Chairs from the Curb: From Craft Room to Bedroom

Day #21

When our basement flooded during the Spring thaw, we did a lot of moving around of stuff.

Then we had to pull up all the carpet and get new flooring

and we had to move around our stuff again.

We decided that we had too much stuff.

One Sunday, a lady at church told me that she was cleaning and organizing houses.

She gave me her card.

Monte told me to call her for the basement.

The sweet lady spent 5 hours with me cleaning and organizing the craft room so we could turn it into a guest bedroom.

I found some wild things.

When the girls were elementary school age, we decided to “practice” getting up early at the end of summer by having a back to school breakfast in our front yard for the neighbors.

Our neighbor, Claire, made the invitation.

My favorite part: “You don’t know what you’ll find!"

I also found a wolf man figurine.

I have no idea where we got it or why. But my brothers would hide it in my room

when I was in high school,

in places for me to find later.

Like under my pillow.

Or on my hair brush.

Or clinging to a sweater in my closet.

It always scared me just a teence.

I would retaliate by hiding it in their room.

And so forth and so on.

So I am not sure who the joke is on since I JUST FOUND THIS after almost 30 years.

And I wasn’t even a teence bit scared.

In fact, I laughed out loud.

I also found the key chain to my dad’s red Pinto from the 70s. It had black interior that always seemed to be boiling hot against my legs and somehow all four of us kids could fit in the back seat.

Seat belts? What are seat belts?

The main memory I have of this car is being chased by my brothers with a beach ball and jumping into the car to hide.

Apparently I released the emergency brake when I hopped in because I moved rapidly backwards down our sloped driveway into the neighbor’s huge garden across the street THAT THE NEIGHBOR WAS AT THAT VERY MOMENT STANDING IN, GARDENING.

So, I almost ran over our neighbor in a red Pinto going backwards.

He stopped it somehow and I ran out and into the house.

I may have blacked out or just blocked out what happened next.

But it involved a wooden spoon.

My dad sold the car to a teenager in town who lifeguarded at the public pool.

I always wondered what that teenager thought when all the press came out about the Pintos being little bombs waiting to explode on impact.

I found this old ticket stub for the Harry Connick, Jr. concert Monte and I saw in Atlanta when we lived there.

If you look at the date, I had McDaniel EXACTLY a year later.

And we moved to Ohio just a month after that.

What a difference just one year makes.

Monte is so proud that we all got to see a Florida Gator football game.

Even if it was in Kentucky instead of Gainesville.

And Tim Tebow got a terrible concussion and was throwing up on the sidelines.

And before that Ellie kept LOUDLY asking me,

“How come Kentucky isn’t getting the ball?

It’s right there! Why aren’t they TRYING?!”

The Kentucky fans sitting around us were so distraught

by all her innocent smack talk that one lady pulled

a flask right out of her boot and took a long swig.

McDaniel was going through a Tom Boy phase.

This is the last time we went to Disney World.

And as Monte put it:

“The LAST time we are EVER going to Disney World."

Ellie was going through a Justice phase. It looks like a rainbow threw up on her outfit.

All this going through and organizing allowed us to clear out some floor space for a much needed guest room/area (there’s no door).

The new cork floor.

Monte said he knew of a mattress store that had great prices.

He drove me by it.

It looked like the place people go to get murdered.

Seriously…

So he dropped me off at home to go get the mattress/or murdered by himself.

He LOVED the entire experience.

Especially the part where the guy said he’d have to deliver the mattress before the Browns game on Sunday because he’d be too drunk to drive once it started.

Okay…

Luckily, someone different delivered the mattress, SOBER.