Homeownership Kind of Sucks

So back in September, I mentioned that my Weekend Warrior project of attempting to paint our guest bedroom turned into a water-heater-leaking nightmare. We are still in the process of that aftermath. Here's a rundown of what's been going on:

1. The leaky water heater was replaced
2. We tore up the bedroom baseboard, carpet, padding, tack strips, and some drywall
3. We went carpet shopping at Home Depot and were overwhelmed by the quantity of their selection, but underwhelmed by the quality of it
4. We bought enough plywood to replace the entire subfloor, since most of it had mold and water stains on it
5. We attempted to replace the subfloor ourselves, but after cutting a decent sized hole in the floor, realized we were in way over our heads
6. A contractor was hired to fix the subfloor and drywall, plus pull up all the peel-and-stick tile in the utility room that got water under it, and replace that tile
7. The contractor didn't show up
8. We went carpet shopping at Yonan Carpet One based on cheesy television commercials I'd seen and they turned out to have really great carpet, but I was about to go out of town so we didn't want to make any commitments in which my husband would have been the only person home to look at color samples and make the final selection when they came to our house to measure the room. And considering that our bedroom was in no shape for new carpet at that moment anyway, it didn't really matter to put off the purchase
9. Our furnace broke
10. The contractor said he was going to wait to do our repairs until the furnace was replaced, since the footprint of the new furnace would be different and therefore, make a difference in the new tile layout
11. A few furnace guys came over to give a quote and we hired one
12. The furnace guy showed up a week later on a Saturday at 11am. He wasn't finished until 9pm.
13. We woke up the next morning to a freezing cold house. The furnace wasn't working
14. My father-in-law thought the problem might have been the breaker, so he came out to look at it, but realized this would be better off in the hands of a professional
15. An electrician came out the next day, but said the breaker was fine. The problem seemed to be the new furnace after all
16. The furnace guy came back later that night and was able to fix it
17. The contractor finally showed up and made all our repairs
18. I went back to the carpet store to make the purchase, but our salesman wasn't in that day. I left my number for him to call me 4 days later when he'd be back at work, to set up a measure/color sample appointment
19. The carpet guy came over with samples and a tape measure and we placed our order
20. I could finally paint the bedroom now that the floor and walls had been fixed, which had been my original intention 3 months earlier. I painted one wall a green accent color and the rest of the walls, a light grey
21. The carpet was installed
22. My father-in-law began installing our new baseboard
23. I decided I didn't like the grey paint color I'd chosen, but I did like the green enough to paint all the walls that color. I just didn't have enough paint
24. I painstakingly taped a plastic drop cloth around the room to protect the new carpet and baseboards
25. I went back to Ace Hardware to get more of that same exact green mixed up. It looked okay when he put a dab on the top of the can, but when I got it home and started painting, it looked significantly more red
26. I was too frustrated and lazy to go back to Ace for another try at mixing the color correctly. My husband and I agreed that the more-red version of the green wasn't terrible, so I continued with it
27. The baseboard installation was finished
28. It took forever to remove all the painters tape, which doesn't come off nearly as easily as the commercials indicate that it should
29. We finally started moving furniture back in yesterday, but were so exhausted from dealing with the rest of this mess that we didn't get very far with the furniture, so we are still living amongst piles of crap everywhere...hopefully for just a few more days

We are planning to be done with everything by the end of this coming weekend, but the way things have been going so far, I wouldn't be surprised if something else goes wrong first.

Maintenance Issues

It's been pretty quiet here at work today. I don't know if everyone is still half-asleep after a lazy weekend, or if everyone is just really hard at work...or at least most people.

Because the silence was broken mid-morning by the sound of fingernail clippers hard at work. Three desks down the line from me is a guy who takes about five minutes every week to clip his fingernails. And what really gets me, is that he's not the only one. I can think of three other guys I've sat near who have consistently engaged in this habit. And I just don't understand what would make these offenders think this behavior was acceptable.

1. You are at work, therefore, you are here to work...not to take care of body maintenance. If I came to work tomorrow and started painting my toenails or waxing my eyebrows, I'm pretty sure someone would say something to me about it. Fingernail clipping is no different.
2. Why can't this be done at home? Are you that busy cooking and cleaning, taking care of your kids and your pets and maintaining your home every available minute of every single day that you can't take a five minute break once in awhile to clip your fingernails?
3. If you absolutely MUST do this at work, at least have the courtesy to do it in the bathroom. Not that I'm encouraging that approach either, but at least it's a compromise.

I briefly thought about typing an anonymous note and leaving it on this guy's desk. Something like, "FYI: It is disgusting to clip your fingernails at work. Please take that shit home." And that got me thinking about lots of other notes that I could leave for lots of other people like, "FYI: It's very rude of you to ask me a question and then start talking over me as I'm answering you," or "Please don't talk with your mouth full. No one wants to hear that."

In reality, I don't have the balls to do something that mean. I would be pretty embarrassed and feel really bad about myself if someone left me a note saying something like, "Your girly hand lotion smell is really bothersome."

So for now I will just keep my mouth shut. And what I can hope for with the fingernail cutter is that he 1.) doesn't progress to toenail clipping, and 2.) that a fingernail clipping will fly into my eye, blinding me incapable of doing my job, and I can retire on workman's comp for life.

Garbage Doughnuts

If you are the Seinfeld fanatic that I am, you might have read the title of this post and think that I'm going to talk about the episode where George's girlfriend's mother catches him eating a doughnut out of the trash. Or maybe the episode where Elaine is having an affair with the Green Lantern and they eat a bear claw in the alley behind the bakery. That is not really where this post is going though. This is about an actual incident of me eating doughnuts out of a trash can...sort of.

It was back in the wonderfully fun days of working at The Benz. It might have been someones birthday, or maybe a random Friday, or maybe someone was just selfishly providing breakfast for everyone. But in any case, someone had brought in Dunkin Donuts Munchkins one particular morning for my team. Everyone grabbed a few to have with their morning coffee, but after that, there didn't seem to be much interest in finishing the leftovers. So A threw the rest of them away.

Later that afternoon I started dragging. Usually around 2:00 I find myself struggling to keep my eyes open. Usually this can be solved with a can of Coke to get enough of a caffeine fix to get me through the rest of the day. But on this day, that wasn't doing the trick. Perhaps my weariness was caused by the sugar high from that morning's Munchkins wearing off. Or maybe I just hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. But it became pretty clear to me that in addition to some afternoon caffeine, some sugar was going to be in order.

I went to see my friend C, who sometimes had mini Reese's PB cups at her desk. But she hadn't made a candy-run to Walmart in awhile and was out of Reese's, or anything else that might have boosted my energy level. But she remembered that there had been some doughnuts left over from that morning. I told her they had been thrown away. Shocked at the silly thought of someone throwing away perfectly good Munchkins, C went to investigate the situation herself. She asked A what had been done with the leftovers, and A pointed to the trash can in the empty cubicle next to her.

C walked over to the trash can, pulled it out from under the desk, and peered inside. Indeed, there were quite a few Munchkins still in the box. She took the box out of the garbage can, picked up a doughnut hole, gave it a little squeeze to confirm that it hadn't hardened or staled since the open box had been tossed earlier that morning, and took a bite.

I was horrified! "Those were in the GARBAGE can!!"

C: They were still in the box, in a can at an empty desk, with no other garbage in the can. What do you think could be wrong with these?

Me: They were in the GARBAGE can!!

C: But they taste fine.

She ate another one, as if to prove to me that they were indeed fine. And she was either really convincing, or I was really just so cheap, lazy and tired that I'd rather eat garbage doughnuts instead of going down one floor to the break room where the vending machine was located.

As it turned out, C was right. They did taste fine. They were so good in fact, that she and I ended up finishing the rest of the box by the end of the day. And it was just what I needed to get me through the workday without falling asleep at my desk.

And in my further defense, Jerry tells George that "adjacent to refuse, is refuse." But my garbage doughnuts were not adjacent to anything. So I guess it really doesn't even count as garbage :)