A Parallel Universe

Have you noticed that my header is still June's header?  Pitiful, I tell you.  For some reason, I had this idea that as soon as the kids went back to school, I would be wallowing in a veritable swamp of time, whilst angels with timers and acoustic guitars played in the corners and all of the chores and projects I had would leap through my capable hands and into the world.

Um.  No.

Instead, I somehow got sucked into the parallel universe that is my laundry room.  Up until the past week, I had no idea that it WAS a parallel universe.  I just thought it was a really messy room that, no matter how many times I tried, I simply couldn't keep organized.  I've written about it before, I've posted pictures, I've entertained you with the gory awfulness of the clothes rack, but I don't know if I've ever fully articulated how mind-numbingly NASTY my laundry room is on a continual basis.  It's crazy.  And I decided that, within the confines of my budget and with all the extra time I have lying around, I was going to tackle that beast once and for all.  With SHELVES!!  And storage bins!!!  It was going to be glorious.

The first step was to corral all of my photography equipment.  One day when I am self-actualized (I've decided to stop using the term "grown up," because I AM an adult, dang it, even if my career aspirations remain as maddeningly fickle as they do), I hope to have a separate studio with an attached garden and all sorts of shelves and bins and rooms and feediddlepots that will make my compartmentalized heart sing.  For now, I scavenged a piece of plywood from the shed and attached it to the wall and to the first shelf that Will and I ever made together and, lo, it was good.  Ish.  Two cup hooks and a strip of elastic later, and my bean bag was stowed away neatly, as well as my containers of headbands, blankets, and assorted bits of equipment.   Tirra lirra lay, I sang.  It was all very festive.  Of course, there was a big pile of stuff that had been wadded up on the FSTWAIEMT that was now on the floor, but that was okay, because I was soon to be making a trip to the supply store for the second part of the shelving system.

And here's where I hit the first snag (the first of many, many to come.)  Because of the placement of the rack where I hang Will's clothes before I iron them and because of the big pile of stuff, measuring the wall for the next shelving unit was going to be difficult.  I planned a shallow shelf for book bags and shoes that would fit beside the door into the house.  Braced on the sides of the shelf and fitting over the top of the door frame would be a single shelf which would house stuff we don't really use that much, like camping equipment and extra bags.  (We have a bizarre amount of extra totes.  It's mildly disturbing.)  In order to measure for this shelf, I'd have to hang over the side of the clothes rack while balanced on a step stool, which was difficult at best, so I asked Will to help me.

Now, I love my husband.  He is awesome and handsome and great and all that mess, but he drives me up a fricking wall when I ask him for help, because there always has to be a DISCUSSION about it.  Why do I need to move the couch?  Why do I want to paint the living room?  Do I REALLY think it's a good idea to expand the garden?    You get the drift.  If he isn't asking me questions about the logic behind my decision, he's making observations on how the process could be easier, faster, or cheaper.  When we got into the laundry room, he helpfully pointed out that it would be easier to measure the wall if the big pile of stuff wasn't there.  REALLLLLYYYY?  I lovingly didn't bite his face off, although I wanted to, and told him that I'd just do it later, because I needed to do something else, and the kidlets helped me out here by yelling at each other in the living room.  I mean...y'all.  I know it is not a particularly pleasant side of myself, but sometimes, I just want some dang help MY WAY without having to write a dang dissertation about all aspects of the project with which I need help.  Bless my husband's sweet heart.

Anyway, I wound up measuring the wall by taking a piece of the coarsest yarn I have (honestly, it's like a brillo pad....I can't figure out why I ever bought it) and taping sections of it to the wall after I found the tape, which wasn't as easy as it should have been (there's a reason I need more organization in my home) and pretty much balancing on the clothes rack and step stool via my toenails and my left breast.  Then I measured the piece of yarn on the floor with a tape measure.  I know, right?  How very competent and Martha-y of you, Heather.  DO NOT BE DECEIVED.  Remember that my laundry room is a parallel universe...

More competence ensued at the supply store where I bought all the wood I needed for the project.   I briskly picked out three straight boards and one almost straight longer board and assorted screws and brackets, got the boards cut, and headed home.  Things went downhill from there.

The first part of the shelf was easy and based on the design of my pantry shelves, which I also built.  I made a ladder of sorts out of the 1x6s, making sure the entire time that everything was square and level.  This is important when building shelves so crap won't fall off them.  The shelf-ladder was a thing of beauty until I put it up against the wall that would be its home.  Then, it suddenly became the world's most crooked shelf.  It wasn't level.  It wasn't straight.  Hell, the two legs somehow weren't even the same length.  Inside the house:  level.  Inside the laundry room:  shelf that Picasso built.  Erm.  Okay.  I shoved a shim underneath one of the legs and screwed the resulting (in a parallel universe) level shelf into the wall.  Then I grabbed the board that would be the shelf over the door and got a splinter.  It was a sign of things to come.

The door-shelf board was too long.  Like, tragically and horrifically too long.  Wanna know when it's a really bad time to discover that a nine-foot board is too long?  When it's propped up over your head as you balance on a step stool.  Not only was it too long, but it also got stuck several times as I shoved it up and down and all around and tried to figure out what in seven hells had gone wrong with my measuring.

Now, here's where my biggest carpentry flaw comes in:  I don't like using saws.  I mean, I will use a jig saw, but anything more complicated than that makes my teeth curl.  I can measure, level, drill, hammer, and screw (ahahaha) with the best of them, but I think my Daddy messed up way too many of his fingers for me to ever whip out a table saw and cut some mess.  So I decided that I would, instead, shave off some of the wood with really rough sandpaper.  Because I'm a masochist.

I did this three times.  The first time, nothing changed:  the wood STILL got stuck.  The second time, something changed:  I apparently somehow ADDED wood to the board, as it got stuck farther down on the wall and actually threatened to block me inside the laundry room.  The third time, the wood moved a little bit higher on the wall on one side, then got caught and stuck on the other side in a new place.  ARGH.  At this point, I had to go pick up the kids, so I braced the stuck piece of wood on the laundry room door and the door frame, said a prayer to the threshold gods, and left.

When Will got home that night, he was fairly discomfited by the pile of crap on the floor and by the precarious  placement of the board, but his comments were confined to pointing out that I must have measured wrong (REEEEAAAALLLLY?) and how he was sure I was frustrated and did I want him to saw the boards for me?  No.  No, I did not.  Instead (because I'm a lunatic masochist), I decided that the really bright thing to do would be to get a hack saw and saw off the end of the board.  Outside.  In the hundred degree heat.

Sigh.

Y'all, listen...it's all well and good to be strong and capable and whathaveyou, but when that good stuff winds up with you squatting over a piece of wood with a hacksaw as gnats crawl all over you and sweat drips off your nose, take my advice and LET YOUR HUSBAND HELP YOU.  Sheesh.  Because there I was, squatting, maniacally sawing the end off of the piece of wood while looking, no doubt, like the world's most incompetent Neanderthal at her fire drill.  Much grunting and snorting ensued.  Finally, I finished sawing off maybe an inch and a half of wood, brought the board back inside and OH MY FILING CABINET--it was exactly the same.

How?  How is that possible?  Hoooowww?  I called the piece of wood a bitch, went back outside, hacked off THREE inches of the board and pretty much slung it up over the ladder shelf and door frame.  It fit.  Barely.

So then I started trying to get the top shelf attached to the ladder shelf and the sides even.  This proved to be difficult, as somehow, putting the board on top of the shelf has skewed the levelesqueness of the ladder shelf.  I...I don't even know how to explain it.  At some point in time, I realized that I needed to unscrew the ladder shelf and then screw it back in to a different place to get everything square.  I did that:  while bracing the ladder shelf with my hand, my hip, and my shelf, I screwed it STRAIGHT INTO THE WALL--and it somehow pulled two inches to the left.  AND SHRANK THE TOP BOARD by an inch.  What?  Just...what the hell, y'all?

ARRRRRHGGGGHHHHH!

By this time, I had figured out that the room wasn't square, the floor wasn't level, the walls weren't flush, the boards were possibly possessed by Satan, and I was apparently stuck in one of Douglas Addams' more obscure books.  I needed a ladder (which my husband had helpfully taken to his mother's house), a few more arms, and an interdimensional time-traveling space ship.  And laudanum.  I had none of these things.  What I did have was a very heavy basket.  The basket is heavy because we use it to store various stone tools and weapons that have been found across the years at my husband's family farm in Mississippi.  I decided that it was the PERFECT implement for me to use to hold the top shelf steady while I dealt with the ladder shelf.

Wait.

Read that again.

Yes, children, I put a heavy, laden-with-rocks-and-tools-shaped-by-Native Americans basket on the UNFASTENED SHELF hanging over my head while I pulled and pushed and swore at the ladder shelf below and beat at it with various power tools.  I know this was neither safe nor logical, but like most things involved with the laundry room project, I have no excuse or explanation.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Eventually, with rocks and cursing and prayers and 5000 splinters and lots of sweat and a few glares at my husband, we managed (I had to bring him in to deal with bracing the last corner of the top shelf because I was afraid that I would accidentally go insane if I had to do it) to get the shelf up and move some of the crap from the pile to the shelf.

Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go out and get MORE wood to get the next phase of the project built and I have to be honest with you and tell you that I'd rather get my eyeball tattooed than deal with it.  I think I'm going to give it another week and let the parallel universe that the laundry room is chug along without me and my power tools and arrowheads and scrapers.

And cursing.