Historically, Lance has been exceptional about keeping his cool with me in moments when he has every right to go off the handle.
If you’ve been a longtime reader, you might remember a time when Lance’s reaction to something awful I’d done was simply to let out a deep breath and full first name me. The long and short of what brought this on: I was teaching third grade full-time and a full roster of private music lessons each night at home. Dishes were never ending, which meant when I had students, I shoved every last dirty dish I hadn’t gotten to into the oven to give my kitchen the appearance of cleanliness. One such day, Lance, not knowing my dirty secret, turned the oven on and soon the house filled with the smell of melting plastic.
It was a blast of a night for us.
We are in the final days* of our kitchen renovation, and man, it has been a journey, as I’m sure anyone who has had a home renovation of any kind will tell you. We’ve been fortunate though. Aside from this waiting game here at the end, very little setbacks have occurred.
*I use the word days optimistically, because though practically every important thing has been done, there are minor cosmetics which seem to be the longest going checklist items to complete.
But, of course, there’ve been moments. Moments where our patience was tested. Moments where we thought we were at the end of our rope. Moments where we had to consult the client emotional rollercoaster our Project Manager gave us to confirm that yes, we were right on track with the emotional ups and downs of a home renovation.
As we were in the thick of things*, we were also in the thick of a heat wave. Now that we’ve had some cooler days, it’s hard to remember those oppressively hot days. Those days where just walking to the mailbox was like a marathon. Those days where I literally thought I was losing my mind because the heat was slipping into every open space surrounding me.
*i.e.: There was no floor in the kitchen, dust covered every surface, and the dogs kept sneaking through the plastic walls that had been installed to contain said dust that was still on every surface.
On one of those 101 degree days, I was out with Jon and came to a road block in the form of Amazon trucks. Not wanting to get sandwiched between trucks with no option of freedom, I made a k-turn and started trying to reroute.
And proceeded to take a curb.
Just as Lance historically can keep his cool, I’m historically great at making off the hinge choices in moments of stress. Somehow, my car is always involved*.
*I once lost the piece of the car** that covers the tire in a moment of panic the night of a bridal shower I was not at all looking forward to attending. That’s another fun story.
**Yes, this is as technical as my car part vocabulary goes.
It sounded bad, but the car still drove, so I proceeded to our destination and then home. When I finally remembered to tell Lance about it, noting that I noticed a little bubble on the tire, he went outside, and when he returned, said calmy, “We’re going to need to have all the tires changed.”
A few days later, on the morning of an intended beach day, Lance went into the garage and in front of our deep freezer, found a puddle of fruit juice which was leaking from, you guessed it, the open freezer door.
You might think, didn’t the freezer have an alert for when the door is open? And the answer is, yes, yes it did. But, the night before Lance had been doing some electrical work, so when first the beeping was heard, it coincided with this, making us think the two were related.
And then, we didn’t hear it or think about it again, especially since, due to the construction, we weren’t parking in the garage.
So, there we were, while we should’ve been driving to the beach, pulling out pounds and pounds of meat and dinners we’d cooked and delicious treats—and tossing them into the garbage.
From there, we declared we could make no more expensive mistakes this summer.
I’m really looking forward to the fall (no heatwave brain) and my kitchen being complete (access to my garage).
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