Yuletide Shenanigans

Today we put up the Yule tree and decorated the house. Dinah the Cat absolutely loves sitting under the tree and always parks herself there the moment we're finished. But this year . . .

This year, Dora the Meatloaf plunked herself down under the tree before Dinah could get there. Dinah was . . . miffed. She circled the tree, staring and glaring at Dora, who completely ignored her. She was upset, but not willing to drive the interloper away.

I shook the treat box, and Dora burst from under the tree like a blubbery explosion and screeched to a halt in the kitchen. Dinah, who doesn't really care much about treats, slid under the tree and pointedly took her spot.

Dora came back and whiffed in annoyance. But then she stalked behind the tree and took up residence in a different spot. Now the kitties are sharing.

Albion: Still No Silverware

So Darwin and I were looking for the silverware and trying to buy curtains at a department store.  Department stores don't stock more than two or three examples of any given curtain type, so we had order them, with the help of a Friendly Clerk.

The was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the on-line order. The Friendly Clerk couldn't get the computer to give us the colors we wanted.  Finally he managed it and set up the order.

"Do you want ruffles for the curtain tops?" he asked.

"We're gay," I said, "but we're not that gay."

The Friendly Clerk couldn't decide whether he was allowed to laugh or not.

But a few days later, when the curtains and rods arrived at Albion, Darwin discovered most of the curtains were the wrong color--a dingy, nasty gray instead of the wine red we'd ordered.  And so the following weekend, when Darwin came to Wherever, we trooped back to JCPenney to complain.  We dumped a big pile of curtain packages on the counter, and the clerk, a different one, re-did the order.  Now we're waiting again.

I went to Albion two weekends in a row in here, and by the second visit, most of the house was put in order.  Complicated TV/Roku/Cable system: check.  Bedroom: check.  Bathrooms: check.  Curtains: working on it.  Kitchen: check.

The kitchen is, at least to me, an important room that requires a great deal of thought and care.  Dishes and food and sundries have to be arranged for the greatest level of convenience.  Dish cupboards should be near the dishwasher for ease in putting everything away.  Foods need to be arranged so that what you're likely to use most often is close to the work space.  Appliances needs to be set up so they're reachable, but not in the way.  And so on.

I was flummoxed by the lack of overall storage space in the kitchen.  Once the everyday-use stuff was set up, there was no room for lesser-used stuff like the Crock Pot and large casserole dishes.  Then I came across a tall, shelf-lined cupboard in the laundry room a few steps away.  There we go!  The secondary stuff went in there, and we were good.  However, I still have a bunch of regular-use appliances in Wherever, and no room in the Albion kitchen for them.  There's no countertop space for my bread maker, stand mixer, and Instant Pot. 

However, the kitchen has a huge amount of floor space.  Freakishly huge, in fact.  Darwin and I can't figure out what the architect was thinking by having so much floor space and a relatively small amount of counter- and cupboard space tucked into one corner.  But it occurred to me that we could put an island in that space.  I found one on-line.  It's the perfect size and the decor goes with the kitchen.  We'll get it.  Eventually.

We also need a kitchen table.  The table Darwin took from our Wherever house we put in the new dining room because Darwin didn't want the dining room to look so empty.  (He's ignoring the fact that the dining room in "my" house is now a giant empty space, but . . . )  We're going to buy an inexpensive one later.

I made a beef roast for our first meal in the newly-done house.  It was delicious, but we were hampered by the lack of silverware.  Plasticware doesn't work well with roast beef! 

By now, we were both seriously annoyed and mystified.  Every box had been unpacked, every storage bin had been checked.  No silverware.

Sighing, we went upstairs to assemble the Desk from Hell.

Albion: The Desk from Hell

So, the Desk from Hell:

See, we'd gone to Staples and found a small, inexpensive desk for me to use in the Albion house.  I'm getting a desk there because with summers and holiday breaks, I'll probably spend more time in Albion than Darwin spends in Wherever, and I need a desk to write on.  The desk in question had a keyboard drawer and some side drawers and it was just the right size.  So we ordered.

When the desk arrived in Albion, we discovered two things.  First, it was packed in that nasty-ass styrofoam that breaks into fluffy little beads that cling to everything everywhere.  Second, it was in literally hundreds and hundreds of pieces.  If we'd known it was like this, we wouldn't have ordered it.  But here it was.  Sighing, we got to work.

It took nearly four fucking frustrating hours.  We wrestled with badly-done instructions and poorly-labeled hardware and tried not to get short with each other.  And in the end, the keyboard drawer didn't line up quite right and wouldn't close properly.  (Has anyone ever assembled a desk on which the keyboard drawer worked?)  I finally said, "Screw it," and pulled the keyboard drawer off.  Now it's a desk with an open space in the front, and it looks fine.

After that, we went downstairs to tackle the lamps.  The house's ceiling lights don't illuminate everything, so I had bought a bunch of basic floor lamps from Ikea.  It was the very last thing we needed to do.  After the desk debacle, Darwin was wary.

"How hard are these to put together?" he asked.

"Easy," I reassured him.  "When you moved and took some of the table lights with you, I bought some of these, and it took me maybe a minute to put each one together."

I reached for the first box on the pile, opened it–

--and found the silverware.

The silverware, along with a couple-three other kitchen things, had been packed in an Ikea lamp box after I'd bought floor lamps for Wherever, and the old box had gotten lumped in with the new lamps.  The silverware had been sitting in dining room the entire time!

The lamps were simple, as advertised, and now we had silverware.  At last!

So now the Albion house looks nice and is all moved in.

Except for the office.  Darwin still hasn't unpacked the office.