FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER!

The woman who works for me one day a week also works for my contractor. It’s actually how I found him. Here’s the problem. She/they keep moving my stuff around. Anyone who has ever done a kitchen knows what I mean.

First they need to get out the sliding glass door to cut pipe.  Never mind that they have pushed the kitchen table up to it. Then they need to go out the laundry room door to stack the bags of insulation they took out of the attic. In order to drag those huge bags she had to rearrange my laundry room and all the clean clothes in it. Then they disassembled a shelf in the pantry to get to the electrical box. Nothing ever gets put back.

So today when I went to look at the granite edging options in the master folder on the kitchen table, I knew that the metal tool box that used to be in the pantry had been moved to under the round table. But I didn’t know it was sticking out.  I caught the edge of it with the toe of my shoe and flew across the room and into the sunken family room, about ten feet before I stopped moving.

I landed on Masonite over hardwood. I hit both knees, both hands, and one shoulder.  I was lucky to have on two pairs of pants to keep warm. I didn’t break anything, but you know how it is when you fall. Everything is going to hurt tomorrow.

I didn’t put the metal toolbox under the pedestal table. But there it was. Now I have a huge bruise on my shin where it hit the higher kitchen floor before I landed on the lower family room floor. My right arm hurts. My hand hurts.  I have a new bump on my shoulder. So much for my chiropractic adjustment yesterday. It’s safe to say that I am no longer in alignment.

The helper is the same person who moved an old kitchen sink in the yard to butt up against my shed.  She created the perfect rat hotel with a cast iron border wall.

This is the same person who moved two large rocks that I’d placed around a protruding sprinkler head so that I wouldn’t trip over it.

This is the same person who puts things back the way she would want them to be, not the way she found them.

I am spoiled by living alone. I can only blame myself if something is misplaced or a trip hazard. Not like when I was married and once searched for 30 minutes for my car keys only to find out that my then husband had put them in my car’s ignition in the garage (we had three young children at the time).

I’ve become intolerant of flawed thinking. If I trip over something, it’s my own damned fault. Unless, of course, someone else put it there.

I’m only two and a half weeks into the remodel. How many more times will I curse the helper’s name? Flying across the room hurts at any age. But it’s tough on an old lady who just wanted to select edging for her granite counter top.