A day after the weekend

and my palm still hurts.

What's wrong with CherkyB's palm?
	The stigmata hasn't healed yet.
	If you're smoking a cigar, don't scratch your nose.
	He's been married over ten years.
	He stayed up late playing with his ratchet.
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We managed to get the furniture all squared away in the guest room on Sunday. This was no small task. The Mrs. started Sunday morning out the way she always does the minute she sees light at the end of the tunnel - she began piling on more jobs that had to get done "today". Now, I had been predicting this was going to happen to the guys at work (you can check with CJ if you don't believe me), so I was ready. I started hollering immediately and refused to entertain starting any more jobs until this one was done.

This actually had a surprising effect. It motivated The Mrs. to actually help clean up the room and carry down the furniture. We could carry down everything except the giant headboard. The Mrs. declared that she could not even lift it, much less walk it to the basement from the garage. This despite much chiding about how the lady from the store was able to carry it just fine. There was all kinds of whining about how that lady only carried it down a ramp and then up the driveway, not up three steps into the house then down 15 to the basement. And how the store lady had a good number of pounds on The Mrs. So we had to get The Dave Guy from across the street to bring that down, though he wasn't home until late in the afternoon.

It took me like an hour to get the bed put together because it had 4 8" lag bolts that needed to be screwed in, and the pre-drilled holes were not very large in diameter. This bed will probably never come apart again. Very rarely do I wish for a pneumatic impact wrench, but Sunday was one of them. That, or I could have used a much longer-handled socket wrench. Or even a section of galv pipe to put over the handle for more leverage. Or the good sense to wear work gloves.

Well, what can you do. Here is what the room looks like right now. Note the three log candle-holders on the dresser. They hold tea light candles. There is a burl lamp that goes on the little round table, but we haven't put it out yet.


We ordered new blinds for the windows on Sunday. They should be in in about two weeks. Hopefully, they'll be here before Fat Moother comes for Thanksgiving. Otherwise, the old blinds will have to go back up for the visit. I have very intelligently not thrown them out yet. Next weekend, we'll go get a mattress.

Having finished off the guest room, The Mrs. started in on me about setting up "the craft room" by positioning a bookcase that was lying on its side on the floor so that it was lying on its bottom up against the wall. This was easy enough. But then she demanded I put together the other one that was disassembled in the garage.

That took a long time, cuz these things take a long time to assemble. Plus, two of the shelves had their mounting thingees torn out of the cheap pressboard, so I had to drill and countersink new holes. MaxieC kept trying to help. Cute kid. I don't like it when he runs around with my power drill, though. Here are the shelves in their final resting place.


Not content with fixing up two rooms in one day, The Mrs. decides to go for the third strike. The compooter room. This was really the last room of the house that had piles of junk on the floor (if you don't count the garage). I was tired and cranky by then, and so I complained harshly. Yet she kept nagging and nagging and nagging. See, a lot of the piles were my stuff, and "she" couldn't straighten up the room unless I put away all my stuff. Somehow, that felt like "we" were straightening up the room.

Here is the lovely The Mrs. posing by the compooter in the recently-straightened room.


Here's another angle. See my failure - that United box is all my stuff that I didn't straighten properly, so she dumped it in a box.


Tomorrow being Halloween, tonight was pumpkin carving night. I told The Mrs. she had to help me bring the big, giant, BrainkyP-head-sized pumpkin in from the deck, cuz I couldn't lift it myself. I lifted it up about 4" and realized The Mrs. wasn't holding on anymore. I set it down.

Me, CherkyB: Uhh...did you even lift it at all?
The Mrs.: Yes. But I can't. It's too heavy.

So I rolled it up the steps and onto the kitchen floor. It was quite heavy. Here we pose with big, giant, BrainkyP-head-sized pumpkin before the massacre. This is also about how long MaxieC lasted before demanding to go to bed.


I got to do the honors of removing the skull for the lobotomy.


HannieC did the actual brain removal.


During the carving, HannieC decided to eat the skull. She declared that it tasted like "not very good cantaloupe," but she ate more of it than she did her dinner. She had very little of her vampire makeup left. She decided she wanted to be a creature who sucked the lifeblood out of her victims.

Just like her mother.


Here is the completed Jack-o-Lantern.

It was still too heavy to lift, so I put it on the furniture dolly to roll out onto the front porch. No steps needed to be negotiated.