Catching up

Does this look white to you? Sigh. Yeah me either....

My, how time flies when blogger.com isn't working quite right. I have had a lot of trouble posting for the last few days ... And I know that a lot has been happening, but I can't really tell you off-hand what. I think that's why I had started posting daily blog entries a few months ago... It helped me remember what happened the day before... Without those entries - I find myself floating in some sort of strange time warp. It's already February 6th? Where'd the week go?

Let me see if I can piece it all back together -- as much for my own sake as for any of my regular readers out there....

Tuesday, January 31st - George's Birthday.
I remember we got an automated message from Lowe's that afternoon telling us that our cabinets were finally in. Dave said it was such a shame that we wouldn't be putting them together since it was George's birthday... Ha! I finally convinced him that George wouldn't mind at all once he ran off to play if we were huddled in the laundry room assembling cabinets. Dave hauled in four boxes and left them in the laundry room for about 10 minutes before I couldn't stand it anymore and snuck in behind him with a screwdriver and a box cutter. It was perfect... the boys were all out in the backyard with the dog and the telescope.. the babies were both sound asleep. I thought I could get at least half of the cabinets assembled well before anyone noticed what I was up to. I cut open the box and winced. Maple. The board on top was maple. Not white. I thought maybe it was just a shelf though and dug further... Boy, was I relieved! It was just a shelf... I had to find the doors and drawer-fronts to make sure they were white... and.. they weren't. Sigh. The wrong cabinets. Two weeks and four days of waiting and they were the wrong cabinets. I went to bed sad.

It wasn't about the cabinets exactly... Just that I start getting sad when too much time passes without any progress around the house...

February 1, 2006
Dave woke up early and said he was going to return the cabinets before he went to work. He also said that someone would be coming by the house to give us a new estimate for repairing our damaged siding and fascia. Yeah right.. like a contractor was actually going to show up for an estimate....

But I was wrong.. and the contractor did show up and worked on the estimate and it wasn't all that unreasonable. We were still chatting when Dave surprised us by driving up in the middle of the day. He looked very proud of himself. Sometimes that scares me. Turns out though, he had reason to be proud. He pointed to the back of his rusty red truck - and there they were.. four boxes of white cabinets AND a truckload of brand new Saltillo tile for the laundry room.

As soon as he left I grabbed the screwdriver and started putting cabinets together. The first one nearly proved to be the death of me with some little cam bolt that didn't want to go where it was supposed to...but I finally got it together and it felt so good that I couldn't stop. I became a cabinet assembling wild woman and got two wall cabinets together in record time before moving on to conquer another base unit... with drawers! All was well until I got to the part with the drawer glides. The parts list called for three left drawer glides and three right drawer glides. I had six drawer glides that looked exactly the same. I knew that was a bad sign... but I continued anyway -- at least until I got to the point that it mattered that all of my drawer glides were the same. Then I called the friendly parts people listed in the assembly instructions and ordered some right drawer glides.

February 2, 2006
I decided I would tackle the very last wall cabinet waiting in the kitchen... So at the very least we could have the cabinets assembled and mounted to the wall while we waited for the parts to finish the drawers. I was surprised that the box was already open -- guessed Dave had opened it when he got it home -- but started spreading out cabinet pieces anyway. There was no little baggy with all the screws and hardware in it. No where. I searched the whole box. It was just plain gone. Closer inspection showed that at some point some other person had partially assembled this cabinet... That would explain why the box was open. Apparently this one had been a return... but the returners failed to return all the parts. Another call to the parts place ended my day of cabinet-assembling.

I needed a pick-me-up so Dave suggested I look around to order the furniture for our bedroom now that the dresser we tried to save was starting to turn a bright and stinky green. I found a great set and had it all ready to order. The website asked for my zip code to check for delivery availabilty.. and every single piece of furniture was available except the footboard to the bed. Bah. It was the footboard that made me pick the furniture in the first place... Good Dave called the place for me.. and then offered to actually drive us all the way over to Gulfport to place the order in person -- since we would be going to Sears to check on our refrigerator order anyway. A few hours and 120 miles later -- we had spent a lot of money and ordered some furniture.

February 3, 2006
Ah.. Friday.. Always a good day to get things done since Dave has the day off. Of course on this Friday he had to go into work to make up time he took on Wednesday getting the cabinets and the tile... But not until he watched the babies long enough for me to drop the boys off at school that rainy morning and drop Jo, the kitten, off at the vet to be spayed. (Poor kitty.) Not long after that - our refrigerator arrived. It looked good. It didn't fall off the truck. It was the right refrigerator. The delivery guys were friendly. But something had to be wrong -- it always is... and well.. it was. A few minutes after the delivery guys unpacked the appliance one of them approached me to say 'We have a small problem.. and you know I've never seen anything like it....' Sigh. Turns out that somehow Whirlpool shelves were packed inside our Kitchenaid refrigerator and did not fit. It's okay. It's FINE. At least we got the major appliance... And the guys assured me they would see to it that the proper shelves were ordered for us.

February 4, 2006
I decided to work on things that didn't require a whole lot of parts -- and stuck to continuing to edge the yard and weed the flowerbeds. I had hoped to start filling the yard and beds where the soil had washed away in Katrina -- but the truckload of topsoil we ordered never showed up. Instead, a lost and distant cousin stopped by to pay a nice visit and saved the day. Great stories - great conversation. It was
good meeting you, cuz -- you know who you are! *wink*

February 5, 2006
Since the dirt truck never showed - Dave felt really sorry for me and ran out to buy a truckload of 40 lb bags of topsoil so I could get started with the rebuilding of our yard. A 40 lb bag of topsoil never goes very far -- but by the end of the day I had spread the black stuff out to at least make it look like some progress was being made. I had approximately ten minutes to be proud of myself - and then it started to rain. With no mulch in the raised flowerbeds - I can be sure to lose at least half the soil to run-off in a good downpour.

.... And that is where the week went, apparently. As I type this - it is raining outside. All I can hope for is that my topsoil at least runs off and congregates in one particular area of the yard so that I can retrieve it and start over.....

Tonight, February 6th, I'm trying to keep my mind off the topsoil and focus on something else.. like, say, the Saltillo tile lying in the laundry room. I have been searching the internet for proper installation technique. Unfortunately, none of the installation 'experts' I'm reading on the internet seem to agree on anything at all. Ah but I think the Saltillo deserves a post all its own. In the meantime - I'll continue my search and pretend it's not raining.