Long story short: I had just finished wiping my lovely almost-4-year-old's bottom because he decided it was way more fun if Mommy did it instead of doing it himself. My skin is literally peeling off my hands thanks to a new round of eczema, which is exacerbated by washing them repeatedly. Then Rachel decided to poop. Again. I begged John to take her. Rachel cried for Mommy, and John happily handed her off to me. As I was walking up the stairs to change her, I heard him telling Laurie how Rachel had asked for me, getting him off of diaper duty. Then he laughed.
And that's when I kicked in the wall.
You know those moments when you do something awful and you know you can't hide the evidence of your crime? That feeling in the pit of your stomach of total panic and dread at having to face the consequences of your actions? I honestly thought about blaming the kids, but there was no way something besides my foot could have made that giant hole. I wish I had taken a picture. It was impressive.
But I couldn't hide my guilt. Not even from my 2 year-old.
Rachel: Uh-oh.
Me: Yeah. [sigh] Big 'uh-oh.'
Rachel: Wall have boo boo?
Me: Yes, the wall has a boo-boo.
Rachel: Boom!
Me: [sigh] Yes, big boom.
John was surprising casual about the whole thing. This made me grateful because if the roles were reversed, *I* wouldn't have been nearly so casual about him causing interior damage to our home.
John even offered to fix the silly thing. But I told him no. One of the things I want my kids to learn is that you need to own up to your mistakes. At that moment I realized how unfortunate it was that I'm such a firm believer in individuals taking responsibility for their own stupidity, at least when that stupidity falls on me.
So I got online and found out how to repair a hole in drywall. It looked ridiculously easy. I felt motivated and self-assured. I could patch a hundred holes in drywall!
Then I noticed all of the material I needed to buy.
Which meant I needed to make a Home Depot run.
And I panicked.
I despise Home Depot. Every time I walk into that store, even if there's a thousand other people shopping, I can pretty much bet on the fact that I will be the only customer over the age of 10 with a vagina. This is compounded by the worst customer service on the planet with employees who barely speak English. I would rather get my wisdom teeth extracted. Again. With the 2 dry sockets, than head over to that cold warehouse to wander the aisles aimlessly for an hour.
It has also been in the 40's this week and rainy. But I sucked it up and headed over. As per usual, I had to beg a disgruntled male employee to make a small can of paint. I trooped up and down different sections before finding a nice man wearing orange who looked like he enjoyed helping people.
"Hey..." I started. "I'm looking for joint compound, drywall..."
"Oh, um... Robba! Robba!"
So, 'Robba' turned out to be "Robert," and my sweet knight in an orange vest turned out to speak about 50 English words, but between the 3 of us, I got everything I needed. I even found a self-adhesive 4" strip that had the instructions for patching a hole right on the box! Awesome!
I drove home feeling proud of myself... until I went upstairs and saw that the hole was just a bit larger than the patch.
Crap.
But, wait! I had bought meshing tape. Maybe I could put a little meshing tape over the part of the hole that was too big? It... worked. OK, it wasn't perfect, but unless you are really looking for the hole, you couldn't see it.
I learned a few lessons through all of this:1) How to repair a hole in drywall. It's really a useful thing to know how to do. I rank it up there with changing oil in your car.
2) Find the stud BEFORE hitting/kicking anything out of anger. Or if the 'stud' happens to be 5'9" and cute, save yourself the trouble and just kick him. :-)
3) I also learned that I really need to be better about taking "Before" shots with my camera. It really was an impressive hole...
7 comments:
The other over-age-10 veebees are there looking for guys. Best place to look is casual power-tools, like drills. That's where you'll find the guys that aren't TOO into building stuff, just generally handy to have around.
Ya know, in case you're wondering.
But they are 55+ year-old, 5-foot Indian men who don't speak English, dude. At least in Reston...
Shop at Lowe's. Obvi.
PS. my human-proof word is blaxess. Which is like bloggess but ghettoooo.
@happilyeveronward:
Part 2- Yes, the customers. I didn't even go into the hassle at check-out when said man hassled the cashier about the price of a power-tool. THEN put down 3 coupons to have the bloody thing half price. THEN complained that a *4th* coupon had expired and couldn't get the $!&@ing thing for even less.
I had to literally elbow him out of
the way to pay for my purchase.
But if that's how you roll, more power to ya... :-)
power tool ya?
har har har
Part 3:
Yeah.. the Lowe's guys are way hotter. Better "customer service," too. ;-)
no special?
::bobble head action here::
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