How To Turn Your Spare Bedroom Into A Walk-In Closet, in 437 Easy Steps (PART FOUR!)

Part 1 is here; part 2 is right here. AND part 3 is right HERE. 

INTERLUDE: Q&A WITH THE WRITER/SHELF-BUILDER:

I want to assure you, the reader, that there IS, in fact, a Walk-In Closet at the end of this story. I HOPE. I am about 1/3 done with the project, which I work on only on Sundays because there are only so many days I'm willing to jab myself in the thumb with a Phillips-head screwdriver for Sweetie.

But there IS a Walk-In closet there, and it's neither a metaphorical closet ("The closet was in you all along!") nor a cop-out like that time that Grover was all worried that there was a monster at the end of the book and he did everything he could to keep me, the reader, from getting to the end of the book, even building a brick wall across the page only to have me, a little boy!, pull the wall completely down with a casual flick of my wrist as I turned the page!

Yes, Grover, I did know that I was very strong.

This story did not originally start out as a lengthy multipart epic involving ERs and a blueberry pie thta I baked yesterday after we had to run to the store to get more paint, at which point we decided that the shelves would not all be blue, but at least one would be red because Mr Bunches wanted to get red paint and one would be orange because I said that Mr F got to pick a color, too, and when I asked him what color he wanted to paint a shelf, Mr F didn't respond, so Mr Bunches answered "orange" for him.

That is how democracy works.

But as an entremet, which is a new word I just looked up and it's French for between courses, I decided to do a little Q&A with you, the reader, featuring questions that I imagine people would ask me about this project if anyone ever asked me any questions about this project.  Which people probably have but if they did I missed it in the comments, because that is how the Internet works:

A.  Someone, maybe even me!, writes a post about something, like, say, a dream we had where we were searching for a kid who might have been a terrorist but the government was trying to stop us from getting to the waterpark, I don't know, it's hazy now but I liked the story as it was developing and was sad to wake up.

B.  Someone -- possibly you!-- takes that post and draws out a side comment, like how in the dream maybe I saw a person cooking french fries, and in your comments you mention that you used to like french fries but now have a heart condition.  If you do! Don't lie in the comments, please. That's rude.

C.  Someone -- hopefully me -- then reads your comment and leaves a response that was intended to redirect you to the point of the post, only that someone gets distracted and begins to talk about this one time he was raking the leaves.

D.  A spambot tells us all to buy hair conditioner and porn.

Luckily for me, my mind moves in random circles: as Liz pointed out yesterday, I am the King of the Tangents, a title I have always taken very seriously even though I only learned I'd been given it yesterday.  And luckily for you, I'm more than able to make up fictional questions about this project and answer them, giving ACTUAL TIPS FOR YOU, THE HOME CRAFTSMAN in the process.

Let's get to those questions!

Q: Didn't you mean home craftsPERSON? Women can do projects, you know.

A:  Recently, Dinosaur Comics did a whole strip on what would be a way better way to end words than with "-ter" or "-tress".  I cannot find that comic strip this morning, and I spent an entire 10 seconds searching through the archive of that comic, so I'm sorry I let you down, society.

Q: What tools do you actually have in your toolbox/workbench area of your garage?

A:  That is a difficult question to answer, in that my "system" for keeping my tools places has several different objectives, and also it is not a "system" in any of the accepted meanings of that word.

GOAL ONE of my tool system is to keep the boys from getting to the more dangerous ones, which is all tools.  I have tools that include a soldering iron, several box cutters (SO TABOO NOW), a saw, and many many little drill bits from an electric drill that I never use because it's never charged up and which I never charge because when charged it is actually less efficient than when it is simply a dead piece of metal.  To keep those various dangerous tools out of the boys' hands, no matter what, I put them as high up in storage as I can.  So at any time, you will find tools about 3' above head height in our house.  We keep screwdrivers and pliers and this really awesome thing I have that's sort of a pliers/shears/hammer -- honestly, it looks lethal -- up on top of cabinets or up on the metal storage container that came with the house.

GOAL TWO is not to have to take my tools back after I use them.  Did you ever have to use a screwdriver for something because a butter knife was not getting the job done, and you went looking around atop the kitchen cabinets and the metal box and the workbench and your bedroom dresser and your car's glove compartment until you finally found the screwdriver in your lunchbox, and then you used it for whatever you were going to use it for (killing a spider) and then you had to take it all the way back to where it belongs, which is downstairs, which is far away and your pizza is getting cold?  So you put the screwdriver 'away', meaning 'someplace I can't see it right now.'

That is my system.

To answer your question: I own four Phillips-head screwdrivers, three of which I bought last week at the Dollar Store and only one of which I use; I own a flathead screwdriver which is practically useless. NOBODY makes flathead screws anymore.  I own a hammer.  I actually own two hammers but cannot find one.  I own a saw, which we use in yardwork.  I own a toolbox that is also a combination stepladder.  I own a tile-cutter because once I put in tile in our bathroom.  There are probably other tools hidden behind the box of Christmas decorations on the workbench but if so I'm not going to find them because who knows what else is back there?  Maybe raccoons.  Don't tell Sweetie.

Q:  Are you seriously not going to show a picture of that tool?  "Worth a thousand words, etc."

A: FINE.  But it is all the way downstairs, were you not paying attention to that last part?

Q: That is awesome.

A:  Yes. It is.  It is the only tool you would need after an apocalypse.  Which makes it more of an investment, really.

Q:  I couldn't help but noticing that you have a zebra bandage on that thumb.  So you weren't kidding about that injury?

A:  No.  Funny story!  Yesterday, working on shelves 3 and 4 -- all  of them are fully assembled as I write this and merely awaiting painting before being installed next week -- I was screwing one of the braces together and the screwdriver slipped and jabbed right into my thumb right by the nail, REALLY HARD.  It bled quite a bit, actually, but did I stop working? No, probably because I was delirious from blood loss.

It wasn't until later, when I was done with the assembly, that I got the bandage on, and that was only because Mr Bunches saw my injury as I helped him assemble an airplane from his Trio (TM!) blocks.  He went and got me a Band-Aid (TM!) so I (to quote him) "Won't have to go to the hospital," which wasn't really an option because they'd just do an EKG, tell me I'm fat, and send me home.  But I let him bandage it up, and then an hour later, I let Mr F take the bandage off because Mr F does not approve of changing our appearances, even slightly, and about two hours after that I let Mr Bunches put a new one on because Mr Bunches is serious about me not going to the hospital.

Q:  How is that a 'funny' story?

A:  I am using 'funny' in the sense of 'incredibly painful and when did I last get a tetanus shot, does blood come out of jean shorts?'

Q:  Have you gotten any other injuries while doing this project?

A:  No, but Mr Bunches has.  He was playing with the hammer last week, on Sunday One of the project, and I heard him say "Ow!" and I looked up and he was holding his eye with one hand and the hammer with the other, and the first thing I thought was OH MY GOD HE CLAWED OUT HIS EYE because I have seen too many horror movies, and I rushed over there and made him put the hammer down and looked at his eye and saw no blood or bruises or anything so I asked him what happened and he said "Hammer," and then said "I hit my eye," and then pointed at the rock, and eventually I decided that he had been hammering a decorative (?) rock in our yard, and that he'd been leaning in close to it, and that the hammer had rebounded and hit his eye.  When I asked him which part of the hammer had hit his eye, he pointed to the wooden handle, so I made him watch my finger while I moved it around to see if his eye would move around, and I made him count the number of fingers I was holding up, both of which are probably tests for concussions and not eye injuries.

"Are you okay?" I asked him, then and he nodded.

"I will go on playing," he said, in a brave, but quavery-sort-of-crying voice, so I gave him a hug and said he could go on playing and didn't have to go inside where Mr F and Mommy were not working on tools, and he went and threw the hammer in the yard, correctly blaming the tool, not the craftsman.

Later on, he decided that he would hammer some nails into a board, if I got the nails started, and he did that all right.

That's it for this time!  

Q: Didn't you promise 'ACTUAL TIPS FOR...'

A: Get her out of here.

Click here for the next part.

How to Turn Your Spare Bedroom Into A Walk-In Closet, in 437 Easy Steps (PART THREE!)

Part 1 is here; part 2 is right here.

We were on, I think, Step 11: Finding A Parking Spot At The ER.

What you want to do next, as a Master Level Closet Craftsman, is try to get one of your older kids to babysit your younger kids while you go to the ER, because a hospital is no place for young children, unless they overhear you making plans to have them babysat and begin to panic because they don't like being left with a sitter.  If that happens, handle it by calling one of your kids, getting her to promise to come over immediately, then realize that Mr Bunches has overheard you and he and Mr F are somehow agitated because they know you are going somewhere, and call the kid/babysitter back and tell her not to bother.  Bonus points if you can make it seem like it's her fault for not getting there already, even though it's been only 15 seconds and not even ambulances flown by Superman could have gotten to your house that quickly.

Step 12: Think About How Cool It Would Be If You Were Flown To A Hospital By Superman.

Hey! Did you forget your wife is in the car, desperately ill and waiting for you to go to the ER? COME ON, MAN!

Step 13: Drop wife off at door and explain to security guard that the parking lot is full and you're going to have to park farther away.

After he helpfully begins to wheel her into the hospital, go get the absolute nearest parking space to the ER, which is about 1 and 1/2 blocks away in the parking ramp.  Do not think about what this means about how crowded the ER is, as that will only lead you to the train of thought where you start to resent people for being at the ER because they are making it take longer for you to be at the ER, and you don't want to be the kind of person who gets upset with other people for being sick, or injured, but let's face it: absolutely nobody in this ER looks like they actually need to be here.  That one lady? She's making sarcastic faces.  She's sitting in her chair next to that guy who's probably just her boyfriend, he's not going to marry you, and she's making sarcastic faces at the nurse as she walks away.  How can it possibly be an emergency if you can still be sarcastic?

Step 14:  Don't realize right away why you don't get to go back with your wife to the small room where they'll work on her.

Once we were inside the hospital, and Sweetie was talking to that triage nurse who always tries to figure out a way to weigh you, and who will also ask you your religion, what's that about?, I got the boys settled down with their cheese puffs (Mr F) and their iPad (Mr Bunches) and waited for someone to come and tell me that Sweetie was getting fluids and would be just fine.

I already knew what was going to happen; trips to the ER when Sweetie gets the flu were, by now, pretty much like an episode of an average sitcom: you know what's going to happen, you're just waiting to see the specific gags along the way.  Would the dad drop the hammer on his foot? Or would the mom burn the roast?

Step 15:  I feel like that analogy was a little forced.

It was.

Step 16:  Remember what shirt you are wearing.

They brought Sweetie out of the triage room, in one of those weird new wheelchairs where they don't really look like wheelchairs, they look like endtables or occasional tables that have been upended and had wheels attached to them.

If you look around your average medical establishment these days, you will realize a few things about life, and people.

A few things about life, and people:

1. I don't know why they are called occasional tables.  Apparently, having just now looked it up, it's a table with no regular use planned for it.  So we now have:
    a.  Coffee tables, which are as far as I can tell never used for holding coffee.
    b.  Kitchen, or 'dinner', tables, which are used for supper.
    c.  Occasional tables, which are not occasional tables at all if you have a regular use planned for them, so if you always, say, put your slice of cold pizza on them while you try to read your book before you get asked to play the part of 'Kwazi" in the "Octonauts" re-enactment that is being set up on the living room rug in front of you, it's not an occasional table.

2.  People are getting fatter.

This is an inescapable fact of life for everyone except me.  I have lost 22 pounds in the past year and am doing great: the other day, I was able to get into a sportcoat I haven't worn in years.  This has come at a heavy price for me, in that I no longer have regular access to bowls of Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch, but the fact remains that you are all getting fatter.

I was thinking about that the last time I went to the doctor, myself, for a sinus infection that turned out to be the least of my problems once the doctor tried to kill me with the antibiotics he prescribed, which caused an allergic reaction which in turn caused me to have trouble breathing, which in turn caused me to go to the doctor again, which in turn, etc. caused me to have to get referred by my doctor, after he said "Well, I guess stop taking the antibiotics", to the cardiologist because if you have just one heart attack in your life then for the rest of your life they're going to treat every single medical problem including but not limited to decaptiation, by referring you to the cardiologist, who I had to meet with, and who that he didn't think I was having a heart attack.

When I said I hadn't thought I was having a heart attack, either, but had only been referred back to him as a precautionary measure, it seemed to make him upset that I was implying that I, a guy sitting in his office wearing a t-shirt, could know as much about who was, or was not, or maybe was/was not, having a heart attack as him, a cardiologist with a giant poster about the heart right behind him, and so to get back at me he began telling me I was fat.

Seriously.

I mean, I know I am still fat, but I was (a) there because I'd had an allergic reaction to medicine, one (b) not caused by fat, and (c) even my original heart attack three years ago was caused not by fat but by bee stings, which as far as I know also (d) are not caused by fat.

Despite all that not-fat-related health history, and despite the fact that a quick glance at my chart would show the aforementioned 22-pound weight loss in the past year, Cardiologist Joe began lecturing me about how I needed to lower my cholesterol (it's actually fine) and lower my triglycerides (probably not a real thing) and watch my diet, and when I said I already do those things, he went on to say that he once heard a dietician or someone say that a good rule is to only eat french fries if you cook them yourself.

And then he stopped and looked at me in that meaningful way that doctors use to say they don't believe you about what you are telling them, and he repeated it.

And then he explained that the point of it is you can go to restaurants and order what you want and just don't eat the fries and then you'll be healthier.

OK, it's a stupid rule, because first of all, the fries are not the problem at restaurants, really, it's the fact that a hamburger, when ordered at a restaurant, weighs in at 8 pounds, as do all restaurant entrees.  One place we sometimes go to eat 7 years ago before the boys were born had, as an actual menu item, "Half A Chicken."

Half A Chicken.  That was what the entree was called.  So we're not even trying anymore.  We don't give clever names to entrees, like "Chicken A La King." We just describe the sheer amount of food you're getting.  I look forward to McDonald's new menu item, "Box Of Meat."

Secondly, cooking fries at home is easy.  They sell them in bags, and they cook up in about 10 minutes, which I know because Mr F loves french fries and eats them several times a week.

Step 17: Maybe you ought to go back to read Step 16 again because I think you got a little off-track here.

AS I WAS SAYING, people are getting fatter and the proof is all around us at hospitals, which want to subtly insult you while they make their job easier, Exhibit A in which is the OccasionalTableWheelchair, which is both larger than a traditional wheelchair and has no sides or armrests on it, so that anyone can fit into it, even you.

Exhibit B is the scale at the doctor's office, which is no longer that traditional doctor's scale with the sliding little weights, the big one and the small one, where the nurse slides it back and forth in smaller and smaller increments, and where she as soon as you step on has to slide that large one way to one side to imply that you are way bigger than anyone else who has stepped on that scale recently, and which made a helpful clunk to tell everyone else in the area just how many levels bigger you were than everyone.  Clunk clunk clunk rattlerattlerattle and then she'd write down "250" and you'd try to explain that if she'd just let you take your shoes off...

That scale doesn't exist anymore.  Instead, hospitals and doctors offices have a semitrailer truck measuring platform, a giant metal slab on which you stand and a digital box on the wall tells how much you weigh and how many axles you would have if you were highway legal. (You're not).

Step 18:  The shirt? Remember?

As Sweetie was sitting in her Occasional Chair and I was sitting and parceling out Mr F's cheese puffs and trying to figure if I should talk to her, a male nurse came over to explain that she would be going back soon, they were just busy tonight, but first, he began a conversation with me about my t-shirt, which was a Russell Wilson (TM!) brand Seahawks t-shirt, and it was only after we agreed that his team, the Oakland (TM!) Raiders might be pretty good this year, that he bothered imparting information to the patient, that information being the aforementioned news that they were busy and we'd be here a while.

About which I wanted to say: Hey, I have been through this before, and I know that what she needs is some fluids, through that little IV bag, and also that little pill you give her that makes her stop throwing up instantly.

Step 19: What? THEY HAVE THAT? THAT IS THE GREATEST INVENTION EVER!

I know, right? They do.  They have a pill that will absolutely stop you from throwing up no matter how sick you are.  And it dissolves on your tongue, like a Tic Tac only faster.

We learned this back in February when Sweetie had the flu for 17 months straight and also got dehydrated and became delirious and was having trouble sitting up and I took her to the ER and they gave her fluids and The Magic Pill, and after what had seemed like years of her bwah-ing every 5 minutes, she stopped.

Instantly.

And even better, later on I got sick with the flu and knew that I was going to bwah, too, and so I took one of her pills, look I know you're not supposed to do that but they'd given them to the boys, so they must be safe, right? and although I bwahed once, a little, that was it, and my flu was over in 5 minutes as opposed to the several days other people suffered through, and Sweetie and I decided later that it was probably only because I took the pill too late that I got sick at all.

So they have a pill that stops you if you are vomiting, and prevents you from vomiting if you are going to, and they do not sell that pill.  Doctors don't prescribe it.  You only get it if you go to the ER when you are actually throwing up, which is why our health care system isn't a system at all.

We sat there in the ER while the crazy man stared at us from the corner -- he really was crazy, I think -- and I didn't say "Look, while we sit here would you give her the pill and an IV bag and we'll be on our way?" because a drive-thru ER should be a thing, especially if you know how to do an IV, which I do because we used to have to do one on our cat, and I was the guy who got to give a cat an IV.

Step 20: Really? What was that like?

Not as fun as you'd think.

Step 21: I didn't think it sounded fun, at all.

Bingo.

Click here to go to the next part. 

90 Days Of Summer... In Photos (A Photo Essay)

July 1-August 29: