And It Will Be The Perfect Storm After All

Man, that Entropy dude knows his stuff. Either he is the most phenomonal planner this side of anywhere, or he is a tremendously gifted opportunist.

Last Monday I mentioned that I thought Entropy was setting us up for the perfect storm with all the things that were going on. Specifically, I have been concerned that with all the travel one or the other of us is doing the next several weekends, would we be able to get the spare bedroom painted and ready for the new furniture that was due to arrive in 6-8 weeks? Given that we have a series of sentimental "collections" to remove from the closet and various other spaces in the room, this could be a dicey adventure. Six to eight weeks of evenings and weekends can go by pretty quickly, and believe me, I was not going to try to paint a room on my own with only Toddler for help. Noooo. Even I am not that disillusioned into thinking it would actually work.

So, I very carefully began undoing the pieces of the collections I was allowed to touch -- specifically the Harry Potter playsets and Lego kits. My job was to clean them, box them in the original box (of course), with as many of the original pieces as I could identify from the pile of miscellaneous pieces on the dresser. As you can imagine, I had a big suspicion this project could take a long, long, possibly very long, time.

I found the directions for one of the big Lego playsets and tried, often frustratingly, to disassemble the set in reverse order, attempting valiantly to identify any missing pieces. Only after I was completely done did I realize that the pile of extra Lego pieces that was stuck in a plastic bag on the bookshelf ALL went to this one set I was working on. In fact, there was only one Lego set even out of the box at all. There was no reason for me to take all this time, and I could have just shoved all the pieces into one plastic box. Well ... nuts.

That was one hour down.

In the meantime, lots of junk was growing on my floor. Not to worry, I thought to myself, there is always tomorrow. We have lots of time ... well, I know I can't keep saying this ... but still, this is only the first day.

Then I got the phonecall from the furniture store. "Guess what! Good news! We managed to squeeze all your furniture onto last night's truck, and it's HERE! When can we schedule a delivery?"

Holy cow! We don't even have the PAINT YET!

Well, long story short, I persuaded the furniture store to hold the bedroom stuff for one week ... which means that Darling Husband and I had one week, minus most of a weekend, to get an entire room cleaned out, collections and all, and painted. With Toddler's "help". Yes. Let's not forget that.

The perfect storm indeed!

Thankfully, my mother decided to come down and bail us out, offering to help watch Toddler while we worked. Instead I managed to get her to paint a lot alongside us while we all hollered, "Toddler back up!" (It worked all times but one, and that one time led to a set of white back pockets and a white shirt belonging to Toddler. Formerly these items of clothing were tan and blue. If you find yourself in this situation, I highly recommend very warm running water immediately applied.)

As of the time I am writing this, we are two days into what will be a three-day job, with a Toddler who desperately wants to help. He even went to far as to pick up a paint brush and run it over a piece of the closet door when we weren't looking, all the while saying, "Toddler paint!"

Just to top everything off, Toddler decided he wanted to show off all his potty skills to my mother. Every few minutes, he wanted someone to come out and help him because, as he said, "ME NEED GO POTTY!" Of course, when he tried to convince us that he was big enough to leave the diaper behind ... he wasn't. Of course. When we are all covered in paint he is covered in ... well ... it wasn't paint.

The good news is that the room will be all done in record time. The bad news is that the rest of the house is falling apart in the meantime. Entropy has done his job well.

On the bright side, this unexpected experience has brought us the following scene to chuckle about:

ME: Mom, we're heading your way.
MY MOM: Okay.
TODDLER: No! That's not Mom. That's Grandma!