day 2: quest for the perfect porch chairs
one of the things we had been looking forward to about our colorado trip was sitting on the front porch of the cabin, staring at the mountains, drink in hand, uninterrupted.
stuck in kansas, i got to thinking: "hey, we have a porch with a great, peaceful view. no need to drive eight hours to have a relaxing drink together. we should find some chairs to make our very own front porch a lovely destination."
we had actually found such chairs the night before as we waddled around target after our gourmet buffet dinner. the problem was that target only had the chairs left in a dark grey, not the red that i wanted and that the sign indicated they had at one point had in stock. no problem-i'll just see if any of the other stores had them in stock.
so tuesday morning i checked online and nope, none of the area targets had the red chairs i wanted, nor would they be getting any more in for the season. i pouted for a bit, then checked around online at several other places. lowes had cute red adirondacks just like i wanted, in stock. huzzah! i called up my momma, who has a vehicle conducive to chair hauling, and she obliged to join the adventure.
after picking up the chairs we went to lunch (yum) and then michael's, where i found a strawberry stamp (cute). finally heading home, i was feeling pretty good about the day.
tim spent the day gun and gun accessory shopping with my baby brother because it was brother's birthday and because tim thinks gun shopping is way more fun than chair and craft shopping. imagine that.
pleased with our find, we sent tim to retrieve the chairs from my mom's suv. unfortunately, upon taking a test sit, tim tragically informed me that the chairs, although very similar in style, were not as comfortable as the target chairs. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! i pouted big time! how oh how on earth could a chair that was comfortable for 5'3" me not be a perfect fit for 6'1" him?! what a jerk!
after looking online and considering a lot of other options, we finally decided to take the red adirondacks back to lowes and i decided to settle for the dark grey ones from target. although my mom offered to help with chair transport, we felt she had already endured enough of our shenanigans and sent her on her way. tim, who has an amazing knack for cramming crap into small cars, fit the chairs into our accent (smallest car on earth if your not familiar with the model) and set out to return/acquire chairs. i was too worn out from all my pouting to go with him and instead drank several glasses of wine while watching network t.v. who knew "friends" is still on at 6 and 6:30?
after tim had been gone way too long, i finally received a call from him telling me to check my email. he was at the k-96 target out east and had found some turquoise adirondacks, as well as several other styles of chairs that were in our price range and of various bright colors. he had sent pictures of the various chairs so i could pick what i wanted.
yes, tim makes me crazy A LOT, but he can also be pretty exceptionally awesome sometimes.
i picked the turquoise adirondacks because they were the most comfy, plus they would always remind me of how sweet timmy boy had been.
unfortunately, part of what makes these chairs more comfy than the red ones from lowe's is that they are bigger. not so great for our tuna can sized car. t said it took a while to cram them in the car in the target parking lot, which was pretty awkward, and they were nearly impossible to get out of the car once home. but he did it and they look totally cute on our porch!
(instead of a picture of their cuteness, i have this gem, capturing tim showing a lot of restraint when really, he just wanted to smash the dang chair to bits.)
day 3: began project and hhhhhaught date. (i'll try to speed up my pace. maybe bullet points will help)
-went to morning mass at same church i attended monday morning. the boys were making the switch after mass from my sister's to my parents' house, but i think max thought i was there to take them home. he kept whispering to me, "why are you here?" over and over until i told him he still got to go to grammie and poppa's house. only then did he give me a hug after not seeing me for two days. such love.
-acquired tools from two different brothers' homes and played with nieces and nephews. sometimes i miss just getting to be the fun aunt without the responsibility of being a mother.
-continued work on an overhaul of our upstairs that i had started back in may. this will get it's own separate post, but my goal was to finish the project while the boys weren't around to interrupt me.
-while resting after working upstairs in the million degree heat, tim and i watched a documentary on absinthe. this led to tim going out and acquiring a very expensive bottle of absinthe. we actually spent more $$ on alcohol than we did on dining out during our vacation. #boozies.
-date night. first stop, taco shop. yep, the epitome of fine dining. we still couldn't agree on a nice place that we wanted to go, so a tray of 12 tacos for 7 bucks was the obvious conclusion.
can you beat feeding two adults for $7?? i think not.
we were satisfied customers.
we then headed to bradley fair to stroll around. i always like visiting williams-sonoma. maybe some day i'll have a few pieces of le crueset and knives that don't have the tips broken off because they've been used as tools.
these were different devices for brewing coffee.
hydrangeas at "the fresh market", a yummy grocery with all kinds of fabulous temptations.
cocoa dolce for truffles, gelato, and an italian soda, then sitting by the lake rounded out the evening. when we were dating, we used to walk around the lake often, so it was very nostalgic. ahhhhh.
back at home we made absinthe cocktails. tim enjoyed the process of making them, but we were both underwhelmed by the flavor. a fun experience though. we sipped them on the porch in our super comfortable new chairs.
cold water dissolving the sugar cube into the absinthe. no green fairies were spotted.
day four: more project time (back to bullets)
-tim was feeling a little under the weather (or absinthe) so he mostly played video games and rested.
-i sanded and sanded and sanded the ceiling and walls that i prepped on wed. it was hot and dusty and gross and i wanted to die and stop and hire a contractor or maybe a slave nephew.
oh the despair. at one point i was loudly singing, "THIS IS THE PROJECT THAT NEVER ENDS. YES IT GOES ON AND ON MY FRIENDS. A POOR IDIOT STARTED DOING IT NOT KNOWING WHAT IT WAS, AND SHE'LL JUST KEEP ON DOING IT FOREVER JUST BECAUSE....THIS IS THE PROJECT THAT NEVER ENDS..." you know the tune.
tim thoughtfully called from the family room, "do you need me to put your pandora back on, sweetie?!"
-started painting ceiling and walls. very frustrated with the coverage i was getting from the paint.
-tim went and got me chipotle because he needed to get out of the house and knew i needed a morale boost.
day 5: more project despair. bunk beds. retrieving children
- painted some more
-tim assembled bunk beds that i had unearthed from the shed and cleaned off earlier in the week. we needed to have an incentive to lure the boys home after a week with fun people who didn't growl at them.
-after returning from adoration i realized i had been painting with the wrong color all morning. i was using up cans i had left over from painting downstairs two years ago. white and bright white are not the same, although tired eyes might almost think so. curse words were said. i gave up for the day. (i still can't figure out why i have the can of "white" or where else i may have accidentally used it.)
-picked up pizzas and had dinner with tim's parents. swam with the boys in the pool and saw their new tricks that they had mastered. cute wild ones.
-the boys loved their bunk beds and continue to do so. they haven't worked as the magic super glue that i had hoped, keeping them from drifting into our bed in the middle of the night, but i think they've helped a bit. progress!
looking back on it, it was a great vacation. at the time though, i was pretty grumpy because of the slow progress on my project. thankfully, because of the way tim's schedule fell, he actually had off saturday, sunday, and monday as well, which allowed me to make more progress upstairs, as well as to have a lot of chill time together as a family. it was so bizarre having that much time together with tim-definitely the most we've ever had in our marriage. and we didn't kill each other= major success.
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