Happy Birthday anyway

We have begun the process of switching over the kids bedrooms.  The boys are happily ensconced in Tristan and Ava's old room and Ava has moved into Sebastian's old room and is loving having some space to herself.  Both rooms have been painted, new bedding is on and pictures and other decor is slowly coming.  On the way home from a camping trip to Banff we stopped at the Ikea Calgary to pick up some shelving for the boys room.  I wanted two LACK shelves to stagger across one of the walls in their room.  Apparently they have, in a stroke of what I can only call genius, discontinued the perfect mid-sized shelf and only have mini's or monsters.  Very annoyed we bought one monster and three min's figuring we'd be able to use whatever we didn't put up in the boys room in our as-yet-unfinished basement.

On Saturday I asked Hugh to put up the shelving.  The phone rang.  I spent an hour and a half on it and by the time I got off the phone Hugh was fit to be tied at the delay.  He held up the monster shelf for height and we did the, up-down-lower-lower-a bit more up-slightly to the left, thing until we got it right.  Hugh marked it, did whatever measurements he needed and started drilling holes while I tried to convince myself that using the monster would be fine.  I definitely had misgivings but a) I knew Hugh was in no mood for experimentation and b) I rarely like change at first so I figured it would be fine in the end.  Eight wall anchors and eight screws later he slid the shelf onto it's base and ta-daa! I instantly hated it.  But since this is not unusual for me and since Hugh was still annoyed with me I didn't say anything and we lived with it for two days.

I hated it for two days.  The shelf was just so intrusive, like a close-talker.  I felt I couldn't go anywhere in the room to escape it's nearness.  Today I decided maybe it would be more appealing if I dressed the shelf with some of the things I had been collecting and keeping in the garage until I had a shelf to put them on.  It lasted for five minutes and then I heard a crash.  Hugh and I ran into the boys' room and saw the monster shelf hanging limply on a downward slope, the anchors pulling out of the drywall and the boys sitting among all the things that had fallen off.  For the record, even with the books and collectibles on the shelf I still hated how it looked. 

Hugh and I then had a conversation about patching and repainting all those holes in the wall and finding a new solution for our shelving issues and whether or not we'd have to repaint the entire wall to maintain texture or not.  Isn't it fun to have to redo something you just did?  I found Hugh a little later lying on our bed with his hands over his eyes.  On our current project list: to paint and install a screen door and paint our front door and sand and paint those Adirondack chairs we picked up a while ago and paint and install a new backboard for our basketball hoop since the Plexiglas was smashed when a storm knocked the whole thing over.  Oh and we're supposed to be working on finishing our basement.

Did I mention that today is Hugh's birthday?  I'm pretty sure he's feelin' the joy of his existence today.