| I am slowly winning the battle against the Evil Dust Bunnies of Doom. Cleaning off the plant shelf with my Trusty Vacuum (with Super Destructo-Attachments) was a singularly awful experience. Plant shelves that are several feet above one's head are never thought of in the daily/weekendly/monthly cleaning cycles of the household. God never intended us to vacuum above our heads, either. My shoulders are pretty damned sure of that fact. The cat has been completely traumatized this weekend. I mean, before it was bad enough, with the insurgence of multiple canines into a household that used to be a single-pet abode - her. Then we got a ferret, who seems to delight in bouncing around her doing that "keh-keh-keh" barking/hissing thing it does. *Then* we moved all the furniture out of the house, so the cat has nothing to hide on top of/behind/underneath. Yes, these were all Evil Transgressions on our part. This weekend topped it off, though. Everything was covered with plastic. Including her - when I covered over the bed in our bedroom and taped the plastic down to the carpet, she was hiding underneath. I didn't realize it until halfway through the day, when I realized I hadn't seen her in several hours. When I looked under the bed, though, she seemed content enough, so I let her be. She finally ventured back downstairs Friday evening, and promptly hid in the cubby between the new tub and the wall in our new bathroom. Calvin threatened to not tell the marble guys that she has a tendency to hide in there lately, and let them wall her in when they put the front piece onto the tub. He's only about 60% kidding. Let's just say the cat isn't his favorite pet in our family. We have 15,000,003 hangers. I swear, it is absolutely not necessary for anyone on the planet to have as many hangers as we do. Thursday evening was occupied emptying our closet of its contents. I had no idea there were so many useless articles of clothing in there - I even came across hot pink and teal green belts four inches wide that I used to wear in the 80's. I mean, really. I don't even know why they made it here in the trip from Maine in '93. T-shirts so worn as to be considered indecent, yet somehow considered good enough to hang up. A jacket with huge paisley flowers that no one in their right mind would wear out in public, yet at some time in the past I considered it acceptable to do so. Some useful things came from the de-cluttering of the closet, though. I found my LL Bean bag, and three perfectly good bras. I re-discovered several pairs of shoes which may come back in style. All the walls in the house are a very nice shade of Swiss Coffee. Calvin got dressed in what we're now referring to as his "Arctic Man" getup - painting coveralls, a hood that covers everything but his eyes, and a mask. He painted for two days solid. He wrestled with the Diabolical Airless Sprayer of Death (which we paid $400 for, and discovered it was useless), and when he defeated it, he had to rent another one. He won the struggle against the Dopey Home Depot Paint Guy from Hell ("You want that in one five-gallon bucket, or five one-gallon buckets?"). When he emerged from the clouds of paint fumes for periodic breaks, his eyes looked like he'd lined them with white eye-liner and mascara (hence the "Arctic Man" label). I was occupied with putting plastic over things we didn't want Swiss-Coffee'd, and looking for the receipt for the Diabolical Airless Sprayer of Death, and doing laundry, and sticking around so I could jump when Calvin hollered "Laura!!!" to move a hose or chase the cat out of the way or some other task to make his job easier. It is Sunday morning, and we're done painting, and the millions of miles of plastic, tape, and paper have been removed. We're headed out to a football game (Cardinals vs. Philadelphia Eagles) as a reward for our hard work. Tonight will find us packing up in prep for our hotel stay, which will feel very resort-like in the face of what we've been living with for the past couple of weeks. My shoulders are screaming at me, and Calvin is one giant mass of achiness, and we're both praying this hotel has a hot tub. Someday when we look back at this, perhaps we'll look upon it fondly as a bonding experience. Hard work which was good for our souls. Feh, who'm I kidding. We'll look back on this and always refer to it as "The Weekend From Hell". Never never never never NEVER NEVER again. If I ever even so much as mention any kind of home improvement project, hit me over the head and tie me up until I've regained my senses, okay? Much obliged. |