Miracle

"You put a picture of one of your kids sleeping on the internet? That just seems wrong somehow, dude."

" "

"So you go into your kid's room in the middle of the night, turn on all the lights and throw off his covers???"

"So I go into his room late in the evening to cram his clean laundry back into his dresser and I turn around and there, in the glow of the nightlight, he is, in exactly that position."

"So you're all like 'dude, I've gotta get my camera'?"

"I'm standing there thinking: 'this beautiful boy came thousands of miles, over mountains of paperwork, through two hulking bureaucracies to a place he didn't know or choose, and instantly changed us from a couple to a family. He has no clue what he has done for us, and I owe him a debt I can only try, and fail, to repay every single day until I die."

" "

"And then I'm all like 'dude, I've gotta get my camera!'"

Cheap, Lazy and Neurotic – Part 1

The people we bought our house from raised three daughters in it. That they had no boys is the only explanation I can imagine for the wall-to-wall in the bathrooms not being worse than it was. But then we moved in with three kids, two of them boys. As long as the little pishers were in diapers we figured we were ok, but as soon as the boys started to be like daddy and stand up to pee we knew the carpet had to go. So, being cheap, I decided I would do it myself, and by the way, why don’t we get rid of the carpet in the hall that all the creatures under 4 feet tall in the house had puked on. And the steps, too, that carpet had to go. So we went out and bought materials – lots and lots of bamboo flooring that sort of matched the kitchen and dining room floors that we paid someone (the horror!) to install before we moved in. We also ordered tile for the bathroom. That was last fall.

So now I had a concept and materials and a worried wife because M has been here before and is trying to gently tread the dental floss thin line between gentle encouragement and desperate pleading. How long does the bamboo have to take up half the family room floor ‘acclimating’ to our house’s temperature and humidity?

Months.

I have a process for figuring out how to do these home repair projects that I know nothing about. First I obsess for a while and allow the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing to create incredible disaster fantasies. Could I put a nail through the water main when laying floor in the upstairs hall? Not only could I but I most likely will! Once I’ve gotten past that and what little confidence I had is on its way to the liquor store I then start talking to people who know less than I do (hi guys from work!) Next I talk to the Old Guy Carpenters who do know what they’re doing and talk to me like I do too so I only understand about half of what they’re saying. They load me up with tools that I am either afraid of or don’t know how to use. Then I get serious and go talk to the guys at the hardware store. They convince me that any idiot could do what I’m trying to do, and somehow I believe it. Finally, I read the two paragraphs that have anything to do with my project in my Time-Life Book of How to Fix Anything in Any Home with Introduction by Bob Vila. A few ten more cups of coffee and I’m ready.

I’m feeling pretty confident about getting the bamboo down in the hall and on the steps before our Thanksgiving guests arrive so I get started the first week of December. M continues to walk her very fine line as she contemplates her entire family arriving for Christmas. She knows if she kills me I’ll REALLY never finish the project.

My Old Guy Carpenter friend Cliff is amazingly helpful and patient and thanks to him I get all the important pieces of the wood floors down prior to guest arrivals but the vinyl tiles for the bathroom continue to ‘acclimate’ in the garage, on the kitchen peninsula, in the laundry room, wherever. And the kids bathroom isn’t smelling any better, let me assure you.

As always with these projects, I radically underestimate the amount of time and trouble. I boldly swear to M that I WILL get this done by, oh, lets say the end of March, definitely. So here’s the way things look on Friday morning March 21:

Yup, lots of carpet still there.

But wait, things are beginning to happen. Later that morning the toilet magically jumps into the bathtub! Thank whatever entity you choose to thank that you aren’t getting on your hands and knees in the small space back there where the toilet used to be and where gallons of pee have marinated the carpet, pad and underlayment. The underlayment, by the way, is about the consistency of shredded wheat and will need to be replaced. I sort of anticipated that might be the case but only in a vague, theoretical way, not in an “I have a clue what to do next” kind of way. Luckily the combination of the rotten wood and the fact that our house was so cheaply constructed means that there are only nine nails holding the underlayment down in that side of the bathroom, so, using my handy cordless Sawzall knock-off (overgrown electric steak knife) and a crowbar it comes up without a problem. I love demolition!

Now I find that I have 40 minutes to go to another Old Guy Carpenter’s house to get an essential and scary tool AND go to the lumberyard to get the new wood for the underlayment, before M needs the van to go to school to pick up the kids. Oh, and Older Boy is George Washington in the first grade’s live wax museum this afternoon too.

I tear out of the driveway concentrating on – what the heck is a live wax museum?

Somehow I get the tool and the wood and get back in time. I’m feeling pretty good right about now.

“So,” M asks, “want to go see the live wax museum?”