Welcome to the seventh circle of hell, also known as Home Depot

Things are happening at Chateau Crap Shack. We will be receiving a shipment of furniture from my mother-in-law’s estate which will be leaving Denver tomorrow. Now, my husband has been the one in charge of all of the logistics which I think is only fair. Perhaps it is my need to have details, or should I say DETAILS, that is driving me crazy. The moving company told him that they would arrive in Duluth by the 22nd of March. I appreciate the fact that they are giving themselves plenty of cushion in their estimate but I highly doubt that it will be that long. They will apparently call us when they are close. How close? My husband didn’t know. Will it be within an hour? A day? Will they call when they are out front of our house?

The reason why this is so vitally important is that we live in a tiny little crap shack. Oh, yes we did get new siding and a new roof last year but once you enter the house, the crap shack-i-tude slaps you in the face. We spent our remodeling money on the important bits, like that roof that had a tendency to drip on our heads.

So, taking out old furniture and putting in new-to-us furniture will be exactly like that little hand held puzzle game where you manipulate the eight little squares on the square which has space for nine squares. The object of the game? Who the fuck knows.

We are adding to this mayhem one more thing. New carpet. The carpet measuring people will allegedly come to our house tomorrow. We will be getting carpet in our living room, two bedrooms, hallway, and bathroom. All of which will also be getting new-to-us pieces of furniture.

It would be easy to take everything out and put it in the garage, if only the garage didn’t have a junked car in it which will need to be towed to wherever it’s final destination is.

Since my husband works two jobs, he likes to spend his precious home time playing on his computer. Every day I feel my level of quiet insanity increase. I feel that things should be happening. I feel that we should be doing things a little each night until the situation is ready for either the movers to bring in the new furniture or the carpet layers to bring in the new carpet. None of this can happen until the car in the garage is gone. I think I need to call my husband’s doctor and get his ADD meds increased or perhaps get meds which will make me not care. Perhaps that would be the easier option…

So with all of this going on in the background, we recently went to Home Depot to pick out carpet. One of the major reasons, aside from cost, that we have not done anything with our house is that my husband and I have wildly divergent ideas on what we should do. He wants a carpet in the living room that has absolutely no pile. Basically a woven rug that passes for a carpet in certain third world countries. He picked out carpets that I would only put in a closed in deck area. His reasoning? They clean easy. Of course they clean easily! You can pick the damn thing up and put it in the washer!

My idea is a low pile carpet, not too dark, not too light. I want to be able to sit on the living room floor and not feel like I’m in a cell at Guantanamo. Of course, we didn’t discuss this at length before we went to Home Depot. As a matter of fact, we didn’t discuss it at all.

Can you see where this is going?

You got it. We wandered around Home Despot’s, I mean Home Depot’s carpet center “suggesting” ideas to each other with increasing snark. It never got as bad as it could have but add into this one teenage girl who took the entire incident as being a punishment just for her and a pre-teen son who spent the entire time annoying his sister and I have to admit, when I looked at the one-finger-typing mouth breather that took our order (and had to have our last name spelled EVERYTIME he changed screens on the computer) I had an honest to god out of body experience. I was standing next to myself, taking in the annoying children, the pacing, bickering husband, and the snarking bitching wife and I thought, “Oh my god! We have finally reached the height of white trash horrible families that NEVER stop bitching at each other, irrevocably damage each other psychologically, and live for NASCAR while drinking Bud and wallowing in the filth that covers every square inch of their single wide trailer.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

And I saw a vision of a velvet Elvis painting hanging on the dark plywood walls of the trailer.

Every part of this vision was a piece of my own death.

So. The carpet is ordered. For some reason, my husband actually agreed to carpet in the bathroom as well. This has been a HUGE thorn in my side as we agreed to remodel the bathroom years ago and I painted it and made it look good and I waited and waited and waited for him to do something with the floor. Every two weeks it was a different idea. Flooring was purchased and abandoned in the basement as other ideas came into his head. Now that we are finally getting carpet, THE DAMN WALLS NEED TO BE REPAINTED!

Not that I’m bitter.

This is why remodeling is soooooo unhealthy. Our wedding vows said “For better or worse”, I don’t recall any mention of carpet swatches.