10 Signs you are suffering from exhaustion.
- You can’t think straight – or at all (forgetting what you’re saying in the middle of a sent…um what was I saying?)
- You are more than stressed out
- Your usual healthy go-to’s have been replaced by chocolate bars and coke (the drinking kind)
- You find yourself counting sheep one too many nights in a row (The sheep are saying, “Oh YOU again? Well, try calling us by name tonight.”
- Your lips are constantly cracked and dry (which makes playing horn hard.)
- You can’t bear the thought of the gym – and when you do manage to drag yourself there, your PBs have significantly dropped
- Your mood is tumultuous, to say the least
- You feel short of breath – even when you’re doing nothing at all
- You seem to permanently have the office cold (No, the electricity was turned off for 8 hours so he could fix the electricity. Oh wait, not cold office?)
- Your sofa is fast becoming your new BFF (WHAT SOFA?!!!)
They got the front door in. What? New doors don’t usually come with door handles and deadbolts? They assume you’re going to reuse the old hardware? Who makes assumptions like that?!
“So, you’ll have to run to Lowe’s to get the handle and deadbolt.” *smirks* Then he just stands there.
“I’ll have to drive over your truck.”
“Hahaha! You can’t drive over my truck!” *smiles condescendingly* He doesn’t seem to get that he’s parked behind my car.
“I’m not going to drive over my mailbox.”
“Oh, you can drive around that…”
“MOVE YOUR TRUCK SO I CAN GO TO LOWES TO GET THE FREAKIN’ HARDWARE!”
“Oh.”
Now all I have to do is paint the front door and finish the carpet in the entryway.
This is the tale of the Microwave/hood.
You can sing this to Gilligan’s Island, but it won’t fit. It’s more of a Dr. Seuss type poem, but if Dr. Seuss had gone through this, he would have been completely bonkers and would have been committed and…sob…we wouldn’t have the Grinch.
My range is old
My hood won’t suck
The paint is peeling
The spoon rest is stuck.
I must update
The bank to please
The floor for them–
A range for me!
A trip to Lowe’s
I fell in love!
A microwave
Above my stove (ok, they’re spelled alike, make it work!)
“You’ll need a plug
I can’t oblige.
Check HA (Home Advisor) (OH and NEVER take the advice of Home advisors–take the ones they send you and ask them 20 questions like: Since you’re here to do electrical work, are you an electrician?)
for some advice.
They sent a man
to move the plug
Electrician? No
That’s the first bug.
Installer comes
“Your guy’s no ace!
You’ve the wrong plug
In the wrong place!”
“Can you fix it?”
I hope and plead.
“I’m a plumber–
Here’s the number you need.”
“Is HE an electrician?”
“Um, well he’s trained.”
I start to see my
bank account drained.
Now for those of you keeping score: The 1st guy, the carpenter, put the wrong plug in the wrong place. Charged $258. The 2nd guy, the plumber–installing the microwave (?)–puts the wrong plug in the right place and charges $50.
I contact my friend
Her guy’s the real thing!
His name’s on his truck!
Licensed and everything. (No it doesn’t scan right. Suck it up)
He comes in to look
Nearly faints in surprise
With a horrified look
“Who WERE those guys!”
What should have been
a simple job
took 8 hours
to fix the flub!
So the third guy put the right plug into the right place, made sure the other wires were connected according to code, put in a new circuit box, replaced the insufficient connecting wire to the AC unit, and actually LABELED the circuits. $1555. The folks that built this house in 1968 took some short cuts. They used aluminum wire because it was cheaper. It could also burn your house down. They attached multiple circuits to the breakers–double-tap. The house has to pass an inspection on Friday, so we have to keep the storeroom clean and unencumbered. My circuit board looked like this:
5 Kitchen
6 Livingroom
7 outlets
8 ?
9 ?
Yup, 17 circuit breakers, 7 labeled.
Unintended consequences: Had to completely clean up the floor in the storeroom downstairs. Found 25 more VCR tapes. I have 2 pressure cookers! We no longer have sleeping bags we can use. We also now have 1/2 another dumpster full of trash and no dumpster. Still pulling off wallpaper in the bedroom and hubby’s office.
- No, I can’t thing sright. think srat, think straight?
- STRESSED OUT? YOU THINK I’M STRESSED OUT?
- It’s time to log in dinner…chocolate pie and beer
- To sleep, perchance to dream about something other than color palettes. No I don’t mean dreaming about colored sheep either.
- I seem to be looking for chapstick. I don’t even use the stuff!
- Gym? All my muscles are sore already! Delts, Lats, Biceps, Triceps, Trapezia (is that plural of trapezius?) Pecs, Right quad (ladder climbing) Obliques. The gym would actually be relaxing by comparison!
- I have to make sure not to punch holes in the wall I’m prepping to paint. I’ve become adept at colorful and imaginative cursing. “HA! Your mother wore MAUVE and your father had an Ocean breeze leisure suit!”
- Short of breath? I can’t finish my melodic minor scales without a break!
- I think breathing in all the wallpaper paste remover has made me sneeze more than usual.
- And, as above, NO COUCH!
Isn’t St. Jude the patron saint of lost causes?
See? He’s carrying a ladder!
Update! Kitchen is done! Of course, now all the stuff that used to be in the living room is now in the kitchen so you can’t see it. Ceilings are painted! The living room is 1/2 painted. The shelves in my new closet are getting painted. The wallpaper in my room is gone. The toilet that was going through the floor is leaking again! https://wordpress.com/post/solomonsadvisor.wordpress.com/5879
I have a Toastmaster friend that’s big enough to lift a dump truck helping me clean out my office tomorrow so I can get it carpeted.
Another update! (Notice the date…December 8)
Just so you know, I no longer refer to these rooms as rooms but entities with demands. It is not the bathroom or the kitchen. That implies that it doesn’t call out to you in the middle of the night suggesting colors and floor arrangements. No, I have come to the conclusion that these are passive poltergeists that will cause paint to change color at 2:00 AM and re-arrange the plugs and outlets in the room in order to keep you from getting lights and electricity in the same vicinity.
Toilet is no longer leaking, I hope. And the gaping hole in the drywall under the leak is now fixed so no more drips on the dryer and the washer! Yay!
Living room has an area rug and furniture in it. It has a box with a Christmas tree in it. We put up a framed picture of an 1876 Nebraska Map on the wall. Sooooo Coool!
Office and Bedroom are carpeted and painted. Bookshelves put into office, and I still have more books to put away. Working on Hubby’s office…and His books…and all the stuff that needs to be put away is now in my office. Why do we have more stuff to throw away? Order another dumpster? #5?! Still stripping wallpaper and painting, but down to only 1 room now. Finish with that, get an area rug, and clean and done. Oh NO! I jinxed myself.
Measureable progress 