lemons to lemon meringue pie!

Our apartment has been through many changes over the past year. Note here, here, here, and here to follow our long journey. The latest update has been a doozy!

From our last flight home from Sacramento, we did the unthinkable. Following our red eye to JFK (with baggage in hand), we took a cab to IKEA and spent the next 5 hours picking out wall furniture to make our life easier (obviously this was not an immediate gratification thing). I was so exhausted that I literally sat down on the dirty floor while we waited in lines. I tried not to fall asleep, but I know it happened once or twice. Lyle was working off some kind of speed that he took when I wasn’t looking because he was a MACHINE. He kept us going. After we exhausted every option of furniture, we picked out what we needed, realized some items were OUT OF STOCK, went with plan B, stood in lines, stood in more lines, waited, waited some more, then got a cab home.

Do you know what we came home to? BRAND NEW windows…and a horrible DUSTY dirty mess. It took all I had to not throw a temper tantrum right then and there (I may have in fact). I think I shed a tear, then changed clothes, and got energy food with Lyle. We came back to the apartment and Lyle was determined to clean. I was determined to sleep. I helped clean a little bit, but Lyle finished most of it while I passed out on the bed. To top it all off, we didn’t put anything up that weekend except for the closet rod/shelf. The next day or two Lyle sliced his finger open so all the boxes got pushed to the side, and it all began to look like furniture that belonged there. I didn’t mind it to be frank. It just made me happy to see it everyday (bought and paid for). I knew it would get done and I wasn't in a rush. I was almost dreading the thought process and dust production of putting it up anyway. Alas, it had to be done.

We used Conference Weekend as an excuse to be spiritually edified and physically productive. We (and by we, I mostly mean Lyle) put up the desk. Here he is working on the task. I added a light and beautiful decor (and by beautiful I mean useful and not cute at all). Give me time people, our budget is tight! It did take almost the ENTIRE weekend to put up this desk because of Lyle's busy schedule. It wasn't difficult for him (nothing is right?), but between a date night on Friday and at the lab all day Saturday and Conference on Sunday, there was little time left. Sadly, we had to "table" the entertainment unit, put the boxes against the wall, and wait for yet ANOTHER moment or series of moments that Lyle could put them up.

I GLADLY would do it. In fact, I was really tempted to surprise Lyle and do it all by myself, but he gets EXTREMELY nervous when I put things up without him. Maybe it's because I "wing it" or "eyeball it" (my words, not his...but totally his feelings on the matter), and he is precise and detailed. I, in turn, usually run into a minor problem, or hiccup, or "it'll do", whereas his product is a masterpiece. This is one of the few (did I just say few?) differences between us. Therefore, I will limit Lyle's anxiety and wait (try to wait) patiently for him to find time (say...Thanksgiving), to put up the entertainment unit. Instead I will dust around it and think of it as another piece of furniture in our apartment.

Well this "leaving it be" lasted about one week, okay make that five days. I attempted to surprise Lyle by putting together the top shelves of our entertainment "unit" which was a little less than a 2 hour task. I really enjoy the "put the puzzle together" game, and I figured it would cut down on the time it would take for Lyle and I to put them up on the wall. I knew he wouldn't be able to put them up that weekend since he had midterms in the following days to come, but I felt like it was something I could do to help us further things along without giving Lyle any anxiety. Plus, I LOVE having boxes out of the apartment!

Again, I waited.

This time, Lyle offered to use our date night as a put-everything-up-on-the-wall-night. I gladly obliged. Friday night, after some pizza and DVR-watching, we opened the last of the boxes and began only what I will remember as the most excruciatingly painful wall furniture installation experience. We started the project about 8pm (why do we always do this into the night). IKEA directions don't have words, only pictures are shown. So you have to make your best judgment. The cabinets were put together, so now we just had to figure out how to mount them on the wall. It seemed simple enough. Simple would have to be the most opposite word you would use for what next happened. Picture Lyle holding a massive double cabinet over his head and me trying to look through the cabinet, line it up with the hole for the screw, make sure everything was level, then drilling the screw through the hole. Can't picture it? Because it DIDN'T happen! There was no way I could figure that out? Lyle couldn't understand why I could figure this out. So we switched places. Can you picture this scenario? Well, not only did I have to stand under the cabinet and hold it up for what seemed like an ETERNITY, but Lyle started drilling (or trying to drill) the screws in the right spots, then he would un-drill, drill again, realize it wasn't level, and finally drill it all it in again. Meanwhile I am DYING underneath the cabinets. Okay, the cabinets are up, we even put up the third cabinet next to it (because the first was a double), and THAT was almost more miserable than the first--if you can even imagine it. By now it's about 10pm and we realize how difficult that was, and start to move onto the bottom cabinets...ONLY to realize that we had not used the wall brackets that we had bought separately (which were NOT included in the instructions), to "easily" mount the cabinets. How could we have BOTH not realized this? We did the unthinkable. We took down the cabinets. We started from scratch. We put up the wall brackets, and how much easier was it to put the cabinets up almost perfectly? One THOUSAND times easier! We couldn't believe it. I may even remember this as one of the stupidest things I have ever done in my entire life. Well it's 11pm, but who cares, we keep going. We put up the bottom cabinets. What next? We mount the plasma. And speaker. Well it's 1am, now what? Let's take ALL the boxes AND the credenza down to the trash. This is the same credenza that I stripped and stained and loved with all my heart. Did I even take a second look as I left it on the street? NO MA'AM! I had no feeling in my soul left at that point. Next we replenished our bodies with a juicy orange, hopped in the shower, and finally got to bed at 2am.

Saturday was spent waking up and making Lyle special pumpkin pancakes for being patient with me through the debacle. After-which, I cleaned, vacuumed, dusted, put the doors on the cabinets, organized, dusted some more, vacuumed some more, et voila!

Here is the beauty...

Our home now feels almost perfect. It's hard to imagine how it used to be, but let me tell you, THAT memory is already engraved in our brain. We now know we can live ANYWHERE and be okay.

Well, maybe just a TAD more decorating...you know I can't help myself. ;)