Good riddance.

(“Don’t go falling out of any windows!”)

BONUS:  And may we never see Mechanical Bull named a fashion icon ever again.  The woman met Wills and Kate dressed like a MARSHMALLOW PEEP, for crying out loud.

“Here, we see Kate in her natural environment, questioning if the press crew is taking the mickey with this bit of chav.  ‘OK, guys, where’s the real representative? That man with her lost the plot and TOUCHED HER MAJESTY.  Off with their heads!'”

There is not one single direction I can point, or one diagnosis I can make, or a simple sensation upon which I could put my proverbial finger.

Agitated.

Indecisive.

Frantic.

Listless.

Trapped.

Doomed.

Alright.  That last one is indulgently overdramatic.

The last two are quite obvious, actually.

Trapped — we had a significant snowfall yesterday through this morning.  And you know how I wallow in my home.  Rain or shine, it takes an awfully tempting carrot danging just out of grasp to get me to clear the end of the driveway.  Many weeks I give much dreadful contemplation whether or not I can get out of going to my ONE weekly commitment.  And I actually LIKE that one commitment.  If there is an option to stay at home in my pajama pants and fuzzy socks, I TAKE IT.  So it is quite atypical how threatened I feel when the option to venture out into the world is ever-so-briefly taken away from me.    (Minion was born in a small snow.  We watched the snow-covered cars in the parking lot come and go.  The day we brought him home, Knobby went straight out and bought nearly two buggies’ worth of groceries while Mom stayed to get the nursery stuff sorted (because we were not expecting his early arrival)and said even with the 4WD he wouldn’t be going back out for anything we might have forgotten.  I remember putting Minion in the bassinet beside the bed and looking out at the grey sky and white everything else . . . thinking “I don’t know what I’m doing with this baby . . . and now we’re stranded!”.)

Doomed — Simple.  It isn’t enough that I have been fighting various stupid cold symptoms and have been nauseously turned off from food (including coffee, straight tea, or even water) since one or two weeks before Christmas.  The urge to subsist on saltless pretzel sticks (my v.old friendly standby) has eased (I attribute that to holiday stress) . . . but I’ve got that feeling I’m coming down with a cold.  And you know that’s a dark dark rabbit hole to peer into . . . even were it not the SECOND merry-go-round of these blasted sinus pressures, clogged ears, itchy eyes, sore throat, runny nose — and all the other qualifications of a Nyquil commercial.  Twice in one month’s time is not just wearing me down . . . it’s making me mad.  “How dare you!  I have already PAID THIS FARE, SIR.”

The rest of the list (and the 17 other attributes I didn’t note) . . . a bit of the above two, I’m sure.  Plus this house renovation business.

In a very obvious way — this should be exciting!  I mean, God struck down our bathroom wall (oh. my. word.  In writing this looks — I have jumped the shark.  But I do actually think like this.  I do.) to pave the way to make me happy!

I mean, how tired have you been of me saying “oh I wish the floorplan was more MODERN”, by which I really sound “MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHWDERN”.  “MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHWDERN and eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeFIIIIIIIIIIIHshent.”  BELIEVE ME, I AM SO SICK OF HEARING MYSELF SAY THOSE BLASTED WORDS.

How tired have you been of watching me make hand motions to describe JUST how little the square foot of kitchen countertop workspace there is.

How tired have you been of me complaining about wastes of space in the stair hall, and how I bloody LONG to not carry those stupid laundry baskets up and down the stairs, bumping my stupid head on the stupid slanted wall WITH WHOSE PRESENCE I HAVE ONLY BEEN ACQUAINTED FOR THIRTY-SIX YEARS AT THIS POINT.  No surprises in the slanted ceilings, Pixy, GET IT TOGETHER.

How tired have you been of me saying I hate the endless stretch of faux hardwood flooring?  (Sure, I’m a snob, but this complaint — more than anything — is b/c I want the warm cozy cushion of carpet under my bare feet instead of DustBunny Tumbleweed Alley.)

We can go on and on, but the point . . . by now, it should be made.

So for this yellow brick road to open up in front of me . . . VOILA, PIXY! . . . and the path paved with these things which I consider fun with which to occupy my mind ANYWAY . . .

To basically set me down at the starting line, tell me “Pick what you want” (within reason, naturally), and then fire the starter’s pistol or wave the green flag or whatever they do to start a race . . .

It’s like turning Minion loose in the McDonald’s PlayLand.

So.  I don’t know if it is the cooped up why bother getting out from under the cozy heated blanket aura, or the various sinus clouds and irritations, or all of it together (Knobby is sick as well).

Whatever it is, today is a gloomy day.  We had a pseudo conversation while he desperately tried to pay some nerd documentary on television his full and undivided attention . . . you know how one of those goes.  I can’t stand to have conversation exist in conjunction with a blaring television or a song playing on the radio.  I hate the whole vying for the attention, the inability to focus and concentrate on whichever part is more important to you.  Knobby has a tendency to plow up some verbose lecture in the car just as a song I like is on, or hey, even a song that I don’t like, I have to turn down, b/c . . . WHY ARE WE TRYING TO MAKE SO MUCH NOISE?  One thing at a time!

Which, obviously, I should follow that advice and stick to the narrative at hand.

Which was . . . suddenly this moroseness about how many realistic years of work he has ahead of him before retirement, how much higher he can rationally expect his salary to go before it hits the plateau, about how we’d be paying for this reno work for this many months and this many years and was it really worth it to be tied down to a house, and blahblahblah.

And me, I’m here on this couch where I had simply expected to sit under my blanket and quietly play HayDay on my iPad while he pointedly absorbed all these interviews with early nerd founders of personal computing etc.  Thinking . . . but . . . where I live IS important to me.  And being unhappy with the lack of configurations or amenities that would make running this house a MUCH EASIER EXPERIENCE . . . that IS an important issue for me.

But it also caused me to start considering how I could trim things . . . could I make do without this addition?  Could I be happy with the addition of the stair dormer by itself?  Could I be happy NOT moving the footprint of the kitchen, and maybe cross my fingers and hope that new cabinets with new spacesaving features could be enough?  Even though Knobby has been loudest of us two, about how he wants a separate powder room from a full bathroom for guests . . . could I be happy if we didn’t move that, either, left it the way it was and re-do only the finishes?

Because . . . this project, this budget HAS grown out of hand.  I question who I think I am, that I think I am entitled to these niceties . . . nay, not even that . . . but that plenty of people live in squatty little houses that aren’t attractive or functionally maximized, and all that junk isn’t a NECESSITY.  Because we went from wall repair, to one bathroom reno, to both bathrooms being renovated, to two bathrooms and a kitchen, and oh hey, let’s add a fancy powder room, a foyer, a MasterSuite while we’re at it.  And then!  When someone gives us an estimate for a reasonable building material price (flooring, cabinet, countertops, backsplashes, hell, even DRAWER PULLS . . . doesn’t matter which one) . . .  I inevitably choose/want/need an item or fixture that makes that “reasonable” estimate allowance price look like the Derek Zoolander School for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Want to Do Other Stuff Good Too.

“What is this . . . a Center for ANTS?!?”

. . . Small, people.  I’m saying that the price tag of whatever I choose makes the reasonable allowance look tee-tiny MINISCULE.

One of the contractors came in, asked what my plans were for the flooring, I told him I’d picked this tile, he shook his head and said hardwood would be much cheaper, pointed us to a lumber yard.

You know where this is going.  Oh sure, the BASIC choice was cheaper . . . but . . . do you think I liked the basic choice?  Ha.  No, even with the kindest sassiest grandmother of a saleslady who kept trying to fit my preferences into the most cost-effective solution . . . nope . . . I came out of there with a stinking hardwood choice that for me WAS basic . . . but within 10% of the price of the installed tile figure.

And we haven’t made it to my own heavenly playground . . . THE GRANITE YARD.

And each step is this big convo loop about how “ok, woman, this (whatever) is something we are going to be seeing for the next twenty years. You better get what you LOVE.” . . . instead of a nice rational locker room pep talk about how surfaces really aren’t that important to most of the people who end up in our house . . . etc.

(I mean, in case you’re wondering . . . I want marble, beautiful Carrara marble, in my laundry room.  No, I don’t want it in the kitchen, b/c I am afraid of stains . . . but in the laundry room?  I will only end up folding clothes on it, so bring on those beautiful milky chilly slabs.  But oh, look, I love how beautiful this basketweave marble mosaic is, too.  I want it on the powder room floor.  And wait, look at this CHEVRON marble mosaic . . . I want that as the backsplash covering the entire expanse between countertops and upper cabinets.  I can’t decide.  I WANT THEM ALL, NOM NOM NOM.)

And that is how you balloon so far out of budget, and so far out of original scope, that you contemplate — you actually contemplate — on a sickly gray 18 degree day, that perhaps it would not be IRrational to tell the architect . . . that architect who is about to finalize these plans upon which many.  MANY.  billable hours have been already invested . . . to just scrap all that and thanks for the memories.

You actually contemplate . . . how long it would take some people to put your bathroom wall back together and let you shower in the space there against the poorly insulated exterior wall, up there on the second floor where you’ve been used to showering without worrying so much about attempting to duck and hide when the UPS driver makes his daily delivery past your window (and it is ALWAYS at whatever hour you decide to shower.  Always.).  You say to yourself . . . hey, not having to worry about that UPS driver . . . that’s luxury enough, right?  And . . . do you think the workmen would let me stay here, in my house, underneath this heated blanket, while they restored my measly bathroom?

Powder rooms are overrated.

Clean clothes are overrated.

Meals other than frozen pizzas and cans of soup heated in the microwave are overrated.

This Sudafed, this Nyquil, this Valium, this coffee maker, this heated blanket, this iPad, this bag of Rold Gold pretzel sticks . . .

. . . this is All. I.  Need.

“I never let on . . . that I was on a sinking ship.

. . . I never let on that I was down.”

More than ever, The Holidays (being the entire stretch of Thanksgiving through New Years) . . . The Holidays are nothing if not the Survival of the Fittest.

. . . And I am not the fittest.

But I (we) managed to limp and drag myself through, anyway.

Minion Update:

Minion is no longer contained.  Nope, that child is ON THE LOOSE.

He climbs out of his crib.  He climbs in and out of his own high chair.  He opens his snack packages, gets his own utensils out of the drawer, even carries his dirty dishes back to the kitchen counter afterward.  We don’t bother with the kid plates/utensils anymore — haven’t bothered with those for a while now.

(I still rely on the plastic sippy cups, though.  It’s purely selfish — I’m tired of cleaning up sticky floors every time I turn around.)

Can mostly put on his own clothes.  (Still doesn’t keep me from having to say “PUT ON YOUR PANTS, SIR” 32986 times a day, though.  WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FORCE SOMEONE TO WEAR SOME PANTS???)

And best of all?

THE POTTY-TRAINING, IT IS A DONE DEAL.

Do you know how GLORIOUS it is, to travel WITHOUT a laundry basket’s worth of Huggies, three boxes of wipes, another pack of Nighttime Nappies, diaper rash cream, etc?

Don’t bother, I’ll tell you.  It IS glorious.  We went to Garm and PopPop’s after Christmas, and we ALL fit our things in a single suitcase.  Four night nappies and a few “just in case” pull-ups, plus a wipes clutch.

And . . . getting the stinky Diaper Genies out of our house????

THANK YOU, CHILD.  THANK YOU.

This is the first year he understood Christmas.  He took his toy chainsaw to the car wash that doubles as the nearest Christmas tree lot.  He started learning Christmas songs.  On the way to Neighbor’s church cantata, we were doing our usual toddler chatter, and Knobby brought up “O, do you know why we celebrate Christmas?”.

This was one of those hypothetical-type questions . . . of course we didn’t expect a response.  No, we were going to soar into some toddler-appropriate Intro to Christmas explanation.

BUT.

No need for that, either . . . because lo and behold, from the backseat comes the super-confident “Baby Jesus born in Bethlehem”.

. . . Well, ok then.  Schooled by a not-quite-three year old.

Other Christmas favorites included his first favorite song — “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way.  Oh what fun it is to ride, onehorseopensleighHELLO!”.  That ends in a really fast run, with the attached “HELLO” better explained as Ricky Ricardo bongoing through some Mexican show at the club, ending with a loud flourished “OLE!”.

Also:  “Oh come let us adore him, CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIST the LORD.”

Love this kid.

House Update:

Plans have been decided . . . now we wait on the full final detailed construction plan.

Contractors have been met, estimates are coming in any day now.

I need to begin packing things up and moving them into storage, pronto.

Most of the materials/finishes/components have been selected.

Finances are . . . hopefully done.  I write that with fingers crossed . . . as our reno is pretty surely past the purchase price of our first home at this point.

Not enough pharmaceuticals in the world.

(And she possesses a bladder of steel.  If she needed to, she could probably deal with a single outing every 14 hours or so.)

(Lest you be too quick to cheer at that, though . . . she can wait all day.  BUT.  She could go out, rid herself of all liquid, come back in, see Knobby coming in the door . . . and piddle on the floor.  She’s an excitable piddler.  I think of her every time I see one of those horrible “bladder mesh surgery” commercials.  *Oy*)

ANYWHO.

All I’m trying to say here, is that with the exception of greeting newcomers at the door with a piddle puddle . . . at least she’s trustworthy inside.

So it was very strange, very out of the ordinary, that two days ago Coco had an extreme accident on the stairs.  And I’m not talking a piddle puddle.  It was one of those hold your nose and seriously contemplate if it might be easier to cut out that section of carpet and have it replaced.

(Actually, I will say — as I knelt there and scrubbed.  And scrubbed.  And scrubbed . . . I was incredibly cheered by the realization that this section of carpet WOULD be replaced soon . . . because it was part of the stairs that will be extended and brought down a different direction.  “WELL THERE YOU GO!”)

(But of course, I still cleaned it.  I have this child who scours the house for every messy opportunity, you know.  Plus, we are not animals.)

“This child” knelt beside me on the stairs, actually.  He brought me additional cleaning supplies when asked, and spent the rest of the time manning the trash can, asking “why did Coco poop on stairs?”, etc.  He was VERY perplexed that any creature could have possibly done that, in the house, and on the carpet (Sweet THANK YOU shout-outs to his “Potty” book — “Where does puppy go potty?  Oh.  Puppy goes potty out in the yard.” — as well as God and My OCD for making him one extremely careful potty-trainer.  We’ve had two totally dry nights, HOORAY!!  The light at the end of nappy tunnel, I can see it.).

Well, you sort of run out of ways to answer the question . . . and by the 27th inquiry as to Coco’s motivation, I went from instructional tidbits to “ONCE AND DONE, OLIVER” to “Coco just went and lost her mind”.

It was then QUITE hilarious when O happened to shut a cabinet door too hard (I’ve always been hard on him about steering clear of cabinets and appliances, because I can’t cry over dents and scratches, you guys) — and as he looked at me in shock, he declared in a hilariously calmly tone while softly shaking his head:  “I just LOST my MIND”.

It is now the new favorite for all oops.

Forget to put your lollipop stick in the trash can?  “I just LOST my MIND.”

Bumped his car into the dining table?  “I just LOST my MIND.”

He’s so funny, I JUST LOST MY MIND.

It’s now been a full month (and a few days) since The Great Hole in the Wall of 2016.

There was the immediate stage of “OMG this WALL fell in, we have to fix it right away!!”.

Then the decision that if we were going to re-do one bathroom, might as well do both bathrooms over while we were at it.

Followed by “Ok, I don’t WANT to re-do this first floor bathroom b/c I’d rather expand the kitchen into that space”.

Then calling contractors (who, btw, never return your call, tell you that they are booked for the next two years or have no interest whatsoever in your reno work, OR set up an appointment with you . . . and never. show. up.).

Which strayed into “I can make new floor plans on this little house planning program all day long, but Knobby is never going to see those as good enough to hand to a contractor” territory . . . so we met with an architect at the house.  Hired him.   Meet with him in a month or so to get started.

Architect was a good choice.  Since the beginning I’ve felt like we needed an overall plan for the entire house and land; a perfect scheme of where we ultimately want to go with Mimi’s house.

Initially, I wanted this end-scheme so that when we DID ever start some of our larger projects, we wouldn’t waste time or money on doing something in one of our weekend projects that would be torn down or moved again.

But.  There are also some really key problems I have with the house.  Things like:

~ When anyone new (guests, deliveries, etc) approaches our house, it is confusing.  There is no obvious FRONT DOOR.  And that is pretty important to me.  I like a home that gives a good first impression curb appeal . . . a house that greets you and hey everyone, here’s the main entrance!  But besides my shallow decorative desires . . . no one ever makes it to the right door.  People are always trying to ring the doorbell . . . of the basement.  Honestly, this seems small in the grand scheme of things . . . we are not that social, don’t do a lot of entertaining, etc . . . but.  It’s been four years of having to go down into the basement to meet the pizza guy.  Four long years of having the UPS man deliver my Sephora packages to Knobby’s office so that I have to pad out there and meekly confess to buying another lip gloss or moisturizer.

So.  I want a front door.  An obvious front door.  I’d love it to also have a picturesque front porch or something, but I’m not going to push that . . . as long as I can have an obvious Main Door.

~Hand in hand with the Main Door, goes a formal entryway.  I don’t mean marble-floored and gilded mirrors or anything . . . just . . . I want a foyer.  An important part of having people effortlessly arrive at your Front Door, is being able to greet them, take their coats to store in the nearby coat-closet, and NOT be standing in a kitchen.  Or a living room.  Or a dining room.  No, you want to open your FRONT DOOR , usher the people in, and once you get all the hello and how do you do’s done, figure out where to direct them from there.

~The last of the major key problems deals with the usage of all the space in the house.  When built, there was no thought of a convenient Laundry Room.  Hey, even when my parents built their house, about 13 or 14 years after that . . . they still didn’t think a Laundry Room was important.  Mimi walked down the basement stairs to do her laundry in a dim creepy basement through the time I lived here after college until I got married.  Mom had moved up to a first floor Laundry Room a little earlier, when they built an addition to the house.  But now . . . now, obviously, we all have a “Laundry Room” board on Pinterest with anywhere from 300 – 10000 ideas of Laundry Workspace Configuration.

(Oh.  Is that just me?  Yes?  No?)

SO.  I want sensible modern workspaces.  I want an ample amount of counterspace (because I am starved for countertop work room).  I want things to be where they make sense.  I don’t like a Laundry Room to be on a different floor from me (aka, The Laundress) . . . and although I tend to think of a Laundry Room as more in the kitchen/pantry WORK part of the house, I think it makes sense closer to your master closet.  Give it public entry, by all means . . . but maybe have a little hatch through the wall where you can toss your dirty laundry through or something.  Like when you go to the doctor, you have to give a sample, and the Ladies Room has that little double-sided door so that you don’t have to carry the little plastic jar in front of the waiting area.  Take your clothes off and throw them straight in front of the washing machine!

Anywho.

One of the main thoughts the architect threw out during our initial evaluation . . . was to construct an addition on the side of the house, with a designated FRONT DOOR (and designated parking . . . or something . . . I’m not clear but what I did hear, I wasn’t keen on having it where he was motioning.).  Not a huge addition . . . but one that would establish the front door as people approached, plus give me a little foyer hall, PLUS open up the staircase so that it would be a normal staircase . . . one that you didn’t have to hit your head on or duck as you cleared the last few steps.

Getting that solved.  AND getting my kitchen design . . . can you imagine how WONDERFUL that would be?

“Wouldn’t . . . it . . . be loverly.”

I’ve been feeling that I needed to update the sole reader who might be out there wondering what has been going on with our surprise hole in the wall.

I honestly thought I’d recapped something by now, but . . . no, you, sole reader, have sadly been left all out in the dark while the TORNADO has swirled inside of our home.

I mean . . . when I start this entry with the trite “Y’all” . . . I don’t mean this in a chipper lightweight wave at my neighbor across the produce section at the Publix.

No, I mean this as a harried woman bursting into your local bar, arms full of shopping bags aplenty (and not FUN shopping bags), drenched in a sudden rainstorm that dropped an ocean out of the sky with no more than a how-do-you-do, and landing haphazardly on the only seat left, right next to you.

Y’ALL.

So.  We had some plumbing problems . . . and I think it was (it must have been, b/c I was working on this for what feels like forever long ago) BEFORE the wall fell in, that I had been instructed to start concocting plans for the upstairs.  Plans that dealt with a bathroom that could include a Minion without us all losing our minds, bringing up the washer/dryer because I’m tired of dragging laundry baskets up and down the stairs, etc.  I feel like this was happening WAY before The Great Wall Collapse.

Then collapse it did, and after the panic subsided to a level which did not leave me laughing like Mozart in “Amadeus” AT EVERYTHING, Knobby began saying . . . ok, so that decides if we’ll be doing more than just re-tiling the shower!

Then it became “Wellllll, while the drywall man is redoing the area around the tub, we might as well just have him do all of the bathroom . . . ”

And then this virus spread downstairs, when fixing BOTH bathrooms crept into our conversation so easily that it seemed the MOST SENSIBLE THING we could do all year.

Not long after that, though.

Not long after that . . . this little green monster thought popped up in my head.  This spoiled little green monster thought that selfishly pinched me on the arm and said “Hey.  You don’t even CARE about those bathrooms . . . as much as you care about that BLASTED KITCHEN.  You know, the BLASTED KITCHEN with no countertop workspace, one decrepit little falling-apart drawer, and not even a proper side to prop the countertop off of the dishwasher!!!  It’s THE KITCHEN YOU WANT TO REPLACE, LADY . . . THE KITCHEN!!!”

I mean . . . once we crossed this mental threshold of very high-priced demolition and renovation and how MIRACULOUS and DisneyPrincessMovie it would be to run my hand down a long-lost cool and smooth granite countertop that allowed me to chop up some onions AND still have space for preparing another ingredient??  AT THE SAME TIME?????  And how those animated little birds with banners in their beaks were all chirpy and singy and there was a chorus of squirrels peeking through my window singing some chipper phrase over and over . . .

Oh.  See.  I got carried away.

*composes herself, calmly focuses on her hands clasped primly in her lap*

I headed back to the floor plan software.

This time, I planned out the first floor . . . obviously, the kitchen was my main number one focus . . . but.

BUT.

It all did make some sense, when you were pulling this many marionette strings.  A bunch of little changes I had hoped to make (moving entrance to another side of the house, bringing the staircase to the first floor in a different way, etc) all grouped up together and made a perfect puzzle of the way we could make this house streamline space and be more modern about serving our needs.

We’d have to move the wet wall upstairs, were we to relocate our bathroom . . . and then how did that affect the downstairs bathroom under it . . . and then to make the kitchen of my DREAMS for this house — yes, OF MY HOUSE DREAMS THESE NEARLY FIVE YEARS . . .

It all fell into place.

If you want an easy plan of our relationship . . .

Knobby is the muscle and the money.

I am the planner, the creator, and the spender.

Knobby doesn’t want to be asked if he likes this color, this texture, this scent, if he thinks these two things work well together or are too busy.  It’s best, really — I have very strong opinions about what I like, and I read too many blogs of too many couples that have to spar over every single decision that makes up their home.  I depend on him completely for working through what is possible (walls, plumbing, electrical, blahblahblah), and often get annoyed that he’ll tell me “oh sure, that is an easy thing to install” . . . when the install turns into many more hours, many more sweat droplets, and much more chaos then I ever expect to see from something “EASY”.

(Our current microwave.  We bought it a few months before Minion was born.   We tore out the cabinet where it needed to go . . . ok, no surprise there.  Then all this talk began about framing it for support and . . . . the next thing you know, we are building pseudo CABINETRY all around this thing so that it will stay up on the wall.  Ok, Ok, fine, it was a few 2×4’s and some sheets of good wood that we turned into a new soffit and a display shelf and all that, painted like the rest of the cabinet.  But none of that fell into EASY.  For me.  No, that fell into “yeah, do we reeeeeally need this microwave?  Do we reeeeeeeally need half of our countertop??  Hmmmmm, we live in a world today where one company delivers takeout from a minimum of 30 different local restaurants.  Do we reeeeeally need the microwave??)

(Yes.  Yes, we need the microwave.  Can you imagine the desertland this place would be if not for microwaveable fare?)

So.

I have planned this floor plan.

I have gone out (actually gone outside of the house, can you believe it??) and estimated cabinetry.

Here is “the thing”.  I will research and hunt down whatever I can, online.  Most of my purchases — all my purchases, not some specific category — are made online.  I sit and compare prices, I sit and research reviews, I generally don’t mind sitting here and waiting for these boxes to be delivered to me on a daily basis.  (In fact, honestly, half the fun of the acquisition is that I get to stalk the tracking on its way to me.)

I have dreaded cabinetry, above all else, because of the variation of all the prices.  I want storage.  I want good sturdy quality storage.  I do feel strongly about certain looks of wood or painted cabinetry, but . . . I hate, hate, HATE the variables of the estimation process:

Inset? Shaker?  Ornate?  Mitered edges?  Maple, Cherry, Alder, Oak, or Walnut?  One or more of our 22 stains?  One or more of our 17 glazes?

Then:

MDF?  Plywood box?  Which of FIVE LEVELS of cabinet construction?  (This means, do you want the bottom two levels which basically convince you that you are better off storing your pots and pans in cardboard boxes you’ve nailed to the wall.  Oh but ha ha ha, how silly of me, of course you don’t.  Of course.) Slow-close hinges?  MDF drawers?  Or custom bamboo?  Do you want the interior of each drawer to be illuminated as you open it?  Do you want drawers that open 3/4 or the way (here you are to sneer), or drawers that come allllll the way out into the middle of the room like a model on the catwalk, so that not one corner might require you to reach so much as one centimeter out of your way to obtain that errant grain of pepper!

(Honestly, I do like the drawers that pull out all the way.  But.  In these showrooms, the option that you might buy a drawer that is all the same as ALL THE DRAWERS YOU HAVE EVER LIVED WITH FOR ALL YOUR THIRTY-SOME YEARS . . . it’s made to be abhorrent.  As though your eating utensils have suffered the same fate as that proverbial sock that gets lost in the laundry.  “MY SILVERWARE DRAWERS HAVE CONSUMED ANOTHER FORK!!  WE’LL HAVE TO BUY THE SEVENTH SET THIS YEAR IF WE WANT TO AVOID HAVING TO EAT THE CREAMED CORN WITH OUR HANDS LIKE COUSIN BOBBY AT THE YEARLY FAMILY HOLIDAY PARTY!!!!!!!”  Surely.  Surely.  We have EVOLVED.

Anywho.

I don’t have a difficult time whittling down most of these choices.  Out of the possible 49816087341 combinations you could make with those two sections of cabinetry selection questions . . . I’ll have about five options I want to know about.

Such as . . . “Ok, not inset, mitered edges, maple, no stains, no glazes, level four cabinet box, level three hardware, no illumination, full extension drawers, blahblahblahblah, BAM.”

BUT.

It’s so variable, really . . . and you know in not even the back of your mind, but right there where your squinty crease is front and center . . . right there in front you are thinking “ok, this is going to be a fortune” by the way the woman is answering you or describing how this is one step up or three amusement parks away from what she thinks you want to spend (and, that alone, no numbers have even SURFACED in this convo, so it’s hard to know if she’s thinking your yearly expenditure at Sephora, OR say the usual budget for your bi-yearly vehicle purchase.  “This IS going to be about 30 – 40% more IN GENERAL than the other door style we talked about . . . . . . .. ”

“. . . Is that . . . four dollars?  forty dollars?  four hundred?  four thousand? EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS????”

You just can’t talk percentage when you don’t even have a basis for comparison.  You just can’t.

People can’t decipher what you can and cannot pay.  We were talking to someone at the bank about a loan for something, and this was just a friendly little fact-finding mission convo . . . didn’t know our names, didn’t know our finances or numbers, totally blank little convo.  The “so, chat with me about how this type of loan works, what you expect, how much we are charged, limits, all of that good stuff”.

We realized that, in our everyday garb — strictly all tshirts and casual wear — maybe the woman was being waaaaay too cautious with the info because at one point we were asking “ok, but what about (double)”, then . . .”alright, but say we asked for (something, say, quadruple the value with which she’d begun)?”  and she very cautiously and concernedly looked across her desk at us, dipped her head a bit from the chin, and said in a softer, quieter tone, as to spare us the embarrassment of having to be told this . . . that if you were to qualify for that amount, it WOULD be a sizeably larger payment expected per month . . . .

This scene . . . oh, in our biographical movie this would be pure gold.  I think we were both slightly leaning in, if only to hear what she was saying, if at the same time anticipating the number that this sizeable payment could be . . . soft plush carpet underneath our feet crushing ever so slightly with the weight of the lean . . .  There would be suspense.  Silence.  Taut attention.

Knobby spoke, sort of offertorily . . . placing upon the sacrificial altar a request to know a number . . .

. . . and then this response to his request was . . .

. . . say, one third of our car payment two or three purchases ago in our vehicular history.

That is when the bowstring would be released of the tension of the scene, and jubilant party HOORAY music would blare as we ran leaping across the parking lot with streamers of celebration or something.

SUCH A GOOD SCENE!

Oof, it’s so late now.

Me and my novellas.

Point being . . . I don’t want just one estimate.  I wanted comparison figures.  And not even difficult comparisons, but two decisive scenarios of cabinet choice.  A best and worse, if you will.

Same brand, one door style cheap shaker, the other mitered with an intricate braided trim.  Same wood.  Same finish/no stain/no glaze.  All the same hardware and drawer choices.

It doesn’t seem that grabby, does it?  I mean, I know this is a free estimate, but we were getting along really well with the designer (well, I was . . . I had come in with my cabinet layout, my house plan, AND a few sheets of kitchens to let her know what kind of look I was wanting.  Knobby was just sort of bored but wanting to know what sort of college education Minion could not have b/c of this kitchen.).  She liked me — she liked my preparedness and was impressed at the way I had situated the cabinets to avoid some rookie mistakes, she even laughed that if I wanted a job I could totally work there.

Even still, without paying . . . I could only have one estimate.  She went with the more expensive variety . . . the next day she’d emailed me the breakdown and the total . . . so you could look at that as “ok, so no MORE than this” . . . but at the same time, I really wanted to know how much cheaper WAS the cheaper scenario?

Then I went home and built the same kitchen using IKEA’s kitchen software planner.  And clicked a simple button at the top of my grid and POOF!, out popped a shopping list that detailed every part required to make the kitchen, included the cost of appliances (not using their appliances, but it’s nice to subtract THAT from your total) and lighting . . . and gave you a quick simple guaranteed price right there.

You didn’t like the figuration?  Ok then, go back and change doors, or change sizes, or styles . . . and voila, another free quick reliable estimate.  You knew what you were working with, without having to ask someone to calculate up imaginable, intangible figures for you.

The difference, you ask?  Approximately seven thousand dollars between the two very different cabinetry choices.

But we’ll talk about that next time.

Goodnight.

This weekend we went down to visit Garm and PopPop.

(It had been a while since our last visit.)

Well, you know how I love Sephora, and it just so happened that I had bought something online that hadn’t been spectacular, but I was procrastinating shipping it back b/c that would mean I’d have to go out of my way to drop it off at an UPS Store.

(And, you know, heaven FORBID I have to go out of my way.  What torture to go TWO WHOLE MILES off of my usual path to and from Voice!)

I always feel badly about going when we visit, b/c G and P hate the mall.  And we’re there to visit them, not visit the makeup counters.

But . . . I tried to make it quick.

As I stood waiting for my return to be processed, the woman at the next register leaned over, apologized for asking me a personal question . . .

(And when someone starts off a sentence that way, don’t we all have that “oh, we’re in for it” feeling in our stomach?)

. . . and asked “Don’t you have a son?” . . . umm, yes . . .

(He was out riding the escalator with Garm.)

“I’m his girlfriend!!!!!”

Guess what — she was!

Last time we’d visited (two months ago?  three?), it was right at closing time and she had latched on to O while I sped through the store.

As soon as she said that, the woman at MY register chimed in with “OH, WE ALL LOVED HIM!!!!”.

So Knobby had to go out and bring him in so that he could play with lip balm and his “girlfriend” could flirt with him.

We were amazed that she not only would have remembered him . . . but have picked out his parents when he wasn’t even WITH us in the store.

But that’s my O.  Little Minion Charming.

(He didn’t get it from me. Obviously.)

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary.

The symbolic present for this one was “steel”, so we made a joke about replacing our shower faucet.  Being brushed steel and all.

Knobby tired of me debating five different ones that I would order, so he rushed us to a big box store to make me pick out one that was in-stock.  Which . . . it wasn’t the most beautiful thing in the world, but as I looked it over as we unpackaged it, I thought . . . really . . . I put all that stress into picking a perfect faucet, and look, this one is just FINE.  It’s a faucet, you shouldn’t nitpick over details so much, woman.

We dallied around . . . Saturday after bringing the faucet home, Knobby realized he needed some saw blade or drill bit that was a different size than anything else he had.  So Sunday saw him BACK at the big box home improvement store.  Then we sat around wasting time for a while until he decided that he’d get started on the faucet install.

This was about 6:30 on Sunday evening.

He had to cut out a section of paneling because the access box didn’t allow him high enough reach . . . and then he asked me to pry off the old handles while he went downstairs in search of some tool or whatever.  The screws had been taken out, but the handles were still stuck, so I took a hammer and started trying to pry the thin metal open with the claw.

Knobby had warned me that I needed to be careful b/c we weren’t taking down the tile . . . just plugging and caulking the holes until we were ready to re-tile the whole shower.  And that was no time soon, so . . . careful.  I was SO! careful!

Which is why it was so confusing when the wall sunk.

. . . huh . . .

. . . wha? . . .

. . . no, I didn’t just see that . . .

But yes, I did.  I surely did.

I stretched out my finger and gingerly prodded a different portion of the tile . . . and it moved.

I backed away, put the hammer down, and sat on the top step to wait for Knobby to come up there.  Like a child waiting for their punishment “when your FATHER GETS HOME, young lady”.

And, OF COURSE, he gave me an incredulous look of “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????” and then went to see if I was just overdramatizing as I tend to do.

Nope.

For once.  ONCE!  Not I.

The tiles had begun to fall into the bathtub, and with soppy chunks of drywall.  Touching the tile at that point was more like pushing on wet sand.

Knobby had gone around into the closet, pulled the pink insulation out . . . which was also wet . . . it had gone from being pink cotton candy to . . . matted wet dog fur clumps.  Behind that, the paper left from the drywall . . . completely absolutely covered in black mold.

Everything had black mold.  The tiles, the drywall paper . . . it’s all mold.

We freaked out . . . as you do when a wall in your house just FALLS APART . . . and raced to the big box home improvement store once again, to throw drywall boards onto a cart and haul them home with the help of my parents and their dump truck.

Silly, silly children that we were . . . we thought we had the situation under control.

As much as you can, really, when walls are wet sand.  We thought “ok, now I guess we will get new drywall hanging experience”.  We unloaded the boards into the garage so that they wouldn’t be sitting in the kitchen/hallway/closet for as long as it would take us to take down the rest of the tub surround.

THEN.

We went inside, changed out of our soaked sweaty clothes (panic, effort of carrying the drywall boards, The South), had a cold drink, and once we felt normal again, we investigated some more.

And found that the subfloor underneath the tub is soggy, too.  And that there is a gigantic ant nest back there, thriving off all the water that has been soaking and molding our house for who knows HOW long.

And you know how I laughed — didn’t I?  A few posts back? — about how I had reached my Tom-Hanks-laughing-like-crazy-when-the-tub-fell-through-the-floor-in-TheMoneyPit??

Well, apparently . . . I was uncomfortably close to MY tub REALLY FALLING THROUGH THE FLOOR TOO.

Especially with all the baths I’ve been taking recently.

—–

“Happy Anniversary, your present is a SURPRISE BATHROOM REMODEL!”

Yay.  Yay?

Oy.

This is the first run at one. Amarilli mia bella. One of the inescapable 24 Italian Songs.

(I was only half joking.  You don’t mess with Mimi, here or in Heaven. She will take you OR your plumbing DOWN, yo.)

Poor Knobby spent a whole lot of time on Friday installing a hot water heater.  We wanted — still want — a tankless because endless water sure sounds nice when you currently are rationing out the shower times and calculating how long one needs to wait for the tank to refill after the other gets in there first.  But, both times we have been faced with needing to install a new one, it has been in emergency situations — the first one cracked open, the second one hit by lightning — and we don’t really have the time to get the hefty rewiring done and all that other stuff a tankless would require.  In the Cornfields our tankless had been an upgrade Knobby wanted to do rather than HAD to do, so we were all prepared and upgraded when the tankless unit arrived.

ANYWAY.  What with the emergency need, we got a basic no frills tank heater.  And while he was working on all the plumbing for that, he figured he might as well put a filter AND a softener on the line.  This won’t solve our water issues, because apparently our copper pipes are all corroded and loveliness, but it will be a big step towards not killing a refrigerator’s ice maker . . . whenever we get around to facing all that THAT entails (taking out cabinets to make room for a full size fridge, etc.  I can’t even pile that on top of my head right now.).

All the corroded copper is slowly going to be replaced with Pex.  One reno project at a time.  But on Friday night, he sliced his thumb open and we ended up squeaking in to an urgent care clinic just before they closed, to get him stitched back up.  He had sliced the thumb in JUST such a way that it went underneath the nail and was too complicated to stitch.  So instead he got some surgi-strips and a big pressure wrap to hold it all together.  He says he doesn’t want to work on plumbing for a while, and looking at his thumb . . . I give him no static about that. (For once.)

Saturday, out we went to acquire the softener.  A store further away than the one we frequent listed it in stock, but we got there and learned (after a very long wait.  a very. long. wait.  I waited so long that I gave up and laid down in a display bathtub because there are never handy benches or makeshift seats in a home improvement store.  Unless you go out into the garden section, and it’s summer.  So no, that is not an option.  We didn’t realize the woman talking to the only person in the whole wide store who could answer a plumbing question was ordering a full-house multi-bathroom renovation . . . and had apparently not heard of GOOGLE, or this miraculous tool called INTERNET SHOPPING (how do these people exist??) . . . so I was in that bathtub for a very. long. time.  Good news, though — I proved myself right b/c Knobby has been telling me that I was ridiculously spoiled, saying that our bathtubs were oh-so-ridiculously-tiny because the water ONLY COMES UP TO YOUR BELLY BUTTON when it’s already past the overflow drain.  That tub was luxuriously elbows-up-to-your-shoulders relaxation height, and it wasn’t even a NICE tub.  So yes, Knobby, we DO have dollhouse-appropriate not-normal bathtubs, thankyouverymuch.) they don’t keep those in stock b/c they are special order only and the “in stock” status on their website is “only to get customers in the doors”.

Well.

I have a different thought, home improvement store.  When I see that your store lists this item as in-stock inventory, then I’m NOT GOING TO APPRECIATE ROLLING UP TO THE COUNTER AFTER A TWO-HOUR WAIT FOR RELICS DOING RENOVATIONS WHO CAN’T EVEN RESEARCH THEIR OPTIONS BEFOREHAND, AND BEING TOLD THAT HA-HA, FOOLED YOU!

This is how we ended up flying down the road in a race against closing time, to buy a softener from a store that ACTUALLY HAD ONE IN STOCK, can you believe that is how inventory works in The Internet Age!  It was forty miles down the road.  And we roll that softener out on a gigantic cart with five minutes until closing . . . to realize that . . . hmm.  It doesn’t fit in the car.  And here we are in the middle of nowhere, the store is closing, we can’t fit this thing in the car . . . . what are you going to do?

We unboxed it, that’s what we did.  It was Tetris and Jenga of ultimate proportions.  Took it all apart, and luckily it JUST fit, all discombobulated, into the trunk opening.  I even broke down the box and was able to wedge it right at the top so that we could BeverlyHillbillies our gigantic water softener home.

—-

While waiting for the Renovating Relic to ask all her stupid questions, like, “does this come in wood finish?” and “what are my choices for a bathroom sink faucet?”  (I AM NOT EXAGGERATING.  LETMEGOOGLETHATFORYOU DOT COM.)  and getting a print out every time the employee told her that she could see all her options ONLINE, and also in THIS CATALOG YOU CAN TAKE HOME, MA’AM . . . (oy.), we tried to fix the original big problem of the main bathtub valve part thingamajig (that is my super technical term, obviously) no longer keeping a drip at bay.

No one makes a valve part this size or shape or who knows what else, anymore.  So we’d searched for alternatives to accommodate this thing, and that DID take a lot of time.

Only.  The water softener installed, Knobby came up to finally cap off the valve and be done with all the plumbing woes.

And the valve broke cleanly in half as he was putting everything back together.  Snap.

It was a very deadpan look-at-the-camera are-you-kidding-me??? type of moment.

So while our fix was fairly ghetto-rigged.  The fix for the fix was super ultimate jumbo sized ghetto rig.

As in.  Let’s just shove everything back in there, say a prayer, and hope that it will not move until we can get an all-new faucet and shower and all that jazz.

Oh, yeah.  And tear the closet wall out.  Because we’re going to have to open up a huge access panel through the panelling.

And at that point . . . we might as well start putting things in place for the end-goal Master Bath Renovation floor plan.

Which . . . it’s lucky then, that on Friday I mostly finalized THAT floor plan.

Breathe, Pixy.  Just breathe.