Sweet Rewards

Holy exhaustion, Batman!! I am T-I-R-E-D!!

Today we ran out of the new apartment as fast as we could and got to the old one at 8:30am. To put it bluntly, we started cleaning our brains out.

You would not believe the damage two kids, a few crayons, and an odd rhythm stick or two can do to the walls of a 2 bedroom apartment. Especially an apartment with cheap, flat, evil paint. Deep-cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms took about as long as expected, and could definitely not be considered in any way, shape, or form to be even reminiscent of fun (although, honestly, I'm glad I gave the kitchen to Jesse, because it took him longer to finish that one room than it took me to finish 2 bathrooms and get started on the other rooms, while taking a nursing break in between...). But oh, the walls. The walls!!!! If I were a cursing woman, you would have heard it all today, as I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed those walls. You remember the walls. Actually, now I can't remember if I've ever shown them to you before. Well, this is ONE wall. Granted, it's the worst of the bunch, but you get the idea. The kids had colored all four walls of their bedroom like this one. And a few other random spots throughout the house. I had tried just about everything to get it off, but was alarmed by the amount of elbow grease each method required. In the end, I just left it, throwing up my hands in true quitter fashion. But moving out sort of required us to revisit the issue.

We ended up taking Scotch Brite pads (the green kind) and Lysol (ugh, I'm still coughing) and essentially wet-sanding the top layer of paint off, and with it, the crayon. It was by far the easiest of the methods, but my arms and shoulder muscles are already aching, despite that. I'm afraid of what they'll feel like tomorrow. Again, I would be spouting a constant stream of profanities at that paint if I were anyone else. The semi-gloss covered doors were a breeze to wipe down. Not so with the ... (pausing to find the will to type a family-friendly word) evil ... flat-painted walls.

While I was scrubbing, Jacob made me laugh: "Grandma told me not to color on dee walls. Yah. Onwee on paper." I was working on cleaning the one wall that Jacob colored on just a day or so after Grandma had cleaned it. She had visited for Alex's birth, so that was almost 5 months ago. I was impressed he remembered that Grandma had cleaned it, that he had colored on it again, and that Grandma told him not to color on the walls. Now, I just wish he would remember before he colors on the walls. I am desperately hoping they don't color the walls again in the new place. We're seriously thinking of going crayon-free over here, but that would almost be heartbreaking. :(

Anyway. We cleaned our brains out, like I said. And got the place completely, 100% empty. All the while, we were putting off lunch. I would have happily ordered a pizza, but one (pretty big) problem: Pizza places apparently don't accept personal checks these days. At least none I called. And I couldn't use a credit card, because - guess what? - they got cancelled. On Friday night, of all the "perfect" timing. Because of a widespread hacker potentially gaining access to our information, thus compromising the security of our credit card. We no longer have a back-up credit card, we got rid of it. And over the weekend, we used up all the cash we had so luckily earned from Craigslist sells from decluttering our possessions. We couldn't run and get cash from an ATM, either, because our credit card acts as a debit card, so we both stopped carrying the debit cards with us. And yeah... they're currently buried in some random, unknown box. I have no will to try and track them down. We'll be getting our new credit cards in about a week (though I'm guessing less, based on our credit union's track record with mail). In the meantime, we were out of cash and didn't know what to do for lunch. So we kept putting it off.

FINALLY, at 2pm, we got our move-out inspection. The FANTASTIC news is that they won't be charging us for anything. We did a great job on the walls (and we can feel it, ugh!!), and despite the millions of stains on the carpet. It's over 4 years old, after all, and they expect to replace it after 5 years. And, when we pulled up our tall bookcase, we found mold on the carpet underneath it. Undoubtedly, it was from a plumbing problem with the laundry room we had experienced a couple years earlier. We had to throw out the bookcase, too, because the mold was all the way into the wood. Just one more piece of furniture to plan on replacing, I guess. They aren't even going to charge us for the broken blinds (which would be on all but one window). So we are expecting to get our entire security deposit back!! Both of us said to each other that we would be perfectly happy to just not have to pay anything extra. So yeah... that hard work? It all paid off. Who wants to join me for a happy dance????

So, tired and exhausted, and all the last of our possessions crammed into the van, we took off to the grocery store, where I know they accept checks. We could have just grabbed some lunch food, but no. We went to the home of the Colossal donuts. And ya know? We got some. We deserved a treat, after all. And after getting home and cramming some lunch into my rumbling stomach, I didn't even hesitate to snatch my chocolate donut.

And let me tell you, it was heaven. And that, my friends, is a sweet reward. A full security deposit returned, and a delicious donut to enjoy for all your hard work.