Wow! What a Bunch of Crap!

Yes, yes, it's been "some time" since I've posted.

Thanks for sitting here patiently refreshing your screen in eager anticipation of my next post.

I suddenly feel like Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin rolled into one.

The upshot here is that Lil and I, while we were in Idaho for the 4th of July vacation we took, decided to really roll up our sleeves and hire some folk to make some rennovations to our home. Initially, it seemed like both a good idea and a necessary step forward.

Turns out it was neither.

It was just a necessary evil that became, with slow inexorbility, the most stress inducing chaos of my young life.

Three projects. Three simple projects and our lives were turned completely upside down:

Renovate Porter's closet
Replace the carpeting
Repair the kitchen ceiling

For the first, you should understand that our house was built in 1922. I love old houses. I'm a big fan of their construction techniques, the overall feel of a house that has stood many times longer that I have, and in general just how maleable they are. Unfortunately, in 1922, they didn't believe in closets or closet space the way we currently think of it. Pretty much a closet for 1922 was a door with a 2' x 2' room inside. Enough room to hang your school clothes and your Sunday best. The upshot of Porter's room was that his closet made an immediate left hand turn and kept going for about five feet. We just needed to knock out that wall, and we could hang sliding doors or whatever and suddenly we have a functional closet!

Replacing the carpeting in the house seemed like a good idea as well, especially when we decided to lay laminate flooring in the front room and the dining room, visually tying these two rooms together. The downside of this little adventure was that everything, and I mean everything, that we have collected over the past six years had to be moved off the floor. The heavy furniture, the light furniture, the little treasures we left sitting out and never dusted. All of that.

The kitchen ceiling wasn't our fault. It came that way, and there was nothing for it. We've been meaning to paint the entire kitchen at some point (you know . . . the "future"), and this seemed like a good time to take care of that. However, everything that we've been storing on the kitchen counter-tops had to disappear because paint in 1922 was filled with lead. Also, dust makes me sneeze.

But being the smart people we are, we decided to do EVERYTHING at the same time, which required, in simple terms, moving out of the house.

Yeah, it's been that kind of a week.

Seeing all our stuff out of the house makes the house look GREAT! But it is simply mind-boggling to think of how much "stuff" and "junk" and "someday-we-might-use-this" that we have collected (and never dusted) over the years. If everything on the back porch were to somehow disappear, I'm faily certain I would only miss my DVDs.

And then I would hunt that person down with a fiery vengence the likes of which ten suns could no match.

But yeah, other than that, I wouldn't mind it all just disappearing.

So, anyone want some "stuff"?