And I Said It Would Never Be Done

Before I write my entry, I wanted to make sure that you guys see this video. It's awesome...

Be still my heart!

Six years ago we moved everything out of the family room, painted it, and went to Home Depot to order Pergo laminate flooring, which a lovely crew of Russian workmen came and installed. It was gorgeous.

We only had 3/4 of the downstairs covered with Pergo because of the logistics with trying to find a place to put an entire house full of furniture. The plan then was that we would do the living room the next year.

Well, one thing and another intervened and before we knew it, six years had passed and we still had no Pergo in the living room.

This actually became a real problem because when we were raising puppies, I didn't worry too much about housebreaking them or really worrying about what they did in the living room, which, over the years, became the doggie bathroom. OUR dogs (except for Polly) were polite, but the visitors sniffing all that good ol' urine from years of peeing dogs, just followed suit.

But I figured it was no big deal because any month now we were going to be replacing the rug anyway.

Our dogs, with the help of others, started digging in the rug and there were bare patches down to the concrete slab floor and a HUGE hole right in the middle of the floor. We covered that for a few years with a red blanket, held in place by a broken secretary chair until Walt finally decided a year or so ago to get rid of the blanket and replace it with a cheap throw rug from Target, still held in place by the secretary chair.

Needless to say, we haven't had guests in the house for more than a few minutes, in years.

The morning after I got home from San Diego, Walt asked if I had looked in the living room when I got home. There had been no reason to look in there, so, no, I hadn't. He took me in there and lo and behold he had packed up the glassware in our glass cabinet and there was a stack of empty boxes waiting to be filled.

"You mean we're finally going to do the PERGO?" I shrieked. He said that we were.

So today we spent the day starting to pack up the tsatskes.

(note all the rug-cleaning and deodorizing products!)

As you can see there are lots of things to pack up. And it's like a trip down memory lane, not always a fun one. The card Ned's friend Brendan (who died this year) gave me years ago, the mask Paul made when he was in high school, things that I brought here from Gilbert's house, a Christmas ornament of David's, little things that Walt's mother brought to us from her many trips around the world, gifts from exchange students, now long gone.. So many pieces of junk, so many memories.

The frustrating thing was finding things and having no memory of who they came from. One little box had a lovely note from the person who gave it to me, but I can't read the signature.

It will be several days before we have all this stuff packed up. Then we're going to paint the room, which means I have to make decisions about color. I don't just want to paint it white again, but it's a dark room and you kind of need the white to brighten it up. (Suggestions happily considered!)

Walt has even agreed that it's time to replace the pane of glass that David and his friend broke, playing baseball in the house, when they were in grammar school.

I'm giddy with anticipation. It's been a long wait, but it seems that finally the wait is over!