January 25, 2016 - Can someone please turn on the boob?

I was in charge of finding the light fixtures. It was the first of many hysterical things that would happen during this house renovation. I went in search of at the local home store, but I couldn’t get past the fact that every single fixture I needed for the hallways all looked like boobs. And some were more boob-like than others, but all carried the boob formation. Every single one of them. So I am standing in the aisle staring up at the ceiling laughing. And I mean really laughing. Like hide-it-under-your-breath kind of chuckling so the employee next to you with the restock inventory doesn’t haul you off to the local institution laughing. Who stares at a ceiling and laughs? I tried so hard to see it for what it was – Edison’s mode of improving the next century - but I just couldn’t get past the Impostor likeness. I then spent the next hour, yes hour, trying to find the one that least looked like a boob, but sticking with the style we needed (white glass, oiled bronze frame, flush mount, 3 bulbs). I found the prettiest boob I could find in our price range, threw it in the cart, and went home. “Ron, what does this remind you of?” “A boob.”  See what going through breast reconstruction can do to you? EVERY TIME I see a flush mount light fixture, this is what I see. And I guess now you will too. (You can thank me later). “Ron, will you please turn on the boob?” The store employee next to me in the store, however, seemed completely oblivious to my new discovery and left me to laugh all alone. We got the boob hung this weekend and now I find myself saying “Ron, can you please turn on the boob?”

Hysterical thing #2. Now I know you may have had to be there for this one, but go with me. It was hysterical. We are ripping out the floors to replace with hardwoods. Long story short, but we now are doing the entire downstairs instead of just the master bedroom as originally planned (Thank you, super fantastic deal!). Part of the new plans included the half bath. Well in order to do that install, we needed to remove the toilet. It’s now close to 11 pm after an exhausting 13+ hours (day umpteen of such!) of ripping staples out of the floor and such when we realize we need to get the toilet removed tonight since install starts tomorrow. I hear Ron in there removing bolts and then “Sally, get the front door!” I walk around the corner to see him bear hugging the commode. (Picture Ron FACING the toilet mind you, straddling the bowl between his legs, bear hugging the back tank portion, with his chin on the tank lid, and waddling down the hallway carrying this 40+ pound awkward contraption toward the front door.) And of course Sally starts giggling. Ron gives me the angry look as he is juggling this awkward beast at 11 pm at night after an exhausting day of serious manual labor where even our teeth hurt. But how could I not laugh? Did you picture that in your head? Did you? And out the door he went, through the iced walkway, to the garage. And there I stood again, alone, trying to stifle the hysterical laughter. I might have been a tad giddy after the exhaustion night after night.

 And then earlier in the same day there was hysterical laughter #3. As I am standing in the garage with Ron as we are “making room” for our cars, I glance out the garage door to see if it is snowing. Longing to be out there instead of in box hauling mode I was in. Suddenly, I see over the top of Ron’s car to see my car hood car inching its way down the driveway. Inch, Inch, Inch. “RON!!!!! RUN!!! The car is rolling down the driveway!” Ron goes tearing out of the garage, fumbling with the key fob, and jumps in the car. Then I see the car reversing back up the driveway. Ron gets out of the car, comes back into the garage all cool, calm, and collected. I am standing there wide eyed wondering how in the world it was so perfectly timed that I happened to glance out of the door at the exact moment the car starts its get-away stroll. Shew. Crises adverted. Head back inside to the dining room to once again start ripping out nails. Climb back onto the floor. Start pulling out nails with the dang needle nose pliers. Cussing inside my head as to why we didn’t hire this out. Wondering how I am going to get myself back up off the floor after having sat with my legs in a v shape in front of me and leaning my aching back over for hours on end over the last few days while yanking with all of my might for not 10, but now over 500 nails. Look out the window to dream of the crystal blue seas of Caicos. Inch. Inch. Inch. “RON!!!! RUN!!! It’s rolling again!!!!!” Ron goes tearing back out of the house, through the garage down the driveway……OK, now how does this happen not once, but twice to us! And how do I so happen to time my day dreaming moments at the exact right time? Needless to say, the car was then parked back in the driveway with 2 bricks under the back tires, the emergency brake on and in gear. Again, like while standing in the department store, I was the only one laughing.

Then comes the not so hysterical portion of this house episode. We had been suspicious when we bought the house. That baseboard in the kitchen looked a little “off”. We were right. At inspection they found a small leak, which was “repaired” and all was well (until we found it leaking again after inspection and it was inspected and repaired again). But yesterday, when we pulled up the vinyl, what did one find? Mold (well, what we think is mold anyway). You could see it, you could smell it, you could feel it. And now we sit, not laughing, waiting with the floor exposed for the expert to come to see if it is isolated to that portion of the floor or has it seeped behind and up into the wall that connects to the floor there. Will the wall need to come down? And did I mention it is the one wall I had just painstakingly painted only a few hours before? The man better not tell me we have to pull off the sheet rock …that I just painted. To say I am terrified of mold would be an understatement. It’s horrible in the best of states. With my working in bone marrow transplant I see the nasty outcomes of such predators for people with no immune system. And now in my pulmonary fibrosis state I am over the top terrified of it. So that is being dealt with STAT! Unfortunately, there was no laughter during or after this story. In fact, I felt a little anger. But what can you do? And so we wait. (Update: The good news is it turned out to be a super small area isolated to the vinyl floor. No wall contamination. No crawl space contamination. It's now completely gone. Crisis averted).

I say all of this as a reminder to myself that even in moments (weeks, months) where you feel like life is just over the top, there will still always be moments of laughter. On a day when just 24 hours before I felt I had hit my last ounce of energy and the frustration-induced-rant was spilling over the end of my tongue came a day not of changed circumstances, but a day of carefully disperse moments of laughter in the middle of all of the exhausting muck.  And those moments perfectly arrived to give me a little burst to get through the next nail. The next carpet square. The next mold spore. When every fiber of every muscle was throbbing, He sent me a few moments of laughter. (Well, laughter once the crisis was adverted…and evidently if you aren’t the one carrying the toilet!) Those moments are always there. When life gets out of sorts, they are still there. You just have to be open to seeing them. And it helps to have good friends helping you along the way. 

Can someone please turn on the boob? Oh yeah, I forgot, the electricity is out. 

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And the one I actually chose.