Happy Monday! I'm home from work at the moment - will go in this afternoon if time permits, but I stayed home this morning to allow two flooring contractors access to the house. One is a carpet guy working on the study and one a laminate expert working on the large living room/dining room combo across the front of the house, where I keep the pool table. My dog is not happy about this invasion, and alters between whimpering piteously, as if he's been beaten, to barking furiously while flinging his tiny body against the door of the room in which he's imprisoned.

I very much wish we'd bitten the bullet in the beginning and paid for the laminate flooring installation everywhere instead of wrestling with so much of it ourselves, but as they say 'hindsight is 20/20'.

It was kind of a sucky weekend. We spent almost all of it working so the contractors could come in today and do their thing: buying and loading/unloading the extra flooring required, buying carpet, making the arrangements, moving furniture out of the rooms involved, packing up some more stuff for the storage space, laying the 'quiet walk' stuff that goes under the laminate, along with the usual errands like grocery shopping, Sam's Club...writing it down, it doesn't seem like that much of a deal but last night I certainly felt as if I'd spent all weekend doing crappy stuff instead of enjoying any of it.

I suppose I'm the anti-Mike, Kristy's husband. Today she writes that "It always amazes me how much work he can get done in a short time." I, in contrast, can work very hard for a very long time and produce amazingly miniscule results. I usually manage to injure myself as well, even if it's only minor. Yesterday I scored one bloody scratch on my forearm, two small cuts on my hands (one each), two giant welts from insect bites and a bruise (an actual bruise, I may photograph it later, no idea how I managed it) on the first knuckle of my left bird-finger. Bah, I bet Mike can work for hours on end without bloodshed.