Straighten up and fly right

Every day it seems there's a new reason to hate flying—the checked baggage fees, the ever-expanding list of prohibited carry-on items, the security checkpoint prostate test. On their own, they're each annoying, but put them all together and it's no surprise that the rates of self-inflicted death by Cinnabon are on the rise. This past week as Carrie and I took our last trip out of state before the baby comes (details on the trip in a future post), we got to experience all of the above (good news, we're polyp free!) plus more. The "more" refers to a pet peeve of mine, one that reared its ugly head on each leg of our trip—the mass transit recliner. Without fail, every time the seat belt ding goes off on a flight I'm on, the jackass in front of me kicks back like they're in a bacalounger in the man cave. Suddenly I go from being a simple airline passenger to an unwilling participant in some form of mile-high tandem luge, my only option being to grin and bear it or offer them a shave like I'm Floyd the barber. It's not just that "recliners" are uncourteous, it's that they actually think that being 5 degrees closer to prone is suddenly going to transport them into a world of comfort and relaxation. Face it people, you're going to be uncomfortable, don't make it worse for someone else. Just because the button is there doesn't mean you have to push it. Suck it up and enjoy your party peanuts.

Thanks, I feel better.

Blood, Sweat and Swearing

"Where did that hook in again?"
"I don't remember taking this part off."
"We don't have the pieces shown in these instructions."
"Is this how it looked before we took it apart?"

These are not the things you want to hear as your husband and father-in-law are trying to put back together the brand new couch that they just took apart to get inside your house. But it's exactly what went down in our basement this past Saturday.

As part of Operation Lindeman Nursery (which really has nothing to do with any work on the nursery), we had to move our office into our old spare room -- which meant losing our one spare bed. While we didn't want this to keep guests away, we found an alternative to offering the phone number to the closet hotel: a sofa sleeper. This sounds even less comfortable than a sleeping bag, which is why we sought out something different -- we found a sofa that folds out into a platform bed with a foam mattress. We're hoping this keeps guests comfortable, but not too comfortable, if you know what I mean. We also had one other really big requirement: the couch had to come apart in order to make it down to the basement. We learned the hard way that older homes don't have standard size door frames when we moved into this house six years ago. My old sofa sleeper barely made it into the house and never saw the basement where it was intended to go. Instead, it went straight to the DAV. So this time we had to find another way to make this work.

We lucked out. We found just what we needed online and a furniture store in KC that can order them. The catch? We could pay an arm and a leg for the distributor to drop it off in our drive-way at their convenience, or we could make an adventure out of it and rent a Uhaul to bring it down and deliver it ourselves. Not one to pass up an opportunity to drive an oversized truck with no cruise control on the windiest day of the year, Craig chose the Uhaul.

So in a whirlwind trip to Kansas City this past weekend, we picked up our couch and brought it home so that Craig and his dad, Sam, could put it together before the Shocker game -- giving them just two hours until tip off. Oh, and the store only provided half of the instructions for disassembly. So seven hours, one gash to the head and several cuss words later, the sofa had been taken apart in the Uhaul, carried downstairs in multiple pieces and put back together. The true test will be when my mom sleeps on it tomorrow night.

The biggest pieces.


Sam and Craig working hard while Luka assisted.


The gash, covered by one ferocious band-aid.


Done. Finally.

Sick and tired

Sorry it's been so long since our last post … it's been an interesting past couple of days around here.

First of all, we kicked our baby preparations into high gear (meaning we did absolutely no real work on the baby's room). We did however start knocking down some of the dominos that needed to fall in order for us to get some stuff accomplished. In fact, this weekend featured two trips to our friendly neighborhood DAV and an entire day hunched over in our attic consolidating crap and inhaling 55 year-old insulation.

Unfortunately, this was all going down as I was in the beginning stages of my second cold of the year (maybe last weekend's 18-degree run wasn't such a great idea). So needless to say my normal "I love to crawl around in the attic!" chipper demeanor was somewhat dampened and I failed to enjoy the task at hand. Then, late Sunday night/early Monday morning Carrie rushed down the stairs, past my place on the couch, and returned a few seconds later with a large mixing bowl. You know the bowl, the one you occasionally eat popcorn out of only to remember that at one time or another you've puked deep-dish pizza into it. Yeah, that one. And thus started a rough 24 hours for Carrie.

So there we were, Carrie upstairs in bed with Luka, me down on the couch with Zoe. My nose blows accented by Carrie's blowing of chunks. Two days later and we're still dragging a bit, but we've got another big weekend to look forward to. Friday we're heading up to KC to load up a U-Haul and pick up some more furniture and turn around and drive right back.

I hope it's true what they say, that when you have a kid you old life ceases to exist because lately this one sucks.