Happy New ... Yikes!

Does our family's January 1 indicate how this year will go for us? I kinda hope not ...

Janet and I went out today looking at couches. For references, we brought along one of the arm covers to our current couch. Guess what we forgot at one of the stores. We think we know which store it was.

But that was just a minor matter compared to the goofs connected to our basement laundry area. Sigh.

The cement floor in our basement is quite rough and uneven, and it's always been hard to keep our washer and dryer level. Heck, sometimes the spin cycle sounds like a manic drummer. So I'm using this half-plastic/half-plywood stuff called DriCore—and a whole bunch of strategically-placed shims—to create a level area. After a lot of fiddling, it looks like it might work. But along the way ...

While helping me briefly, Emmett got some paint on some of his school-worthy pants. I painted the walls in that area yesterday, and it's cool and damp, and in some spots, the paint had to go on pretty thick because ... oh, just take my word for it. So I had to break out the Oxi-clean for some jeans-soaking.

And I had to make an unscheduled run to Home Depot because I hadn't bought quite enough DriCore.

When I unplugged the washer and dryer to move them, I didn't realize that I also unplugged our basement freezer. I discovered this about 24 hours later. We're talking some soft ice cream here.

And when I was wrestling the dryer into final position, I noticed that I'd put a fresh kink in the copper gas-supply line.

Matter of fact, that kink might be a puncture, I thought.

Then: Do I smell gas?

I ended up calling the gas company, being told not to turn any electrical switches on or off, and sending the family out of the house where I wouldn't have to worry about them turning any electrical switches on or off. They went to Wal-mart to buy underwear—because with the dryer down for the past few days, it seems that Ethan had run out of clean boxers. The gas company man came and showed me the gas-line shutoff that I hadn't been able to locate. He advised installing a new kind of hook-up to the dryer.

I left a phone message about that with our neighbor/electrician/plumber, Tom. Later, I left Tom another message, after discovering that I found that in putting the washer back in place, I had also pulled a drain pipe out of its joint.

Oh, yeah. 2007 will be something. When you wish me Happy New Year, feel free to add ... Ya Goof!