500-pound Tucson woman airlifted from her own house

Posted on | June 23, 2010 | 2 Comments

There’s a piano in my kitchen. A sofa sits on its side in my office. The frame of a coffee table is upturned in the living room, and the top of it is in my bedroom, leaning against a sideboard that usually takes residence in the entryway.

We’re baa-ack! Back from our travels, back to some groovy new flooring. And back to yet another home–induced headache, one that exhausts me even more than my jet lag.

Hubby had 10 days between end-of-concrete-flooring-installation and our return to (a) get some new baseboards up and (b) get the furniture returned to the living room. So far, nada. He did make a trip to Home Depot to check out the baseboards available, but declared the MDF ones cheap and nasty and returned empty-handed.

I submit, Your Honour, that he had no intention of buying, as he actually walked the dog there, so how could he therefore carry baseboards back? And here I present Exhibit A: one leather sofa and TV in the living room (yep, he managed to move those back all right), and a rented DVD of the first series of Lost.

Last night I searched for words and tone of voice that would disguise my disgust at this – not the dog-walking (I’m happy to at last see Hubby and The Mutt bonding), but the idleness. It came out all cryptic and weak:

“Can we, um, set a time so that we can deal with all of this?”

“All of what?”

“All of what? Don’t you see the mess here?” Yes, my patience disappeared in a puff of marital disharmony, my attempts at grown-up communication thwarted as soon as I’d begun.

I swear men don’t see mess, and this is the absolute proof of it. All men, that is, except for my neat-freak toddler. Munchkin asked, wide-eyed, almost as soon as he walked back into the house: “Why is the sofa on its side in the office, mummy?”

“Well sweetie, you’ll have to ask your father about that one,” I mock-smiled.

As always, it’s not been straightforward. In removing the furniture from the living area, some legs were found to be missing from one of the sofas, and some more legs wobbled and departed from the sideboard. That is Hubby’s sole remaining excuse. Because the baseboard one doesn’t wash. Because, as I point out, it is entirely possible to install baseboards with furniture in a room. You just move the furniture out a little from the wall.

On the bright side, the flooring looks wonderful. The polished concrete – scored into big 36″ tile-effect squares – makes our living room and hallway look twice as big, is oh-so-cool underfoot in this triple digit weather, and provides a surface that’s excellent for sliding on in socks. Rogo’s Finishing Touch are kings, heroes, Masters of the Remodeling Universe. I wish we’d done this years ago. Like, before we moved in and had furniture to move around.

“Let’s start tomorrow night,” said Hubby of the return of furniture to its rightful place in the house.

But maybe that’s a little hopeful. There’s the jet lag, you see. Munchkin and I are awaking between 3am and 4am. Nice for cool-weather walks of the dog. Not so nice for evenings of hard labor.

And so the leather couch and the Lost DVDs are enticing me too now, as is the British chocolate I smuggled through Customs. You may not hear from me for some time. And it will do nothing to help the slightly expanded waistline acquired from our month-long trip to Blighty. I may hit headlines: “500-Pound Woman Removed From House By Crane After Firefighters Fail to Get Her Through the Door”. And I’ll be shouting, “Watch that nice new flooring, now!”

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