist for that. I never saw it as sexist, since I simply said I wanted to be stable enough so she could stay home; I’m not saying I want Meg to be barefoot and pregnant. It’s funny to think back about talking about this in high school, when I was young and didn’t know shit about shit. Now I find myself at 27, with a career and a mortgage, still not knowing shit about shit. I hoped that last part would have changed by now.

I mention all of that because it’s part of the motivation. We haven’t outgrown this house, we were just looking to move to minimize Meg’s brutal commute. The problem is that it doesn’t make sense to move ourselves to Cow Town, NJ (yes, it’s a real place, I wish I was kidding) if Meg will likely work part time, if at all, at some point in the next few years. Sure, my current job is work from home, but with my tendency to hop around jobs, it’d be better for me to stay in an area where I have more potential for new work. Despite what you may think, there is little need for a software developer at Cow Town, and Meg won’t let me be a rodeo clown.

So, we’ve started to think more about staying here. In the meantime, it’s inspired us to start to fix things around the house to which we’ve become complacent. Since, with working from home, I spend 98% of my life in this house, Meg now finds me actually interested and helpful in putting forth effort into the house.

The first project is going to be replacing the hole in our ceiling to the attic with pull down stairs. Pulling out the ladder from the closet and hoisting myself into the attic just plain sucks. There’s a good deal of space that’s wasted up there, which we could use much more regularly if we had pulldown stairs.

To start the project, I did what any man would do: I bought a case of beer. While one would view the association of power tools and alcohol as dangerous, everyone I’ve talked to says these sorts of house construction projects begin with this step. One step already done, time to celebrate.
Unfortunately, that step was just about the end of me being able to refer to myself as a man in this project. Step two is to call my brother-in-law, Eric. Why? Because I’m freaking useless with power tools. Eric, on the other hand, is incredible at this type of stuff. So while he does the man thing with saws and power drills, I’ll sit there with my digital camera and keyboard (so I can blog about the whole thing, naturally).

The other early project is building a home office for me. I’m currently making due with a war torn computer desk that, although enjoying a long and useful career, is on its last legs. The majority of the desk is still held together with duct tape and L-brackets, which describes just about the only home maintenance I can perform. If I can’t be fixed with an L-bracket, I’m pretty much shit out of luck.

The good news is that I can actually do the home office thing myself, since I have the necessary skills: painting, wiring, putting together moronic Ikea furniture, and drinking beer. Tonight I start my research, which begins at the liquor store (since the other case of beer is already spoken for by the attic stairs thing).

As a random side note, the new office absolutely must be sound proof. It’s October 9th, and the freaking ice cream man still insists on coming to our neighborhood. No one buys any– because it’s October– but he likes to sit outside my window for what seems like hours, playing the ice cream truck song that I have no doubt has driven people to insanity. Keep your eyes open for a news story that begins “Mr. Softee beaten to death by crazed computer programmer.”