The Week He Went Away

This post has been a long time coming as life has filled up my days, and funny stories with Little Miss have taken the forefront of my "nutters" blog.  But some of my faithful followers have been asking when I'm going to talk about what I did the week Mr. Man went away.

Now I don't tend to sit still for very long, as my mind gets working on the "what if?" questions and "oh, look what's on Pinterest!" exclamations.  Despite his support, Mr. often rolls his eyes, and whispers to our son, "Your mother's crazy."

Hmph. Am not.

On a particular Monday night, Mr. left with friends on a week long trek out to Alberta.  Tuesday morning I dragged out several dressers in the house, carried them downstairs and prepared to make a stunning, lots of drawer space, spectacular, "oh, you are amazing and so thoughtful" surprise for my husband.

I knew what I was doing. My dad's a carpenter.

Originally I was going paint it an elegant antique white, and change the knobs, but then I thought:

1. Ooooh, he'd LOVE a bigger dresser!  Let's combine his tall boy with one of Little Miss's and make one wide dresser, similar to this:

Centsational Girl

2.  When I realized that all the highboys in our house were different heights, I found this one on Pinterest, and thought I could stack them!

Before Meets After

So I measured and measured again, and it would work! (So I thought). Once stacked, however, the top drawer was actually over 6 feet up, even too tall for the Dutchman I married.  So what next?

3.  Let's cut off the bottom drawer! 

Again, no sweat.  I am a carpenter's daughter.

Now I may be a bit naive, but I knew power tools were out of the question without someone hear to apply pressure and drive me to the hospital. I found a bunch of handsaws in the basement and went to work, sawing horizontally around the fourth drawer, slowly, so I didn't get "sawer's shoulder" or some real-life ache like that.  It took a while. Once it was finished, it looked like this:

OK, it's not made of spectacular material, but my friend, Paul, said he was impressed how straight I cut it.

Well that's because I am a carpenter's daughter!

I lifted the upper part containing three drawers on top of another wider dresser, and it looked great - until I looked at it from the side.  It was hanging two inches off the back of the bottom dresser, and there was no way to hide it.

By this time it was 4 o'clock, and I had accomplished nothing. A feeling of dread came over me and I sat down on the couch. I just sawed my husband's dresser in half.  The same dresser that my parents had in Yellowknife when I was little. I felt really ill.

And so I thought,

4.  I have to buy Mr. Man a new dresser.

This isn't the end of the story, but at this point I did learn something. When looking back over the years of partnering with my Mr., I could run through numerous ideas I've had where he said, "NO."  I'd pout, and sometimes get my way, but ultimately he was always right. It wasn't a good idea.

So, while I am the imaginative, spontaneous one (in my safe, little world, mind you), Mr. Man is the sensible, "seeing the big picture" one.  And together we make a great pair.

When he decides to go away for a few days, this is what happens.

So really, it is all his fault.

Erin