Bits for Sunday, September 9, 2007

I have to begin this by sending out a happy birthday to my Mom. I have to do that because I’m about to talk about her and she can’t be mad at me for it if I start by wishing her a happy birthday. Yesterday was the big day, actually. I think she had a good day despite the downpour that lasted…the whole day.

So I’ve discovered that one of the many things I have in common with my Mom is this tendency to allow one small idea to snowball into a project of mammoth proportions. For example…about twenty years ago, Mom decided that new kitchen linoleum would be in order. (AMEN!) And since things would be torn up anyway, maybe it would be a good time to re-stain the kitchen cabinets. And now that we’re thinking about it – the kitchen really isn’t big enough for parties and family dinners. Why not make a little four foot porch type space off the back where a long table could go? Well, if we’re going to do that, we might as well raise the floor and make it even with the kitchen just to make the best use of the space. And you know – while we’re making this mess, why not just make a whole new room?

And so the new room was born – and we call it that to this very day. Twenty years later, you can hear Mom and Dad talking about sitting in the new room.

Twenty years later, I find that the same thing has happened to me. Not a new room, but a small idea blossoming into something that takes way more time, effort, and money than I originally planned.

For me, it began a couple of Saturdays ago when my original plans were rained out and I was stuck inside the house with way too much HGTV Next Design Star swirling in my head. I stood in the living room, assessing the furniture and mulling over the prospect of rearranging said furniture. I pushed and pulled on a couple of the more-easily-moved pieces and didn’t like anything I tried.

Then I began to toy with the idea of “living” in the dining room. It’s very hard for me to think outside the box, so this took some mental exercise for me – and a couple of phone calls to Mom.

And so began the chain of events that began with a desire to relocate the couch.

* Take the air conditioner out of the window. (A three person event that ended up requiring a BBQ fork to stab and remove pieces of runaway insulation lodged between the window panes.)

* Clean out the closet under the stairs. The goal? To pitch things that haven’t worked for months and I’m not sure why they were still occupying space in my home, to send to the Rescue Mission the items that I’ve cleaned out and put back twice before, and finally, to make a place for the paint cans that were housed in the guest room closet.

* Take the space formerly occupied by the paint cans and make it the new home of spare blankets (for guests, cold nights, or movie extravaganzas).

* Take the trunk formerly occupied by blankets, move it into the guest room closet and fill it with toys for my friends’ kids to play with when they come over. The actual work has been completed to this point. So the points below are an outline for my friends and family, warning them of phone calls to come…

* Call Habitat for Bekah (a.k.a. my parents) and respectfully request their assistance in disassembling the dining room table and hauling it away to the Rescue Mission, thus clearing a gigantic spot in the dining room.

* Make a pan of fudge as a thank you to Habitat for Bekah. (P.S. – can I have the pan back from my last thank you?)

* Brave my way into the attic (fear of mice and spiders gets me every time) and haul down the small dining room table that is being stored in pieces for such a time as this. Attempt to put it together CORRECTLY. Always a challenge. Matt still laughs at me over my first attempt to assemble the table. The legs were a bit…backwards???...when I was done. BUT HEY. IT STILL WORKED.

* Find chairs to go with table. (This detail still being worked out.) Until then, just look at table and say “awww.”

* Borrow steam cleaner to clean as much carpet as is visible at this time.

* Bribe some people with muscles to help me move my buffet from its existing spot to its new home just across the room.

* Steam clean underneath the place where the buffet was until it moved.

* Bake cookies for people with muscles and owners of steam cleaner. Double cookies if muscles and cleaner come from the same household.

* Call Habitat for Bekah to see if I can borrow an extra recliner to place in newly empty corner of the dining room (coupled with a recliner I already own) as a new “sitting area.” This will remain until I eventually save up for overstuffed recliners from a more currant decade.

* Make more fudge for Habitat for Bekah. (Assuming, that is, that the pan has once again been returned.)

* Haul end tables from the master bedroom into the living room to be the new tables on either side of the couch.

* Haul short bookcase from living room and short bookcase from guest room into the master bedroom to replace the tables that were relocated to the living room.

* Haul the elliptical machine into the guest room – since I am principally opposed to exercise equipment in the bedroom.

* Rearrange the guest room for good measure.

* Move everything again because by this time, it’s Christmas and everything has to be moved to accommodate the trees.

And may I mention…did you notice the one thing that never moved?

The couch.

It’s okay. Mom never got new linoleum either. She went for carpet.