Sometimes Life Kicks You In The Shins

Being kicked in the shins isn't horrible, but it certainly isn't pleasant and that's why it's a great metaphor for today. Nothing horrendous has happened today. There have been no natural disasters and no one's eye has fallen out of their head (yet). However, nothing has gone the way it should.

I had a horribly gruesome dream last night. It involved a witch who owned a rest stop/convenience store. Over the course of the dream, she kept casting spells on her patrons, forcing them to kill themselves or their loved ones. Parents were forced to kill their children. People committed suicide in imaginative and macabre ways. Like all my dreams, it was very vivid and detailed and therefore not at all pleasant. Fortunately, I almost always know I'm dreaming, and I'm rarely in my dreams (it's more like I'm an invisible bystander or watching it all on IMAX); this means that dreams like this aren't scary, per se. I didn't feel like I was in danger. But I also couldn't stop watching and that wasn't great.

Then the alarm went off and it was Monday. And it was raining. Also, I ran out of hot water in the shower.

Then R was all short tempered and snappy. This is very unusual and is a direct result of his anxiety about his dissertation. He's almost finished with it, but is under time pressure and is, you know, acting human. But knowing that doesn't make it any more pleasant for me. Especially first thing in the morning. So I retreated to my office, grumbling under my breath.

However, instead of the work I had planned to do, I was met by an email requesting that I do different work. And it's due today, so rush rush rush.

Also, I'm wearing my last clean pair of underwear* and I need to wash pants and all the dog bed covers need washed. I don't even want to talk about that last thing.

*Technically this is a lie. I have plenty of clean underwear, but not the kind I prefer to wear, which are soft and anti-chaffing.

So, kicked in the shins. Hopefully the bruise is gone by this afternoon, when the sun comes out and my husband comes home in a better mood. However, the forecast doesn't look good.

P.S. Shortly after I posted this, I spilled hot chocolate on my laptop (it's drying - wish me luck) and then when I was rinsing out my cup in the sink, somehow water ran all down the inside of the arm of my sweatshirt. Le sigh.

P.P.S. I just tried to flush the toilet and the handle broke off inside the tank. No joke. I will stop touching things for the rest of the day.

As Promised

I give you pictures of the work we did on our new house. There isn't much else going on in this entry, so feel free to leave. But if you are interested in glimpsing the amount of manual labor that goes into redoing your floors, have a peak.
Here's the main room upstairs:

The carpet we removed (And donated to Habitat for Humanity's Restore - recycle and/or reuse whenever possible. Okay, that's the end of the public service announcement.). See all those specks to either side of the carpet? Yeah, those are staples. We had to remove all of them. Also all the nail board around the edge of the room. The prep work was tedious and character building.

 The boxes we lugged to and fro. Each box weighed 45 lbs and they didn't stack themselves.

 The work in progress.

And, Ta Da! A completed room with floors and furniture and everything.

But wait, there's more! Here's some pics of the family room:

 More (heavier) carpet. On this floor, instead of staples we had to scrape off glue. Also, not shown, the enormous amount of carpet pad that had to be disposed of.

 After the floor was prepped, there was painting to do.

Then more lugging of boxes, more cleaning, etc. Also, note that plastic has to lay over the concrete. fortunately, this flooring was pad-attached, or else we would have had to lay padding as well.

And we are left with a beautiful floor! I am very pleased with both the color and the pattern of this laminate. It is very realistic looking with a lot of pattern variability. It's Timberland Western Pecan, if you're wondering.
P.S. We hired a contractor to help us with the tricky bits (around the fireplace, the angles of the bar, and just to ensure that everything was square). To save money, R and I did all the prep work and the contractor let us use his tools when he wasn't around, so we could do the easier runs ourselves. I highly recommend this arrangement.

This is what the dogs did while we were bustin' our butts.

And, what do yo know? They still do it, but now more comfortably.

Maybe A Vortex? Under The Bed?

SO, as I mentioned here, I planned to share before and after pictures of the new house and all the crazy manual labor that happened after we bought it. I am happy to report that those pictures now exist...in digital form*. The real barrier to sharing them with you is that I haven't found the cable to my camera.

*The majority of said pictures obviously existed before. I do not yet have a time machine, so the before and during pictures were, in fact, taken before and during the manual labor. I just hadn't gotten around to the after pictures. Just thought I should clarify. No time machine yet.

The fuck?

I have unpacked 95% of the house and apparently my box o' cables is in the other 5%. Maybe its a ninja box? Because there are not many more places left to look. Or, perhaps it took off with the box of super important papers that my husband put somewhere so they would be easy to find? I don't know. Maybe this new house is a portal to another dimension. A dimension desperately in need of USB cables.

In the meantime, enjoy this poor quality webcam snapshot taken through a dirty window. This is the view from my home office!