Honey?

You know, it would be a LOT easier to be organized if it weren't so stinkin' hard to find things! At the moment I'm looking for my paint brush. I know exactly where I last saw it: in the hands of one of my children. At which point I calmly confiscated it and put it "somewhere safe" and out of reach of small children. Otherwise it would be out in the dirt being used by my little paleontologists to gently uncover dinosaur bones. Previously it had been sitting nicely on a shelf, right where I wanted it. Now I can't find it if my life depended on it.

Yep, I'm trying to paint again. As if moving furniture all afternoon wasn't enough. It's just necessary, this changing the rooms around thing. If you don't move all the furniture and put it in new places, how do you find that little tiny remote that's been missing for 3 weeks? No, just kidding. I do it because... Because...

Hold on, I'll think of it eventually.

Today I moved an enormous wall unit, built of solid wood and 70 inches wide by 80 or so inches high (it's hard to tell being as it's so much taller than me). It comes apart in 2 pieces. Hey, that's 2 pieces, should be a piece of cake, right?! Come on, how hard could it be? First, take the 200 books out of the shelves and 40 games out of the cabinets, scrub it all down, and remove the top half by picking it up like so... or okay, how 'bout like so... no? Hmmm. Turns out my arm span is NOT 70 inches. Right.

Well, then, I'll just move the whole thing out from the wall a bit and see if I can scoot the whole thing across the room. Oh dear. Well, for one thing, the one back corner was propped up by two chunks of wood and is now very lopsided and attempting to kill me by sliding the top half (shelf unit) onto me.

And... for another thing, there's no way it's going to fit through the doorway no matter how hard I try to scoot it that far in one piece. Plan B then (or was it C?). I quickly grabbed the stool and the end table and used them to prop the shelf unit up while I pushed the cabinet out from under and across the room. Great! Looks fabulous, got the corner propped back up with the chunks of wood, and now on to retrieve the shelf unit and put it back on top!

Again, my arm span is not 70 inches, so I'll just... right! I'll just balance it on my back and tramp it over to the cabinet, heave it up like so.. SoooOOOooo!!! Woah! Okay, why am I stuck with this thing precariously balanced on my back HALF WAY across the room?! Aaack!! Then, I hear this snap, and as I'm realizing I've been caught up on the rope strung up for a clothes line through the living room, the shelf unit sways hard in the other direction and I realize it's now going to come down on me and kill me.

Some how I got my foot down just in time to catch it! I was so relieved it fell directly on my ankle instead of the floor! Wait. Okay, maybe that wasn't on purpose after all. I'm sure the bruises will be pretty, though.

On to plan C. Now that it's on the floor right in front of the cabinet, all I need to do is just pick up one side, place it on the cabinet, pick up the other side, and pivot it oh so nicely onto the other side of the cabinet. Right? Right. Or not. Too high, back of the unit too flimsy to pivot on the center of, etc. etc.

Plan D: get the piano bench and put one side up on that first, then pivot off of that! *sigh* no? fine.

Plan E: put one side on piano bench, one side on end table, should work, right?

At this rate I'm going to run out of alphabet letters before it's DONE!!!

Plan F: Brute force, man, brute force! I'm gonna get one edge of a corner up there and shove for all I'm worth and ROOooaaarr....AaaaAAAHH! *WHEW!* good thing the piano caught it before it tried to kill me again as it tipped over forward while I'm trying to catch it while standing on a tippy stool.

*Sigh*

Plan F: sit my tired self down on the floor, whip out the cell phone and call hubby to find out when he'll be home.

I come by the compulsion naturally. If you've never seen a 5'3" woman stuff a sectional hide-a-bed sofa into a mini van BY HERSELF, yep, all 3 pieces, you've never met my mother. She's moved her share of furniture alone including grand pianos (I personally don't recommend this while pregnant - it's not good for your hip bones!), removed walls, built walls, remodeled anything and everything and always managed to make it look pretty and homey in the end. Once she even removed a window from our living room and took a Sawz-All to the wall to make the opening bigger for a new window! She has a definite Can-Do attitude, and I'm glad I got at least a smidgen of it from her! Of course, I did have to call her half way through this process for moral support!

So after I finally admitted defeat and my handsome, wonderfully strong hubby came home, he picked up one side, I picked up the other, and it was up and ready to go in 30 seconds flat. Ah, I love that man! He was my hero in that moment! Even if it wasn't quite as triumphant as I'd hoped. You know, because what I really wanted was to have it all done and all the books back in and the whole mess cleaned up when he walked in the door.

And then he'd say, "Whoa! What. Did. You. Do?" 'cause he's always telling me not to move stuff like that without him but I can't help it he doesn't even want me to move the TV by myself!!

And I'd say, "Honey, you don't want to know..." just like I always do. I guess, well, that I'd have to say I still haven't learned my lesson then. Yet.