Boo. Hiss.

I hope you were as grossed out as I was when you saw this photo in yesterday’s post:

That, my friends, is the remains of a snake skin. Or a lizard skin. Some kind of reptile’s epidermis was, at one point, plastered to the wall, and these scales are the sick remnants of former glory.

BARF ON MY FACE.

Part of me is glad I didn’t know it was there until David started spackling holes in the checkerboard room, but another part of me wishes I had noticed it sooner. My baby has been sleeping in that room for nearly six months now, and bits of dead snake in your baby’s room has got to bring some seriously bad juju, right? No wonder the kid has been having nightmares. Godzilla’s offspring has probably been haunting her.

Not to mention the fact that the rest of the room, when you zoom out, looked like this:

I feel like a terrible mother for keeping her there, but it was this or
the bloody baby hands. When your options are limited, a
Beetlejuice-themed bedroom seems a lot more appealing than it might otherwise.
(Our realtor
suggested that it might help Mila develop a healthy love of Tim Burton
movies. I hope that’s the case, because otherwise she’s probably scarred
for life.)

These photos show the room much more cleaned up that it has been until now. There was a dresser in there, for
obvious reasons, piled high with blankets and outgrown clothing, as well as most of a twin bed (stacked against the
wall), a box or two of miscellany, and a sheet of camouflage cordura
tacked up as a curtain over the window. It was a dark, messy little hole where Mila slept; otherwise, we rarely went in.

The crib is too big to fit through the door without being dismantled, so it stayed while I worked, and I’m kind of glad. It gives you a little perspective on just how little this room is. It does have two closets, though, and I love the big window.

I thought the worst part of tackling this room was going to be covering up all the black, but the bigger challenge turned out to be the MILLIONS of tiny holes in the walls. Somebody must have given its previous occupant a bee-bee gun, a bucket of push pins, and a stapler and said, “Have fun, kid.” And he did.

And I wanted to murder him every time I found another stupid hole in that mess of a wall.

(By the way, be thankful I didn’t take a picture of the dirty smudge that looked like dried vomit. I am embarrassed to admit just how gross this room really was. I had no idea. Truly. Although I was kind of afraid to look too closely. Hence the missed snakeskin.)

So that’s what we had to work with. Stay tuned for progress photos and its current state (which is admittedly unfinished but will suffice until I figure out what to do in there).