June 7, 2014

• Midnight Madness & Morning Magic

  So, last night began no differently from any other night. Brett went off to bed and I stayed up a bit longer. Sometimes I watch old episodes of Bones, sometimes I watch the late night talk shows, sometimes I read, sometimes I mess around on the computer, and sometimes I just stare off into space thinking I should really go to bed if I could just work up enough energy to get off the couch and climb the stairs. Last night was a combination of the last two.

  I'd had a tiring day of limping around Meijer because every last one of the electric carts was in use by people who surely weren't in as much pain as I. It's so easy to start judging. I sucked it up and got most of the stuff I knew I'd forgotten before I left the store last time, but didn't feel like making another round to get them. Of course, it involved limping from one end of the store to the other, but I did it. And then, on the way home, I realized I'd forgotten to get black spray paint and toothpaste and hand soap. Sigh. I stopped at the Dollar Store that was on my way and grabbed the spray paint that was for a special project. I then drove home, elevated and iced my knee and rested for about an hour before going back out to get the toothpaste and soap at Walgreens. They also had my makeup on sale, so BONUS!!

  After I got home from Walgreens, I got serious about the little project I'd been putting off because May was so insanely busy I was lucky to get the important stuff done, like buying food and toilet paper, and doing laundry. This was a fun project, so of course it got pushed off until I had some leisure time. It was for a photo scavenger hunt site on Facebook and was an attempt to recreate a famous photograph. It had to be instantly recognizable. I chose this photo of Neil Armstrong planting the American flag on the moon.

   

  

   

  The spray paint was the only thing I had to purchase; I already had everything else I needed to make the shot. The pocked rock was out in the flowerbed, the Neil Armstrong Christmas ornament was in the basement, and the pieces of cardboard were next to the recycling. All I had to do was spray paint a couple of pieces of cardboard black, set them on two sides on the big rock in the flowerbed, pop the Christmas ornament on top of the rock, take the shot and do a little airbrushing in Picasa.

   

  

  Maybe not an exact replica of the famous shot, but instantly recognizable, and you've got to work with what you have. Plus, I'm running out of time for this hunt and I've only got half the list done so far.

  Back to my story. I'd been working on this photo and generally goofing off on my laptop for awhile and I was tired and my knee was hurting. So I shut down the computer, put Boo in his crate, gave him a treat, filled his water bowl for morning, took my arthritis medicine and a sleeping pill, puttered around a little, and finally began the laborious and painful (but not as bad as the day before) process of getting upstairs. I carried a bag of stuff upstairs, including two bottles of hand soap I'd purchased at Walgreens. For some reason I always have a hard time remembering to buy hand soap, so when I do remember to get it, I buy two.

  I got upstairs and began my usual nightly routine, which starts with writing in my journal (usually in the bathroom where there's a place to sit and I can have the light on without waking Brett). I wrote in the journal, put on my nightgown, brushed my teeth and replaced the empty hand soap container with a new one. I opened the cupboard door under the sink to put the backup hand soap away until it's needed... and discovered standing water and a bunch of soggy crap I'd been meaning to clean out for several months.

  I started pulling stuff out and tossing it in the tiny bathroom trashcan. Then I realized I'd carried stuff upstairs in a Walgreens bag so I started putting trash in that. Then I found a soaking wet towel and some washcloths under there, which I tossed into the bathtub (which is where I also ended up putting the wet bag of wet trash). By this time my sleeping pill was kicking in and all I was capable of was clearing enough junk out from under the sink to throw down a couple of dry towels to soak up the water and catch the drips from whatever was leaking.

  When Brett got up at 4 AM to do his nocturnal wandering, he found the under-sink cupboard doors open, a lot of stuff shoved to one side, two sopping wet towels in the middle, and some wet towels and a bag of trash in the bathtub. When I woke up this morning, I found the bag of trash and all the other contents of the cupboard in a laundry basket on top of the sink, all the wet towels gone (later discovered in a laundry basket on top of the washing machine), and a fan inside the cupboard drying it out (and also drying the rug in front of the sink which I'd managed to soak while removing wet stuff in my addled state). He woke to mayhem and I woke to find most of the mess magically cleaned up.

  The bright side of all this is that the cupboard is finally getting cleaned out, and since all those old curling irons were sitting in an inch or so of water, there was absolutely no temptation to keep them anymore. They went into the garbage bag with the rest of the soggy stuff. I still need to wipe down the few things I salvaged and I'll need to wash the wet towels, but I'm waiting to do that until after Brett fixes the leak because I figure there's a slight chance there will be more wet towels by the time he's finished.

  Brett left me a note saying I'd handled the "midnight madness" well and it looks like a bad faucet seal but he'll have to tear it apart when he gets home this afternoon to know for sure, and he hopes I didn't lose any of the healing progress I'd made in my knee. And there I was feeling badly about leaving such a mess for him to find!

  We are trying to work in an early birthday celebration today. Everyone's schedules are so busy, it's hard to find a time the three of us can all be together and birthday celebrations tend to last for several days as we block off three or four hours at a time. I think the main plan for this afternoon is to go to a movie. Tomorrow maybe we can squeeze in dinner at a restaurant. Now we need to figure out where the plumbing repairs will fit into the schedule. Hopefully, sometime before midnight.

  Speaking of which, I should hobble on upstairs and start wiping down all that stuff I tossed into a bucket this morning.

   

  • 12:51 pm
  • 3 Comments