Labor daze.

September 7, 2014

Moonlighting. A blog by Judy Cools.

Yes, I know that Labor Day doesn’t signal a day of really hard work, or the time for birthing babies. It’s a nod to the unions and to workers, and their contribution to our society. However, our Labor Day weekend was of a different sort than celebrating the nation’s workers and flipping some food on the barbeque. Here’s a glimpse of our marathon weekend:

Friday after work, dinner with friends.
Friday after dinner with friends, go to Manistee for Mom and stepdad birthdays.
Saturday morning, try once again to teach the dogs about sleeping in on weekends.
Clean out the “catch all” room to become the new home office space.
Clean, dust, and box up stuff as we go….
Rent carpet shampooer and shampoo the carpet in the new office space.
Let new office space dry with fans blowing, and then pre-treat the traffic pattern in the living room.
Shampoo the living room floor.
Let the living room dry with several fans blowing, and start carting furniture from the old office space to the new office space.
Re-try cleaning the living room traffic pattern with a different product.
Nuke some frozen thing I found in the freezer and call it dinner.
Clean, sort, dust, and box up stuff as we go….
Re-visit the living room traffic pattern with product #3. Or #4. I forget.
Continue to do this until around midnight, then collapse.
Sunday morning, repeat Saturday morning conversation with the dogs.
Putter around moving boxes and cleaning stuff until all household members are awake.
Shampoo the rug in the old office room.
Throw something in the crock pot for dinner, set it on hi, and walk away.
Shampoo the traffic pattern in the bedroom carpet, set up fans to dry it.
Move more stuff from room to room.
Carpet shampoo the hallway.
Have a discussion about how stupid it is to have so much carpeting when you have two dogs. (Notice that this was NOT a conversation about how stupid it is to have two dogs….)
Advance to home remedies and folklore to address the traffic pattern in the living room. (Not our fault – the previous owners put down light blue carpet. They obviously didn’t have dogs.)
Shampoo the whole living room carpet again and readjust the fans.
Clean the rented carpet shampooer.
Eat, shower, change, and head out to drop off the machine and go the show – we earned it!
See a good low-key movie, and manage to stay awake during it; Gary wants to see action/adventure. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.
Return home at 9:30, set up the new office space until midnight.
Monday, repeat Sunday morning conversation with the dogs.
Spend the entire day moving boxes, emptying boxes, changing fans around, letting dogs in and out so they could re-establish their footprints on the carpeting….
At 8:00, Gary says “Let’s go watch the sunset”, which we did (and it was awesome).
Return home around 9:00; work on the kitchen and laundry.
By 11:15, the new office is done. Mostly done. The rest of the house is total chaos.