Hail to the Chief!

President’s Day is an official holiday for my company. At first I found this to be an odd company holiday. Danny didn’t have that day off. Most non-government workers don’t either. Now, I relish that one day of the year when I have the day entirely to myself. Last year it was especially rejuvenating. I was completely stressed out with work and my maternity leave was still a fresh, throbbing wound. I didn’t do a lot, but I really enjoyed the relaxation and going to a movie. I felt human again. This year, I took an additional day to the holiday (Tuesday) and made plans.

We moved into our current house in December of 2002. Emma wasn’t even three months old. I loved the house just as it was with the exception of the wallpapered bathrooms upstairs. The master bathroom is too Victorian and frilly, but it is much more palatable than the bathroom in the hall. It was decorated with fleur de lie above the chair rail with a navy and maroon top border and a matching navy and maroon stripped wallpaper underneath the chair rail. I cannot tell you how much I hated that wallpaper. So, I used my extra long weekend to make a change. The weekend wouldn’t be as relaxing as the year before, but I decided that doing something just for myself would be its own reward.

I’ve never removed wallpaper before. The friendly staff at Lowe’s gave me the information I needed to pick out my It took a good part of Sunday and all of Monday to strip the wallpaper and clean the walls. The scoring tool that was supposed to let the adhesive remover through the paper didn’t work. Instead, I had to peal off the top layer. Emma really enjoyed helping me with that. Monday was a physically tiring day because it was all the grunt work. I lost count of how many times I cursed the builders/first owners of our house. They clearly decided that smoothing out the dry wall wasn’t very important. When I went to bed that night, I never wanted to set foot in that bathroom again. Tuesday was a fun day. I still had to curse the original home owners for “fixing” a dime-sized hole in the wallpaper with a blue permanent marker, but I saw the room taking shape as every hour went by. With about an hour or so to spare, I painted the walls and put up the shower curtain. I still have to iron the shower curtain, touch up the walls and paint the chair rail, but I am so proud of how that bathroom looks now. I promise a picture tomorrow.

In addition to the reward of having a bathroom I love, all the physical work over the weekend helped with another reward. Wednesday is my Weight Watchers meeting at work. Last week was my first week back. I stepped on the scale and discovered that I had lost 5.4 pounds! Thank goodness for those first weeks back on program. They are a tremendous bonus to jumping back on that bandwagon!