highs and lows

Like the weather, today had its ups and downs. Here are the highlights:

1. my paint samples arrive

Aren’t they cute? Each sample comes with a mini-roller and plastic paint tray. Adorable. Everyone loved Spring Hill, the green for the master bedroom. Pismo Dunes, a sandy yellow I was trying for my office, was less of a hit. I’m gravitating more toward a pale blue in there now.

2. we have no indoor plumbing
Working at the house has taken a new, unpleasant twist. I actually found this out Friday night when I used the toilet first and asked questions later, a mistake I shall not repeat. Our contractor and his plumber have been refitting pipes so the only source of water is a spigot jutting out of one bathroom wall. This is even more annoying than it sounds. It has made the simple act of taking a pee into a multistep process fraught with danger.

3. we pick up our countertop
Usually, Joe is the one who inspects everything with a fine-tooth comb, to the point of embarrassment for me. I’ll grant that maybe 20 percent of the time, I’m glad he’s so anal because it saves us some headaches. But this time, it was me who zeroed in on the problem. There was a huge dark flaw in the countertop, the same one we specifically asked them to cut around. I pointed it out with alarm, but Joe pooh-poohed me and we took it home.

4. we return our countertop
It was all over the second Joe’s dad took a look. He pointed out that the backsplash had been broken in half and then repaired, among a bunch of other flaws. He kept asking, “Why’d you even bring it home?” That was enough for Joe. We drove back to the granite place to return it. The good news is, they didn’t argue with us. The machinist just looked at the broken piece and said, “Yeah, that happens,” a phrase Joe kept muttering angrily the rest of the weekend. The bad news is, we seem to be going backward in the progress department.