Sunday, April 24, 2005

Guess Where I Slept Last Night

Go ahead guess, if you said in your "brand new bedroom" (say it as if you're on Price is Right, cause that's how I do) you would be correct. Sorry there is no picture but I cannot get the camera to work after the field trip to Megan's school. When I came home on Friday Gordon had the radiator covers on, the closet full of clothes, my chest of drawers back in the room with my clothes all folded neatly in the drawers, and my old nightstand stripped but not finished. Yesterday Megan and I put together the new furniture (a bedroom-in-a-box: dresser, nightstand, headboard, and mirror) except for the mirror. We then loaded the new furniture and unfinished nightstand into the room. The only thing left was to get cinderblocks for the bed frame. The plan was to have Bob pick them up at the Home Depot in Houghton Lake and bring them here after work but he had picked up a dryer while on his Pizza deliveries and didn't have room. I was sooo close to sleeping in my own room! While I was waiting to hear back from Gordon on Bob's status Dad called and we were discussing how I was leery of putting 20 cinderblocks in my car he said that if I ever had to to make sure I distributed the weight through out the car. After Gordon called and said it couldn't be until some time today - maybe, Megan and I determined that if the cinderblocks weighed 10 lbs each that would be 200 pounds and we had the front seat well covered and could load the rest in the trunk and the back seat. So off we go, stop first at Wal-Mart for milk and various groceries not a lot, load that in the back seat. Into Home Depot, grab a pull cart, ask where the cinderblocks are, find them, some tiny woman comes out and says can I help you, I say I think I got it I just need some of these cinderblocks, she asked if I needed help loading them, "How much do they weigh?", "Oh, 30-35 lbx each." After saying Um Yes, I quickly did some math and determined 15 blocks would be just fine. While I was doing math this little thing started loading cinderblocks on the cart. I had assumed she was calling in some muscles, but I guess she had them already. I did help her load them trying to work out if we really needed 15, but found math is a fair weather friend and totally deserted me as I was slowly losing consciousness. I managed to pull the cart out to the car and load them all in, getting them in was terrible, once they were down moving them to a good spot so I could put another in was almost impossible, if I had had 20 there was no way they were all going in the car (and it turns out 15 was more then needed although I did use them all). I ran through the drive through at McD's to feed poor Megan who had been so helpful all day. While she ate dinner, I contemplated how I was going to get these blocks into the house before Gordon got home, and I had to before Gordon got home since I was picking Gordon and Robert up from work and could not with the blocks in the car. I pulled out small dolly type carrier that I used when I was traveling back and forth with a file box for work. We loaded two blocks on the dolly, Megan pulled that into the house and I carried one. With three in, I laid an old blanket on the floor and put one side down for the bed, we dragged the box springs in and moved the blocks around and then brought in three more, and so on five times. I used material left over from the window curtains (dark blue) and cut strips to run along the side and foot of the bed to cover the cinderblocks. Matteress, clean sheets, the new blanket I made, and 11 pillows later I was all set. Megan closed the door so when Gordon came home we could have a reveal. The old nightstand still needs to be finished, but we are not sure right now what we want to do, we had thought that we were going to mix some of the wall blue with some white to make a lighter blue, but I think that might be just too much blue, and my chest of drawers looks really out of place and old so we may redo that to. But in the meantime I'm not sleeping on the floor, or without a door to close when the kids get here in the mornings so I am good. I will post a picture as soon as I work out the camera issue. Going through all of this was so much nicer being able to share it with all of you.

3 comments:

marty said...

Hint.....When we are going to pick up things that may exceed the weight linits of our car we don't bring along people for company.Put your math skills back to work.......one less person=______more cinderblocks.

EZ Travel said...

Ah, but one less person = more cinderblocks to move yourself. I can't even picture what you did with the cinderblocks, but I am glad you got it done and that you shared it all with us. I hope you got the reveal on tape.

KathrynVH said...

Marisa called you "gretch"--that just reminds me about how Aunt Rita used to correct us if we called her Rita.