Pity party- wanna join?

[cricketwife]

This is a total whine even though I know I have plenty to be grateful for.  I’m just not in a grateful mood at the moment.  We have a tiny house.  I’m sooooooo over it.  I bought this house 15 years ago as a single woman and never intended to live here as a family of 4.  We’ve got 1 bath.  The third bedroom is a walk-through off the galley kitchen.  No matter how much I purge, I just can’t seem to make enough for things.  The only place the boys have to play is the middle of the combined living/dining room floor which means we can never walk without tripping over toys.  There are projects that need to be done (fresh carpet, linoleum, paint) that we keep putting off because if we are moving, we’d rather do them right before listing.   H is WFH now which he does in our bedroom.  Thank God, I’m back at work, but about once a week I have a late afternoon zoom that I have to do from home, which means I have to go the DS1’s bedroom to zoom.   Anyway, H’s grandmother passed away in June in England.  Because of Covid, neither H nor his sister, who’s in Australia, can get over so that we can settle the estate.  And now SIL is saying she doesn’t even think she’ll be able to get over this year.  H is hoping to go in October.  Meanwhile, our housing market continues to be insane, prices rising 10% each year, houses just one the market for days or hours.  I know it’s the same a lot of places.  I just feel like we’re never going to get out of here and if we do, Idk if we’ll even be able to find anything we like.  
End rant.   Pity party of one.   What’s your whine?

ETA- my “likes” are sheer commiseration.

[ny96]

I totally hear you. We have a small house with 2 bedrooms and a plan to remodel sometime in the near future, but in the meantime our 7yo has the 2nd bedroom with a double bed and our 3 year old still sleeps in our king despite trying to get him to sleep with DS1. I want to buy bunk beds and force him into the other room, but H is dead set against it because he thinks it’s a waste of money since we’ll soon be adding a 3rd bedroom.

[brooke77]

Nodding my head. We have a 1300 sq ft, 3 bd 1 ba house which has always felt like more than enough for our family of 3 plus a large dog. But now that our house is also expected to be 2 home offices, a gym, and playground/preschool for half the day - it is way toooooo small!! I feel claustrophobic. My H will be WFH forever and I am hoping for the same so we can move to a lower COL and warmer area.

[ohgillian]

Where I work at home is a pass-thru room and H's office is on the other side. So he passes thru all day which is totally understandable but frustrating, AND, the kids come to see me before H because they get to me sooner. It's been difficult lately.

ETA: It also frankly feels like I'm H's secretary and he works in the inner sanctum. None of this is his fault. But there are logistical (technology) reasons that we can't swap work spaces, so here we are. 

[SusanBAnthony]

Jan 23, 2021 13:17:48 GMT -5 ny96 said:

I totally hear you. We have a small house with 2 bedrooms and a plan to remodel sometime in the near future, but in the meantime our 7yo has the 2nd bedroom with a double bed and our 3 year old still sleeps in our king despite trying to get him to sleep with DS1. I want to buy bunk beds and force him into the other room, but H is dead set against it because he thinks it’s a waste of money since we’ll soon be adding a 3rd bedroom.

When we lived in a 2 bedroom house we had a trundle bed for DD. It was maybe 100$ for the rolling trundle. We already had a twin mattress, we just needed to put the top bed on those plastic risers so it would fit under. That might be a cheaper and easier solution.

[expectantsteelerfan]

I hate my house too.

We are actively looking and have saved enough money to be ready to buy an upgraded house, but our market is insane too and there's nothing available at the moment that we'd consider. I also have no motivation to use any of the money we saved to improve this house, I just want OUT.

[pandora89]

Ours is housing related too.

We sold our house in the city and moved to the burbs this summer and hated it since day 1, so we listed our house in the burbs. It took longer to sell than I had hoped and now we are looking to buy back in the neighbourhood we originally sold in but prices are nuts because there is no inventory. We sold our house for a great price but now houses like ours are selling for $100-200k more than we sold ours for in August. There is literally like 20 houses for sale in the area so until we find something we are stuck in the rental. Hopefully getting closer to spring brings up more inventory.

I wish we never sold our original house.

[loira]

We just bought our first place in March and closed literally the day before everything shut down because of COVID. It's a 2 bed 2 bath 900sqft condo, and we bought it because we loved the location and didn't mind living in a smaller place since we just have DD.

Well. I obviously had not bought it with working from home in mind, nor did I think we'd end up buying extra toys/ books to entertain DD because there's less we can do out of the house. If I had known, I might have held out for a 3 bedroom or a unit in a building with more than a tiny storage locker.

We're not in a position to buy an actual house as we live in a very HCOL area and H is still only working part time.

[konapoppy]

We got Covid from daycare and I feel awful and the girls have been home for two weeks and are staying home next week. Ughhhh

Also both girls were exposed in their classes. Daycare thought at home we were keeping them separated. What? Three year old twins who share a room and are home for weeks cannot be separated.

Obviously we don’t want to further the spread.

[ohgillian]

Jan 23, 2021 15:21:03 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

We got Covid from daycare and I feel awful and the girls have been home for two weeks and are staying home next week. Ughhhh

Also both girls were exposed in their classes. Daycare thought at home we were keeping them separated. What? Three year old twins who share a room and are home for weeks cannot be separated.

Obviously we don’t want to further the spread.

Daycare thought 3 YO twins were kept separate at home?? I ... what??

[konapoppy]

Jan 23, 2021 15:32:28 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

Jan 23, 2021 15:21:03 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

We got Covid from daycare and I feel awful and the girls have been home for two weeks and are staying home next week. Ughhhh

Also both girls were exposed in their classes. Daycare thought at home we were keeping them separated. What? Three year old twins who share a room and are home for weeks cannot be separated.

Obviously we don’t want to further the spread.

Daycare thought 3 YO twins were kept separate at home?? I ... what??

Thank you.

Both were exposed. We learned about one class being exposed first, so we kept them both home just in case. Then the other class was exposed (obviously not from us). Daycare emailed saying “it must have been hard to keep them isolated from each other”. LOL.

[Susie]

Jan 23, 2021 15:51:54 GMT -5 konapoppy said:

Jan 23, 2021 15:32:28 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

Daycare thought 3 YO twins were kept separate at home?? I ... what??

Thank you.

Both were exposed. We learned about one class being exposed first, so we kept them both home just in case. Then the other class was exposed (obviously not from us). Daycare emailed saying “it must have been hard to keep them isolated from each other”. LOL.

Mine aren't twins, but... yeah.  In December DD was exposed at kindergarten and daycare said DS could continue to attend if DD was quarantined away from DS and from me, as DS's drop off/pickup parent.  Um.  We have a modest sized house, one full bathroom, and they are 1.5 and 5.  I know you're a daycare director, but have you MET kids?

[waverly]

I don't know any family that have isolated their kids. Older teens yes, but not young children. I'm like how do I tell my 8 year old to stay in her room all day. I can't do it.  Also times this by 1000 for 3 year olds. 

[Susie]

Add me to the "completely over my house" list.  We're working with a realtor and actively looking to make a move.  On paper it looks totally reasonable for a family of 4:  1860 sf, 4 bedrooms, 0.25 acre lot... but 1.5 bathroom is getting old, the house has no storage, no laundry room, no mud room, and just no place to put STUFF.  No pantry.  I'm tired of it being a mess all the time because no one has any place to put things away.

I'm also irritated because there are a bunch of projects that need to happen to list.  Our house is gross, because we haven't had a house keeper since October, and we both work full time and aren't used to (and kind of can't) make time to keep it up ourselves the way it should be.  We're 95% finished painting the trim white, but there's some final annoying stretches in the kitchen, etc. that need doing.  H seems to think this stuff, the deep cleaning, the purging, the painting, the freshening up to list just ... magically happens?  I feel completely over my head between work, kids, and these projects.  I will spend tonight painting trim.  Him?  He has plans (again) to play a game with friends online.  

Happy birthday (tomorrow) to me.

[Velar Fricative]

When DD2 (3.5yo) was exposed just before daycare we had to assume that if she were infected, we all would be. Especially since we didn’t learn of the exposure until 5 days later. How ridiculous to think young twins could separate! But I’m so sorry to hear and hope everyone is on the mend soon, konapoppy.

I’m actually really angry about the state of WFH right now. I didn’t buy this house for it to be an office for two adults, a school for one kid, and a gym too. We have the space, but I hate that those things are taking up this space. Neither of us expects to be WFH full-time forever (we are a teacher and a library administrator), nor will DD1 be learning from home forever, but I do resent that now these added costs and people who have perfectly functional homes suddenly feel like they’re not enough and they have to absorb the additional costs of buying and selling. All while employers get to save money. I’m just venting in general, I don’t begrudge anyone for making such decisions because it’s no one’s fault we are in this shitshow.

[pandorica]

Re: WFH. H and I have both been working at our dining room table since March. We have a desk in our bedroom but I can't work there - too dark, our bedroom clutter stresses me out, and it's just not a great desk.

Well after 4 straight days of H having meetings for half of the day I decided I wanted to strangle him and decided we could kind of manage a desk in the guest room and bought one 😂 but now the desk won't be here until at least next week, but really who knows given the state of shipping. I'm so mad I didn't do this 10 months ago. It almost feels like a waste of time and money, even though I'll probably be WFH into the summer at least.

This was probably a nonsense ramble. Everything is an annoyance these days!

[ohgillian]

Jan 23, 2021 19:33:43 GMT -5 pandorica said:

Re: WFH. H and I have both been working at our dining room table since March. We have a desk in our bedroom but I can't work there - too dark, our bedroom clutter stresses me out, and it's just not a great desk.

Well after 4 straight days of H having meetings for half of the day I decided I wanted to strangle him and decided we could kind of manage a desk in the guest room and bought one 😂 but now the desk won't be here until at least next week, but really who knows given the state of shipping. I'm so mad I didn't do this 10 months ago. It almost feels like a waste of time and money, even though I'll probably be WFH into the summer at least.

This was probably a nonsense ramble. Everything is an annoyance these days!

It wasn't a nonsense ramble at all. I'm really glad you bought the desk, it will be so worth it for however long this continues. Yay for you.

[cherry1111]

I feel you. My husband and I each have a desk in a corner of our bedroom. Like I can turn around and touch him. It is infuriating when we are both on calls at the same time. We were already planning on probably moving in a year and a half or so when we drop daycare costs but I really don’t want to speed that up just because of Covid. Not to mention the market is stupid crazy right now and I’m hoping it slows down a little before we are ready.

But aside from working 4 feet away from one another we are running out of storage space. Whenever people give my kids a big toy all I can think is “where the fuck am I supposed to put this?!?!”

[purplepenguin7]

I can definitely join in on this pity party. My husband has worked from home since before Covid but his desk is in our daughters room. It was never meant to be permanent. We always planned to sell our house in 2021 or 2022, but covid threw a huge wrench in that for 70 billion different reasons (a pay cut, loss of promotion, insane housing market). Now I’m working from home too, for at least all of this year and probably for the future and we need a house that can accommodate two offices, kid stuff, etc and there is nothing, like actually nothing. in our price range. Houses that used to be $500k and are now $700-800. It’s crazy. SFH below $500k are basically unheard of. Our currently townhouse is cluttered and messy because we have nowhere to put anything. It’s all so frustrating and overwhelming.

Also...happy birthday Susie

[pinkplasticdoll]

Our house is a decent size house but it feels small now that are here 24/7/365, I would kill for a dedicated office space where everyone can hang out all day. Our friends just built a new house 2 miles away and I walked into their office and was instantly jealous because they can basically keep their kids contained all day while they work and I just feel like that would make life nice so I'm not chasing children every 10 minutes , yes we have gated off areas and the baby just cries, yells or screams which is far more annoying and not feasible when you're on calls all day long.

[vmars]

I will say it is sort of comforting to know that we aren’t the only ones feeling this way. Our house was on the market summer of 2019 but didn’t sell because people wanted a 4 bedroom (we have a 3 bedroom). Now we could easily sell, but the prices of homes where we went to move to have also gone up and the i home size is much smaller. So I think we will stay put unless we get an offer we can’t refuse (we still get requests for showings even though we are off the market).

[lillaguma]

Another pity party on housing here. We wanted to buy last year, but we had to decide if we were staying in our rental by the end of March and with the beginning of the pandemic we got freaked out (and unsure about He's job) and decided to wait until this year. Now there is zero inventory and prices are sky high. We saw a townhouse listed Friday afternoon, tried to make an appointment to go see it but it was entirely booked up for showings already until the offer deadline on Monday. It's crazy.

I start feeling behind because we don't own any type of property and we're in our mid-30s. H has huge grad school loans and I just feel like we're never going to get anything. I'm feeling very pessimistic about it all. 😕

[ohgillian]

I already posted but I have another: I'm just Tired of These People. The ones I live with. They're fine, but I'm tired of them.

[bookqueen15]

I feel like I should be grateful that we have the extra space now (and I am) but I wish we had not renovated our 3/1 1200 square foot house in 2019 and instead worked harder to try and find a larger newer house instead of putting in an 2/1 addition that brought our house to 1700 square feet. Being home so much has made the main living spaces of our existing house that were always on the small side feel so much smaller and cluttered.

I wish we had a least tried to sell and buy a different house first, because one with a larger living room/kitchen would be a lot nicer to have now that we're all home ALL the time. But pricing in our neighborhood just keeps going up and it wouldn't make sense to do so now.

[cricketwife]

Jan 24, 2021 17:05:02 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

I already posted but I have another: I'm just Tired Of These People. The ones I live with. They're fine, but I'm tired of them.

I wish there was a “superlike” button. 

[VillainV]

My cat is an asshole and she keeps waking me up in the middle of the night. For snuggles. I love snuggles but LET. ME. SLEEP.

[pandorica]

Having another pity party today. DD turned 1 a couple of weeks after the shut down last year. I had put a lot of time/effort/money into planning a biggish first birthday, and then we had to cancel. I thought maybe I could do a little 1.5 party, again nope. And I thought for SURE we could at least have a second birthday party for her this March, and that's looking unlikely too 😭

This is so small and petty in the grand scheme of things, but it's still really bumming me out. I'm a big birthday person, and I think she would have really enjoyed a party. It's just one of many things she's missed out on in her short life. She's fine and has no clue what she's missing.

[pandorica]

Jan 24, 2021 20:50:01 GMT -5 VillainV said:

My cat is an asshole and she keeps waking me up in the middle of the night. For snuggles. I love snuggles but LET. ME. SLEEP.

This is why we have to lock the cats out of our bedroom at night. They are aggressive snugglers and always wake us up a bunch!

[cricketwife]

Jan 27, 2021 9:50:14 GMT -5 pandorica said:

Having another pity party today. DD turned 1 a couple of weeks after the shut down last year. I had put a lot of time/effort/money into planning a biggish first birthday, and then we had to cancel. I thought maybe I could do a little 1.5 party, again nope. And I thought for SURE we could at least have a second birthday party for her this March, and that's looking unlikely too 😭

This is so small and petty in the grand scheme of things, but it's still really bumming me out. I'm a big birthday person, and I think she would have really enjoyed a party. It's just one of many things she's missed out on in her short life. She's fine and has no clue what she's missing.

I'm really sorry.  I semi-relate.  We were never big on parties for our kids during the early years and so they get a "big" friends party when they are 4 since it's their last year in daycare.  DS2 didn't get to have his big party either.  I'm sorry you're missing out on something you love and that means a lot to you. 

[pandorica]

Jan 27, 2021 11:12:24 GMT -5 cricketwife said:

Jan 27, 2021 9:50:14 GMT -5 pandorica said:

Having another pity party today. DD turned 1 a couple of weeks after the shut down last year. I had put a lot of time/effort/money into planning a biggish first birthday, and then we had to cancel. I thought maybe I could do a little 1.5 party, again nope. And I thought for SURE we could at least have a second birthday party for her this March, and that's looking unlikely too 😭

This is so small and petty in the grand scheme of things, but it's still really bumming me out. I'm a big birthday person, and I think she would have really enjoyed a party. It's just one of many things she's missed out on in her short life. She's fine and has no clue what she's missing.

I'm really sorry.  I semi-relate.  We were never big on parties for our kids during the early years and so they get a "big" friends party when they are 4 since it's their last year in daycare.  DS2 didn't get to have his big party either.  I'm sorry you're missing out on something you love and that means a lot to you. 

I'm sorry you can relate

I think the fact that we're coming up on year 2 and having to miss things more than once is making things worse!