X-hausted.

Today we finished the boxes and the moons & stars in the nursery, and ordered the carpet. We got up early and I called a dozen or so carpet places to get estimates. Bob's mom said to go to a carpet store and see if we could get a remnant installed, because it would be cheaper. I would have loved to, but it just wasn't in the cards (I hope they don't freak when they find out how much we paid.) You'd have to settle for whatever remnant they had, God knows what quality it would be, and then the installation at most carpet places takes at least 2 weeks. One place said, "Oh, it'll be about 2 weeks." and in the next breath told me they could get us in for October 9th or 10th. Yeah, 2 weeks, 2 1/2 months, same difference. NOT.
We called Empire to get an estimate, and although they weren't the absolute cheapest, it was a solid price, not an estimate like we got at Home Depot (cheaper by $100) and they could install the carpet tomorrow. We also used them before and liked them, for the most part. We wanted one more day to paint, having the nasty old carpet as our drop cloth, and so we asked for Friday to be carpet day. The price we got from them was still about $100 less than most of the carpet places - and those were just estimates, which you can count on going up. So we had to book it to get the other painting done.
We did the taping for the dark blue boxes, painted those and found that the paint had bled undermeath the tape and looked like crap. So we had to move each piece of tape, carefully keeping it level, and paint a second coat with a tiny paint brush so that we'd have perfect straight lines. Which we do. And on top of them we now have reasonably neat stars and moons in yellow. THAT was a bitch. Stenciling sucks. It doesn't work. We had to go back over each star and moon with a tiny brush once with yellow and once with the dark blue, to clean up the lines and make the shape look, well, not retarded. I think they came out pretty well. :-) We decided right before dinner to alternate shapes and paint in the dark boxes only. Less busy (and less work) that way.
I'm freakin' exhausted, now, of course, because any amount of standing longer than 1/2 an hour leaves my back a mess. I attempted a nap today, but that wasn't in the cards, either. We went swimming, that was fun. Bob made burgers and dogs on the grill w/ pasta salad. Then we cleaned up and did the stars and moons and farted around on the computer and soon I will fall asleep at this desk.
Tomorrow is a very exciting day - shut up, you'll understand one day - REGISTERING!!!
There is nothing so greedily gratifying as walking around a store you love with a scanner gun and basically saying "I want this, and this, and this, and this, and..." It's all stuff we're going to need for the kiddo, and a lot of research actually went into a lot of these products - shut up, yes, I researched strollers and high chairs and stuff like that, and I LIKED it. Again, one day you'll understand, if you don't already.
SO we get to go to Baby Depot (the baby store inside Burlington Coat Factory - good selection, many locations near family & friends, way better prices than Babies-R-Us) and take our official LIST and point and scan like mad. I'm psyched.
And I'm also half-dead. Night.