Thwarted!

This day is NOT going as I'd planned. Not.even.close. Nope, and I have been thwarted at every turn.

My sad tale began when I realized that going to IKEA was not a good plan since (1) I really have no where to put any new cabinets, even if they were left in their boxes, and (2) I'd need to empty all my market stuff out of the car to hold the IKEA boxes, and that sounded like work. So I scrapped the IKEA plan, for now.

The next thing I realized was I'd need to paint walls before I could assemble the new cabinets. You see, when I first did my bedroom swap several years ago, it went something like this:

1. Donate couch and chair to charity.
2. Move all the office furniture and everything 'stored' in the small bedroom into the now-vacant Living Room.
3. Paint the small bedroom.
4. Move all the bedroom furniture from the larger bedroom into the smaller bedroom.
5. Check the calendar to remind myself of how few days I had left before the new couch and chair were due to arrive.
6. Panic.
7. Decide to paint only two of the walls in the big bedroom. The ones that will hold all the office furniture plus the storage cabinets currently living in my Dining Room.
8. Move the office furniture into the big bedroom.
9. Empty and dis-assemble the cabinets so they could be moved into the big bedroom, re-assembling the cabinets as you go.
10. Re-fill all the cabinets with the stuff you unloaded from them.
11. Vacuum the Living Room.
12. Receive new couch and chair.
13. Rest.

I was going to work every day in between all that, too, so it was no small feat! Please refer back to step 7, where I decided to paint only the two walls that would immediately receive the furniture. This is the result:

Here you can clearly see where I stopped painting above the windows.

It's not quite as easy to see the line here below the windows because of the huge shadow cast by the trundle bed parts.

The trundle bed, ah, we have history, but that's a post for another time. Let's just say I refuse to get rid of that thing, for now, anyway.

Now I need to move the stuff along that wall before I can paint it, which means I need somewhere to move it TO, which means I need to address The Other Room as a whole.

First up: I decided to deal with the Scrap Heap living on the table:

There is really no question that this whole table top is a stinkin' mess, but I am addressing the center portion of it as The Heap.

I removed it to the now-cleared-off Dining Room table, where I divided and conquered. Along the way I discovered several really interesting items. Please allow me to share.

The instructions for my Crop-O-Dile! I'd put them in a safe place. Oh, yeah, so safe I lost them! But they are back, so I'll need to figure out where to store them for real, now.

A stack of stamped Happiness (now retired) backgrounds. Oooh, I could use these ... so I put them in a UFO (Un-Finished Objects) pile.

An interesting article about different inks. I assume it's interesting, as I've never read it.

Oh, look! More Happiness backgrounds!

Speaking of backgrounds, these are some twice-stamped images - words over canvas (or linen). Yep - I see potential.

A crooked card that I could not bear to throw away. Right now, I could sooo toss this, and maybe I shall!

A very large pile of penguins.

Some scalloped rectangles. Hmmm ... left from some other unfinished project.



Finally, I added all the by-color-group piles of card stock to the existing, remaining Heap-In-A-Box of failed Field Trip fame. I am still working on that heap, and it has been dwindling ... really, it has been ... until I just now packed it full. BUT, it is still progress, because I can see part of the top of the table in The Other Room. Sweet.

See that clear space in the center of the table? I have not seen that for years!

For further disclosure, you can see the other end of the trundle bed and how it totally spans the whole length of the windows. Just past it is a cabinet where all my cross stitch supplies live. Past that is a pile of (ahem) ironing with a bunch of old pillows on top. Hey, I told you this was a storage room, too! So you can see that in order to move the bed down far enough to the left to allow a cabinet to fit where I want it to, I also need to address the cross-stitch cabinet and the pile of ironing and pillows, and the large, full trunk on top of which they all sit. THEN, and ONLY then, can I even begin to think about getting that cabinet.

Do you NOW understand why I give up In There? All I wanted was a new cabinet to hold all my paper overflow in my Living Room, and it all comes down to needing to take an old pile of ironing that is so wrinkled now I need to re-wash it all and THEN iron it. Man, doesn't all of this sound like WORK!? Is it becoming clear to you WHY this room stays like it is? Well, it's certainly clear to ME!

Then I attacked the next part of my To Do list for today: Make the card for today's UHC challenge. I even pulled out the piece of card stock I wanted to use. Then I saw two pieces of paper from the Scrap Heap exercise and decided instead to use those first. I got about half-way done with the card when I looked at the clock and decided I really needed to go to Angela's and pick up all the goodies she has on hold for me.

I decided to take the Forester since I only drive it to and from the Market each Saturday (5 miles round trip), so I thought it needed to go on a longer journey. This fateful decision was a mixed blessing. You see, as I approached the VA state line, my Check Engine light came on. I know from past experience that this is not an emergency, so I kept driving. It was then that I noticed my thermostat was all the way to H, which is bad. Real bad. I called my mechanic and he said it was REAL bad, so I turned around and drove back North and went straight to the mechanic. This was my car during the diagnostic process:

BIG fan! The decision was - it is one of three things, in progressively larger dollar amounts and time-to-fix requirements: (1) the thermostat. (2) the radiator. (3) one or both head gaskets. The worst-case scenario would be 4-5 days to repair, meaning I'd miss this weekend's market. The cost to rent a car to get my stuff to do the market would be more than I'd earn, so if it comes to that, I'll just skip the market (as a vendor). I'll still go, but just to shop, you understand.

I decided to get a ride home and take the Miata down to Angela's instead. I was determined. I jokingly mentioned to my mechanic that the only thing wrong with the Miata was the brake light was on. He shook his head and said that brakes were right at the top of the Things Not To Ignore list. He was not real happy when I told him I'd been driving it for 4 months that way.

So I took all of this as a sign that I was not supposed to go to Angela's today. That's a good thing, as I'll need all that money, and a lot more, to bail out the Forester once they get done fixing it. And to pick it up? I'll just drop off the Miata so they can fix the brakes. No problem.

So let's see. So far I have not gone to IKEA; I have not painted the bedroom walls; I have broken one car and found out the second one is ill, too; I have not made my UHC card; I have not finished the card I started instead of the UHC card; I have not gone to Angela's; and I just realized I left the laundry in the dryer, so that means I have not folded the laundry, either.

Not bad, and it's only noon.

As I await the verdict on my vehicle, I think I'll go fold some laundry, maybe finish my card and make my UHC card, and I'll also need to make my Father's Day Card and my eldest boy's b'day card. Hopefully I'll be back later with some stampin' to show you!

If you've read this far, thanks for listening! :-) It can only get better, right? RIGHT?!?!?!? Sigh ....