The beet is officially sleeping in his own room now. The past several nights he's slept in there without any problems. It's been rather chilly up here at night, so I've had the heater going in his room. He still manages to squirm out from under all of his covers, though, and wakes up cold in the middle of the night. So last night I swaddled him in his SwaddleMe and and extra blanket, and he slept like a log for 10 and a half hours straight. It was fantastic! I was able to do a bit of uninterrupted painting after I put him down, and still got up and took the dogs out before he woke up. I've got him swaddled for a nap right now, and that seems to be working really well. If he can take even one long nap a day (in addition to all of his 20 minute catnaps) he's much less grumpy. But usually the only way to get him to sleep for two or three hours is to hold him. The whole time. And that kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? Except for the grumpiness, of course. That's worth it in and of itself. We're painting the walls a much more neutral sandy beige (which I once swore I would never do, but never say never, eh?) over the orange. It's almost mind boggling to me how much work we need to do to get the house in good sell-able condition. We've done some things already, of course that will help a whole lot, but considering how much is still to do and how little time (potentially) we have left, it's close to overwhelming. Steve is applying for the Portland job, obviously, but we won't know if he's even going to get an interview for probably three or four weeks yet. But we'll keep you posted. After all, that's the point of the blog, right?

   We have been using our forced air unit to heat the house the past month or two because it's so much easier than tending a fire. More expensive, sure, but worth it. Well, we're back to the stove now. One of the fan blades on the  heater cracked and split, so it doesn't turn right anymore. Doesn't anybody build quality anymore? I mean, come on! It's only about 25 years old! It should have lasted a whole, what, ten years total? :P Obviously, it's not that big of a deal (hopefully) and won't be too expensive to fix (please, please). It's just nice we have our trusty stove to fall back on. Ironically, when we bought the house, the guys who cleaned the chimneys told us the stove was on its last leg and we should replace it ASAP. I guess we're going for broke by using it, but we used it exclusively last winter without any issue whatsoever. I didn't even know metal stoves could get to the point of "last leg." Eh, whatever. I've got more important things to worry about. Like painting. Almost all of the walls upstairs, the kitchen counters, the entire deck...Now where'd my paintbrush get to?