Saturday, December 03, 2005

19th Nervous Breakdown

"Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown.
Oh, who’s to blame, that girl’s just insane.
Well nothing I do don’t seem to work,
It only seems to make matters worse. oh please."

What does a 1/4 inch and an 18 dollar beadboard panel equal?
Well, if it's a 1/4 inch missing then I guess we get a nervous breakdown. I carefully measured the area behind the range and transfered the measurements to a piece of beadboard and when I put it up it was off just enough that I couldn't fix it. Now this happened the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and looking back I shouldn't have freaked out so much but Jeff says I made faces he's never seen before.

You know when Bill Cosby describes his wife having laser beams coming out of her eyes and her face splitting in half? Well, I guess that pretty much sums up what happened. Jeff made it worse by saying "I cut the beadboard for the bathroom and it fit perfectly." Could the man have any WORSE timing? I guess it was his attempt to comfort me???? Like, "I'm sorry you have cancer but I just found out my cholesterol is down!"

I guess that the pressure is getting to me. I'm feeling the quicksand effect. Each time I go to the condo I feel like I'm in a time warp. A couple of days ago I had decided that my family needed to eat so I went shopping in the morning so I got to the condo at 1:30. It was a gray day anyway so it was hard to tell what time it was but I felt like an hour had passed and the announcer on the radio said it was 4:10!

I don't know how it happens. Some days are better where I accomplish quite a lot but then I look around and wonder when it will ever finish. I guess the key is to see the glass half full.

Lesson Learned:

TEMPLATE, TEMPLATE, TEMPLATE. When you have a complicated cut make a paper template. Newspaper is a lot cheaper than beadboard.

We all make mistakes (except Jeff of course. GRRRRR!) If you mismeasure it can usually be fixed easily, sometimes with chaulk and a little spit. But we had to go home after I had my breakdown and missed a days worth of work. Being angry while you're working can also lead to accidents.

1 comment:

Prof. Jeff Cold said...

Denise forgot to give credit to the Rolling Stones for the prophetic words. Actually, in attempting to replace the outlets with new in the Master Bedroom, somehow I got some of the wires mixed up and we're having a terrible time getting it straight. Mikey, Help!! The original electrician used a white (neutral) wire for hot and didn't code it on one outlet and there are red wires all over the place. The last time I went to the break box, was Circuit 11 off or on? Aaaaargh! Working with 12 gauge wire has been hard on my hands. The tips of my fingers are tingling from being sore.

Of course Denise has to stop her work in the other room and "check" on my progress every 10 minutes. "It's too quiet in there...what are you doing?"