The American Dream

Paul and I are the proud owners of a brand-new washer and dryer. They will be delivered by Mumma's Appliance on Monday afternoon. When I get home from a long and stressful day of work on Monday (it's Week 1 of our billing cycle, hell week for finance-related people), I plan to enjoy doing laundry for the first time in my life. It's like food - I never liked asparagus, green beans, broccoli, brussle sprouts, etc. and various meals until I helped prepare them, and then I realized that they were absolutely delish. I don't anticipate quite the same thing happening with laundry - I think I'll be excited to do a few loads on Monday night, but after that I think I'll just not mind doing laundry, which is still a step up from absolutely hating it. I think anyone would hate it when it involves hauling everything down 3 flights of stairs, walking outside to another building, and paying $3 per load.

We also did lots of sanding today. Our dining room floor is really starting to look good, and I think after a bit more work with the 36 grit tomorrow, followed by a few passes each with 60 and then 100 grits, it will look really great and you'll barely be able to tell it was painted around the border and covered with a crappy carpet and no pad in the middle. Then we will do LOTS of vacuuming and dusting (also Sunday afternoon/evening hopefully). Then Paul will stain it and polyurethane it (Monday possibly into Tuesday), and then we will spend a few more days not walking on it, and then we will have a beautiful wood dining room floor that we can be really proud of!! Paul will be the most proud, but I get some proudness because I helped run the sander a little bit today, and I ran the vacuum while Paul sanded so that he wouldn't have to stop as often.

Then the painting will start...that will take a while, but hopefully next weekend the floor in the dining room will be done so that we can at least go to Ikea and buy cabinets and hang them in the kitchen. MAYBE we could even start USING our kitchen after that...is that too much to hope for? An at least partially-functional kitchen? With counter and storage space? I'll try not to get my hopes up too much. It will happen eventually, if not next weekend. I think I'll aim to at least purchase a carpet for the bedroom and install clothing storage so that once I've washed my clothing in the new washer and dryer, I don't have to keep it crumpled up in baskets and go to work every day looking like I just rolled out of bed in what I wore yesterday.

OK time for a much-deserved night at the bar with Vince. We're watching his cat until Wednesday while he's in Detroit, so maybe he'll even buy us a few drinks!

Here's to a kick-ass apartment, and being home in one place for a few years. Cheers.