I’m watching my cat slowly pass the baton of life into Death’s grip so sorry if this post lacks my normal level of snarky humor. I promise to re-snarkify next week.
It’s a rare thing, but we’ve had a few nice days here in the Northwest. If you live anywhere near Portland, you’ll know these days as the ones where it’s a degree above normal and everyone starts touting how we’re going to have a hot summer. They never seem to say a word during the string of weeks when the temps are five to ten degrees below normal.
But during these clear and sunny days I’ve dashed outside to dig things, move things and make plans for my husband to conquer (or bitch about) on the weekends. In case you don’t recall, this year is the year of the Great Backyard Remodel (I know, you totally thought it was the Year of the Snake. You thought wrong! So wrong.).
Part I of this remodel plan (scattered over many sheets of scrap paper) is to move our picnic table from the center of the yard to the patio. See, with the table the center of the yard we really don’t use it much, it takes up a lot of space that I could be using for plants and is in the way of Part Something Or Other of the Great BY Remodel. Plus, I always liked the idea of a super cute eating area on the patio. So, yeah, that table needed to get its legs movin’.
In the beginning… You can see the table in the background to the right.
Where the table needs to go is a big bench my stepdad made. We moved that (it has yet to find a new home), dug out a couple ferns, removed several very heavy patio stones and then graded the area. Okay, I say we but I recall doing most of the digging removing, grading…
Call the cops! Someone stole our bench and ferns!
Then came the task of laying out the pavers. The very heavy pavers. Seriously, why can’t they make these things out of pumice? This led us to the realization that we kind of sort of failed to measure the area. And apparently “eyeballing” isn’t the most accurate way of determining if something is going to fit into a space. Perhaps neither of us played with enough blocks and Legos as kids.
So we had a bit of a quandary: scrap the idea or carry on. We’d already moved everything so we decided to plow forward and make the damn thing fit (you can see how we solve jigsaw puzzles in this house, can’t you?). During this “make it fit” thought process it became quite obvious that men and women do NOT speak the same language when it comes to describing how to move and adjust things. C’mon ladies, you know that if you look at a square from its edge, it’s a square. If you look at the square from one of the corners, it’s totally a diamond. Am I right? Mr. Husband did not get this. “It’s still a square.” Sigh. And apparently hand signals indicating how far an object needs to be turned aren’t decipherable to the man brain. They want “15 degrees” and “counter-clockwise” type words.
Regardless, we found a common language to sort out how the pavers should be laid to squeeze in the table. After all the heavy lifting I’d done earlier, I left it to Mr. Husband to lay out the pavers and level them while I roamed around picking up rocks for another portion of the Great BY Remodel.
Finally, we were able to set the table into its new home. There’s still some planting and fine tuning to do, but I think it came out pretty darn well.
I had more to say, but with the whole cat thing, I think I’ll just leave it at that. Many tissues will be gone through tonight I think.
