shedding no tears

our big kitchen renovation officially begins tomorrow, when the demolition crew shows up at 8:30 a.m. and starts knocking out walls and throwing all the waste into a dumpster in our driveway.  but really, the actual process began months ago, when chris and i came to the conclusion that this wasn't simply a kitchen renovation.  yes, the main focus is the kitchen; we will finally be rid of our nasty white-on-the-outside-lime-green-on-the-inside cabinets, which never close properly and recently have begun falling off their hinges.  we will be saying goodbye to the peachy-colored tile floor in the breakfast area, and the smaller, slightly more peachy-colored tile floor in the laundry area that someone, at some point, decided looked good right next to each other.   we will be tossing out an old chandelier that isn't wired correctly, a microwave that makes a weird humming noise every time you use it, and a set of mismatched appliances (white fridge, beige oven, black dishwasher) that have all seen better days.  i will finally have COUNTER SPACE ... a foreign concept, after surviving almost three years with such little work area that i often find myself placing a cutting board on top of the range to chop up veggies, simply because there's nowhere else to put it.  the finished product, after a very intense summer that will require us to move out for a month or so, will be a kitchen that is much larger than our current one with a great big island, a wine fridge, a double oven, and lots and lots of much-needed storage. 

but, as they say in infomercials, that's not all!  because along with our revamped kitchen will come a new powder room in a different location, meaning that we will finally bid a fond farewell to pepto bismol pink.  (our current powder room has a pepto bismol pink toilet, pepto bismol pink pedestal sink, pepto bismol pink tile wall, and pepto bismol pink tile floor.  just what was happening on the home decor front in the 1970s, anyway?)

and lastly, we will get a new mud room, complete with a high-efficiency washer and dryer, a desk/work station, and cubbies and baskets to house our gazillion pairs of shoes and boots and raincoats and jackets and umbrellas and backpacks and lunchbags and briefcases.  i actually think i'm more excited about my our new mud room than i am about my our new kitchen.   
 
but what chris and i realized, about a month ago, is what an enormous domino effect this project is turning out to be.  there is hardly a room in our house that will not be affected by this renovation.  our future kitchen will take over our entire exisiting playroom and existing storage room.  obviously, we still need a playroom and a storage room, so we had no choice but to move the playroom up to our existing guest room.  the contents of our existing guest room were divvied up among goodwill, a garage sale, and my parents' basement.  and to fill the void of our soon-to-be-history storage room, this past weekend we had a shed built on the back corner of our property.

which brings me to the subject matter of this post.  last night, i'd returned home late from tutoring and was cleaning the kitchen while chris toiled away in the backyard with a flashlight, making countless trips from one side of the yard to the other, his arms laden with tools, bikes, outside toys, gardening supplies, and all the other miscellaneous crap we throw in the storage room because we don't know where else to put it.  as i was loading the last of the cups into my dented black dishwasher with the unreliable detergent dispenser, my phone rang, with chris's name coming up on the caller ID.

"hey!"  i said.  "did you not want to walk the few extra steps into the house to talk to me?"

no laughter.  instead, a sigh.  and then, "i'm in the shed.  i can't get out."

i began to process what he was saying.  there he was, at 10:00 at night, surrounded by darkness in the sweltering north carolina summer heat ... locked inside our new shed.  naturally, i began to laugh.

and naturally, he found nothing amusing about his predicament.  "sara.  sara.  SARA!  stop laughing!  will you just please come out here and open the door?"

for the umpteenth time, i thanked God for the invention of cell phones.  and i thanked God for men's athletic shorts, which, unlike my athletic shorts, have pockets, in which chris happened to place his cell phone.  for had he not had it on him, i honestly don't know how long it might have taken me to realize he was stuck inside our unlit, poorly-ventilated shed in 95-degree heat.  a half-hour?  an hour?  might i have just gone to bed, assuming he'd come inside when he was ready?  fortunately, i'll never know.

and this, my friends, is how a truly rambling post is written.  start off with a description of your kitchen remodel, and wind up with an image of your spouse trapped in a ten-by-twelve foot building outside in the pitch dark.  how, might you ask, do you wrap up such a rambling post?  i think a pun is the perfect solution.

so let's just say that i hope this post happens to shed some light on what's been going on around here lately.

(groan)