Our Grand Designs

Well I guess I suffered my own Super Bowl hangover.  No I'm not talking about the adverse effects of drinking too much during the Super Bowl - I'm talking about the let down teams often experience the season after winning the Super Bowl.  Apparently many such teams have a hard time balling again come September due in theory to the amount of effort, both physical and mental, it takes to reach the pinnacle of the NFL...and of course the amount of energy and time it takes celebrating being the champs. 

Yes...well that's what I'm blaming for my hiatus from blogging over the past week and a half.  Of course it's because of the let down after the Super Bowl...the end of another fantastic year of football and the long wait for a new season to begin.  Over the next 8 months I'll cling to every little tid-bit of information.  I'll anticipate the start of free agency and speculate about the draft.  Come June I'll be looking forward to the latest fantasy football preview magazine and really start to plan in earnest for the upcoming fantasy season.  Ahhh...the off season.

There will be plenty to keep me busy I'm sure.  And if I get bored, I'm sure my wonderful wife will find work for me to do...and if there isn't any, she'll create a make work project especially for me.  Take yesterday for example...I was sitting at my desk at work, happily plugging away solving Canada's information needs one record at a time when my telephone rings.  It's Alexis and she has called to tell me that she has destroyed our kitchen floor.  "What do you mean?"  I ask in a patient voice that is doing its best to mask the panic welling up from deep within my heart. 

You see we're planning on redoing our kitchen...in the summer.  She has been chomping at the bit to get the project rolling and for the past week or so has been playing with the idea of beginning to tear some of the fixtures out now in preparation for the work.  I have been quite clear and consistent in my conviction that it is much too early to begin the work and we should wait until much closer to when we are prepared to continue with the renovations.  I don't want to have a partly finished or partly demolished kitchen for 6 months.  I figure a good three day weekend of work and demolition, the week before the workers are scheduled to begin to install our new stuff, should be sufficient.  Alexis thought differently and turned her playful ideas into concrete action and thus I came home yesterday to a partly ripped up kitchen floor. 

Needless to say Lex and my girls put in a lot of hard work but only got a fifth of the first layer off...it needs a lot more work to finish the job.  I'm not even sure what the interim state of the floor would be like if we continued along this course.  We certainly can't install new flooring now when we're planning on redoing the whole kitchen in 5 or 6 months.  And I'm not sure the stuff that we've uncovered makes for a very nice 5 or 6 months if we in deed completed the phase my lovely ladies began.  So after some discussion, we decided to paint the section that's torn up to match the rest of the floor and put our rug back down to cover up most of the patch. 

To my wife's credit she did the majority of the painting and even touched up spots around the main floor - scratches and spots along the walls here and there - she also cleaned up the mess of tiles and floor pieces on the front porch too and even shoveled some snow because she was feeling badly about it all.  I for my part rustled up the tools and paint and helped with the painting. 

That doesn't sound like much but it wasn't a simple matter.  My roller was in my shed which at the moment is in winter-condition.  That means it is jam-packed, bursting at the seams with all the stuff that I'm trying to protect from the cold and snow.  While rummaging around in the shed I had a ladder and then a garden hose rack (both heavy metal objects) fall on my head.  What's more is that I discovered a varmint had taken up residence in my shed. 

Oh yes, a squirrel had squeezed its way inside my shed, found my stash of yard waste paper bags and had shred them to kingdom come.  I mean I couldn't have had more than 3 or 4 bags in there but it looked like about 50 bags had gone through a mechanical shredder and subsequently strewn all over my shed floor.  What a mess!!  So I ended up cleaning my shed out in the cold with a light snow/sleet falling on me.  It was a wonderful night. 

The floor is now livable although I'm not too sure we'll leave it for six months.  I might end up peeling the onion back a few layers and seeing what's underneath.  But that's for another day.  For now I think we'll be content looking forward to our summer renovations while enjoying and living vicariously through other peoples' experiences as documented on the numerous design shows we have been watching recently (which we may cut down on in an attempt to rein in our enthusiasm and penchant for spontaneous DIY redesign projects).  Video's such as this: