Waiting for a Girl Like You

My phone rang at 7:00 on Saturday morning. No one calls me that early unless there is an emergency. Well, no one who knows me, that is. It was Lowe's, calling me to apologize for the trouble that they had given me yesterday (after I gave them the online feedback that they requested at the bottom of my receipt). They wanted to know if they could bring my new refrigerator between 9:00 and noon and, of course, I said that they could and thanked them for calling.

Then came the hard part. I had to drag myself out of bed at that ungodly hour of the day. McKenna refused to get up and stayed in bed for another hour, when she smelled bacon cooking. After making a yummy breakfast of strawberry muffins, bacon, and Puerto Rican coffee, I moved things out of the way in preparation for the arrival of the new refrigerator. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. Right at noon, the delivery guys pulled up to the house. The Offensive Beast had spent its last night in my house:

They brought the New Girl in and then began to work on removing the Offensive Beast. I wanted to die when they pulled it away from the wall. The Disgustingtons strike again. Imagine how much dirt is under the average refrigerator and then multiply that by about 100--that's how much crap was under this thing. Besides your basic dust and dirt, there were three pens, a Sharpie, a magnet, part of a phone book, some receipts, and a wadded up extension cord. So, I got to work with the shop vac and cleaned up as much as I could. I was going to just live with the rest of the dirt, but I was just too grossed out, so I told the guys that I wanted to mop quickly and started scrubbing. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until my mop head was in shreds and by then it was reasonably clean.

Then, they rolled the New Girl into place:

While the New Girl cooled down, I ran into town to get a new mop head so that I could finish cleaning the floor and to pick up some other things. When I got home, I made myself a Lemon Drop before I started cleaning.

I washed the New Girl inside and out with a Magic Eraser and a mild detergent solution. Isn't she pretty?







By then, things were fairly cool, so I started moving things from the little refrigerator into the New Girl:

I cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom and put the magnets on the New Girl:

The tablecloth is new--Mother of Ken sent it to me this week and it is so pretty.

Finally, life is back to normal in the Ken and McKenna household. After a trip to the grocery store, the New Girl will be full of good food. McKenna has claimed the tiny refrigerator as her own. She plans to keep scraps and bacon grease in there.

Happy Easter to all of my gentle readers. McKenna and I are celebrating our 100th post with Lemon Drops chilled in the New Girl.

Haven't We Been Here Before: Some Updates

I am sure that all of you gentle readers are on the edges of your seats waiting to find out what is going on with the refrigerator. So far, the Offensive Beast's replacement has not arrived. When I called to find out what was going on, my conversation with the delivery person went something like this:

Delivery Man: "This is the delivery man calling."

Me: "Yes."

DM: "We have your refrigerator. When do you want to schedule the delivery?"

Me: "I'll be home all day today, would you like to bring it this afternoon?"

DM: "How about Sunday?"

Me: "Is that the soonest you can bring it?"

DM: "Yes."

Me: "Well, then I guess Sunday will have to do."

DM: "Is Sunday afternoon convenient for you?"

Me: "Not really, since it is Easter, but since I don't have a working refrigerator right now, I don't have much choice."

DM: "Okay, we'll bring it on Sunday afternoon."

Me: "Okay."

DM: "Well, I guess I could call you if anyone cancels today or tomorrow."

Me: "I would appreciate that."

Gee, thanks. I love that they brag about next day delivery for their in-stock appliances, but when you order one, it takes three days to deliver it after it arrives. For now, my little NuCool refrigerator will just have to do...

My Grambi has been asking me to update "It's a broad noodle." all week. I must apologize for omitting a reference to the important people who "fluff" the noodles several times a day as they dry to ensure even drying. The chicken and noodle dinners would be nothing without the "noodle fluffers" who ensure the high quality of the noodles made in the St. Timothy's kitchen.

In other news, because I know you are dying to find out what I have been up to all week, the creek is running pretty high as a result of the rain and snow that we have had lately. Here's a short video of the roaring rapids outside of my back door:

The highlight of our week was the arrival of a box from Mother and Father of Ken. McKenna was convinced that Piper and Boomer were in the box and she spent most of the morning sniffing and rubbing on the box and trying to put her head inside.

McKenna received a special gift from Mother of Ken: a St. Patrick's Day t-shirt from Old Navy. For some reason, she loves to wear clothes, although she doesn't have an extensive wardrobe nor do I dress her regularly. Here she is modeling her new shirt:

Maybe my next post will include news that the Offensive Beast is gone and the new refrigerator is presiding over the kitchen--wish me luck!

Believe It or Not

This picture of McKenna after we got back from taking a walk on Thursday pretty much sums up how I feel after two days of work on the house.

Friday was installation day for the new carpet in the bedrooms, so on Thursday night, I took everything out of the downstairs bedrooms.

I had stuff in the kitchen:

The laundry room:

The living room, but I forgot to take a picture of the queen size mattress and box spring that I shoved behind the wood stove.



The downstairs bathroom:

And I put a few odds and ends in my loft study. It took me about an hour per room and then I did the same thing in my bedroom on Friday morning, which you will see later in this post.

So, beginning with the larger of the two downstairs bedrooms, the Father and Mother of Ken suite, here's what I started with:

You may remember me writing before about how the carpet in the downstairs bedrooms was a hideous teal color and also smelled like cat urine when I moved in, so we removed the carpet and I just painted the sub floor. When the realtor came a few weeks ago, she said that we would get more for the house if the bedrooms were carpeted.

And now the new Mother and Father of Ken suite:

During all of this, McKenna found various places to make herself scarce:

The other downstairs bedroom, the Leah suite, looked like this before:

And now, with the new carpet:

McKenna found another place to hide:

Perhaps the greatest transformation took place in the "master suite." I have hated this carpet since the day I moved in, but really had no reason to change it because it was in good condition in a room that few people ever saw. The realtor took one look at it and encouraged us to put new carpet in that room as well.

The previous carpet:

And the new carpet:

None of the new carpet is something that I would choose for a home that I planned to live in longer than the year I have left here. However, we were able to purchase two remnants for the downstairs bedrooms that were half off and the carpet that went in my bedroom was clearance. The carpet installer told me that this was some of the thickest carpet he had ever put down. Apparently, we paid a quarter of the original cost per square foot for this carpet. As someone who prides herself on finding good sales, I feel pretty good about the deal we got on this carpet.

The thickness of the carpet in the upstairs bedroom:

I was informed that the carpet installer was not a morning person and would not arrive before 11:30, so I waited until Friday morning to clear things out of my bedroom. Here it is before:

I put as much as I could in the bathroom to get it out of the way:

I also had to dismantle the closet organizer so that they could put new carpet on the closet floor. In the process of taking it apart, I noticed that the brackets that support the lower shelf had been completely pulled out of the wall. Once again, thanks to Mr. Disgustington, I had a problem on my hands.

At first, I thought that I was just going to have to buy a new closet organizer because I didn't think that I could put this one back together in such a way as to ensure its stability and safety. By the time the carpet installers left, I had decided to take another look at that shelf and the brackets and see if I could somehow make it work. As I studied it, I realized that the brackets had built-in anchors and a little tab that you have to flip up to insert a screw and then flip down to lock the shelf in place. When I flipped the tabs up, there were no screws. So, the shelf pulled out of the wall because it wasn't screwed in to begin with! This moron just stuck the brackets into some holes he drilled and called it a day. Why am I surprised by this? Once I put the brackets back into the holes and inserted a screw into each of them, the whole closet organizer came back together in a snap and is much stronger that it ever was before.

All is right with the world when my clothes and shoes are in place and organized by sleeve length and color. Stop laughing.

After moving back into the closet, I put everything back in my bedroom:

New carpet!

All of the rooms are so much brighter and they look a lot bigger now with the new carpet, especially the master bedroom. It was a huge relief to see that ugly carpet being hauled away from the house.

I stayed up until almost 1:30 in the morning putting things back together and felt satisfied that the house was in good shape when I went to bed. Then I woke up and found that all hell had broken loose on the other side of the house in the kitchen. I had water all over the floor this morning because my refrigerator, the Offensive Beast, died.

After making some phone calls and looking at a few places, it became clear that it was going to take at least three days for me to get a "bisque" colored refrigerator delivered to match the rest of the appliances, so I ordered one that could arrive as early as Wednesday or as late as next Saturday.

Here is the Offensive Beast, which I have never liked because it is huge and ugly and ingrained with dirt from the Disgustingtons and if you put anything on the left side of the refrigerator, it freezes.

I can't exactly spend the next several days with no refrigeration unit, so I ended up purchasing a small refrigerator that I have installed in my laundry room. It is very tiny, but it holds the essentials and I suppose that once I get the new refrigerator, it can become a wine fridge or something fancy.

Here's the new tiny, energy efficient refrigerator. It runs on the same amount of power as a 60w light bulb--it's like the Easy Bake Oven version of a refrigerator. The important thing is that it works and I was able to move it easily on my own.

Isn't it cute?

You can see what is important to me--apparently all I need to survive is butter, butter, butter, cream cheese, a couple of other cheeses, potatoes, and garlic. I was able to salvage some of this from the Offensive Beast, so at least I didn't lose all of my food.