An evening with George

In the 7 years since we've owned our house we've done the following home projects.

New windows
New carpeting in basement
Removed old carpeting upstairs
Sanded and sealed wood floors
Ripped out hideous linoleum floor in kitchen
Tried to put in laminate flooring
Floor too crooked for laminate
Had my dad spend 300 hours trying to level the floor
Went through several sheets of plywood and a bag of Quikcrete
Still not level enough for laminate floors
Installed less hideous vinyl tiles in kitchen instead
Ripped down hideous wallpaper
Painted walls
Painted walls again
Painted and painted and painted and painted
Put up ceiling fan
Prayed fan wouldn't fall out of ceiling
Installed several different light fixtures
Blew out a fuse
Gave thanks to Jesus that I didn't electrocute myself
Ripped down chain link fence
Planted a hedge
Planted tree
Planted hundreds of flowers and bushes myself and husband says, "MY yard looks nice."
Completely remodeled the bathroom, but this was done by professionals.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things, but as it is now I have a new ceiling fan to install and 2 more interior doors to put up (thanks, Dad, for figuring out how to make shims out of duct tape). You'd think installing doors would be easy, but my house is almost 60 years old and nothing is straight.

Now we also have a hole in the floor where an old cabinet used to be. It had been installed when the house was built and put in about 3 feet from the front door. Whoever thought this was a good idea, I don't know. There's no accounting for taste. So last night I made Matt rip it down. He's not much for building or construction or feats of engineering, but HE CAN DEMOLISH STUFF. I think deep down he likes it. ME HULK! ME SMASH!

So now we have to fix the hole in the floor.

Because I'm obsessed with home improvements I have a lot of dreams about it, but the one I had last night is the best so far.

In my dream I'm trying to put together an IKEA shelf. If you've bought stuff at IKEA you know the directions only have pictures, no words. This is actually really a good idea and makes sense, but in my dream I could NOT figure out what the little drawings meant, they looked like Egyptian pictographs.

Suddenly there is a knock at the door.

I open it and see George Clooney standing there. He is holding a paper bag like one of those drunks standing on the corner of the liquor store.

"Hi, George."
"I heard you have some IKEA shelves you need fixing."
"Did IKEA send you?"
"I brought wine," he says and shows me the bottle.

It's a nice Brunello di Montelcino. I let him in.
For some reason the wine is a twist off, so I open it and start drinking straight from the bottle. "George, these directions make no damn sense."

"Where's your Allen wrench?"
"Why do I need that?"
He sighs, "IKEA furniture always needs an Allen wrench."
"Oh." I sit on the floor with the bottle and watch him sort out the different sized bolts and screws. He is doing a really good job so I offer him some of the wine. He takes a swig. "Yup, that's the good stuff."
"Yeah it is." Then I feel a little bolder. "Hey, when you're done with that, we could play Twister."
"That sounds fun."
"Yeah it does."

Suddenly the wine I'm drinking smells suspiciously like cat food. I open my eyes and see my cat Junebug with her face two inches from mine and staring intently. She does this every morning because she's afraid if she doesn't wake me up I will forget to feed her breakfast. I look at the clock and see I still have ten minutes before my alarm goes off.

I hate Tuesdays.