The Hole for the Patio & the Blue Bedroom

I would like to preface this blog with one comment directed at my "brother in law": No, I did NOT paint the bedrooms for children. There will be more about my 'child' dread later but moving on...

So this was a busy weekend! Saturday morning we woke up a bit late and groggy. MB headed right over to his friends NA's house to help him move some things in exchange for NA's help with the patio. Me? I ate a slice of cold pizza and started out painting the spare bedroom the lovely blue you see here. "Russian Blue", our only none food titled paint. However, we are fairly convinced our cat Lulu is part Russian Blue so we chose it partly in honor of her. I had it done in pretty much no time but somehow managed to get a good smear of paint on my leg and my arm. A fact I neglected to fix before putting on a knee length dress and heading out in the world to do a million errands. No wonder I got odd looks.

My plan was this: I needed to stop by Wings Over Worcester to pick up a gift card they had generously donated to the blood donor center (where I work). I knew NA and MB would be hard at work digging out the patio so I thought I would get a gaggle of different types of wings to try and feed them to the boys for lunch. OK, no biggy. HOWEVER, first I needed to make at pit stop and Babies R US first and get a baby shower gift. There will be separate blog about this later but this took me longer than I expected. MB called me while I was out and told me he had decided to invite our friends over. Okk. Now I had invited NA's new wife Jen over and their adorable 2 year old but MB added to the mix with his 'girlfriend' AC and his fiance Ashley (note here that we are one of the few left of our friends who are not engaged or married. They are dropping like flies let me tell you). That was great except that I had not idea what we were going to serve them and I still needed to clean the house. Now I was in a rush.

I got back with my loot to find MB's brother had stopped by on his motorcycle to check out the progress. It was at least 2:30pm by the time I got back and MB and NA had sure been hard at work, they nearly had the thing done! Funny thing is, after I fed them lunch and MB and I settled on smoking some beef ribs for everyone, they asked my option on the shape of the patio.

Now we know how this always goes. I get asked, they say no, they do what they were going to do ANYWAYS, and I throw my hands up in the air. More or less. Now I believe the original plan had been to make the whole thing a rectangle. Then the back was formed into a semi circle and the flat part was to be square. Well I pointed this out as they had it mapped for a round patio and I was told that left no room for the mower. OK. I said it was too small and it looked kinda weird. Why can't you make it an OVAL instead? Well then I got another lecture on the mower not fitting and when I said it would be too crowded they said well you don't want it too spread out and proceeded to move the patio table onto the spot to prove this. I was unconvinced so I gave up and walked away.

I got back after running all over creation to gather sustenance and spirits for our little gathering, then managed to do what little ladies do best: multitasking. I cleaned while I cooked and cooked while I cleaned. By the time I was done, I still hadn't gotten a change to shower but I was presentable (minus the paint smears) and so was the house.

MB and NA continued to work pretty much up until we ate and low and behold they had the entire thing dug! They had done a great job and I was thoroughly impressed. The boys went elsewhere to clean up for dinner while Jen, Ashley and I stood and stared at the hole. "It's too small." "Yup it's definitely too small." God I love girls :) they saw it the same as I did. It would be too crowded, especially since there would be a big wall in the back and a fire pit built into it. You don't want to sit too close to a fire. Boys just don't get it sometimes. Ashley just smiled and said "you know what, that's fine, let him realize he was wrong and then you'll be right." Exactly. ;) The way I see it and we discussed this, was that the wall would be be built first. If, once that is done, it's deemed too small, it can be expanded. It is very nice and round but I think it would look better an oval but hey, it still looks great.

We moved the patio furniture back onto our dirt patio and had dinner there and then went to our present fire pit way up in the back yard by the woods and s'mores. It was a great time but I can't wait until the patio is done and usable and we can make our s'more right out the front door!

Sunday was incredibly lazy. I got almost no sleep the night before, was up very early and then finally poked MB around 10am to please, please , please make me homefries! I spent the whole day in a half awake daze as we lay around watching the food network and doing not much of anything. This is very difficult for us. Even when we are tired/hung over and it's raining, we STILL feel the need to do something. We researched anything to do, ended up driving out to Amherst for the hell of it, spent about 20 minutes walking around ( I had wanted to go to the Yankee Candle Village and make candles but I got shut down. humph.) then went to where we REALLY wanted to and trotted over to mecca: Whole Foods. It was a good day but we got absolutely nothing done. I think our Saturday was busy enough to make up for it though.