Toss up between Grrrrreat and just Grrrrrrr

Do you ever have one of those days where life is going along and you seem to be enjoying the ride and then something flips out of nowhere and hits you in the face?  Sort of like a rake that's been laying in the leaves and you don't see it.  You're just admiring the beautiful fall colours until you step on the tines of the rake and the handle comes up out of that beautiful pile of leaves and hits you right square in the face?  Ya?  Well, that's the sort of day I've had.

I woke up this morning, made yummy pancakes and prepared to go to the Swaziland warehouse as planned with Stacey.  Drove over there and Stacey and I decided to work on separate projects hoping to get things done a bit faster.  My job was to do a window display with some decorative shelving and put up the sign in the window as an indicator for those looking for us.  The sign always seemed so big before.  It is pretty small in the window, but nevertheless, it's up!  The shelving... well... the shelving...

You know it's harder to put something together that you haven't seen before.  Who am I kidding?  I wouldn't have remembered really what it was like before anyway!  Instructions wouldn't have helped since that isn't something I usually do either.  They never seem to make sense to me.  I noticed that some of the shelves had these little holes in the back of them, so I went looking for small metal rods in the back room where it was stored.  Nothing.  No rods.  Ugh.  I thought, well, it's only decorative and I'm only putting a dozen books on or so, so I thought that would be ok.  I couldn't put the third shelf in because it just wouldn't snap in.  I called Stacey for help.  She said I'd need to put the back part of the shelf in.  What was she talking about?  She pointed out those little holes that I thought a rod went into were meant for the back support. Oooooh!  I get it now.  I thought those extra pieces of wood were the leaves for a table to extend it longer.  I should have realized that they weren't for that since we didn't have a dining table there.  Lesson learned.  Don't assume things.  In the end, the shelf looked pretty good.

Stacey worked like a beaver getting the shelving up.  We took out about twenty feet of shelving floor to ceiling from a school that was being renovated.  When Vince & Campbell were disassembling it, they had the foresight to label the sections so we'd know how to put them together.  Stacey did a great job of getting the first large piece of shelving up by herself.  Andrew did come in for the last fifteen minutes to help her slide on the wooden shelves.

Pattern available!

During the morning a parent and daughter from my school dropped in with some books.  This is the same person who made the bags I blogged about in the Swaziland section.  This time she brought in some pillowcase dresses she made!  Her daughter modeled one for us!  They were great!  She picked up a couple of the pillowcases at the  Dollar Store too.  She is a very talented lady.  Debbie made these little decorative covers for those individual kleenex packages.  What a cool idea!  She thought we could use them as a fundraiser, so we will!  She had some really good ideas and is willing to help with this part of the project too.  That's what it's all about.  If people did things that they were gifted in and excited about doing it, then each of the jobs would be done with just plain old joy!
As Debbie and her daughter left, Stacey & I finished up and we felt like we accomplished what we set out for the day.  I had to step out for about fifteen minutes to drive Campbell to work.  He said that Vince had gotten home from his appointment.  I looked forward to spending some time with Vince when I got home.  He has had a lot of meetings the past two days, and it would be nice to just to chat.  When I got home, Vince was in our bedroom with the vacuum cleaner and some screwdrivers.  And his face wasn't happy.  That's when the day turned from Grrrrrreat to just plain Grrrrrrrr.

Last night, when my son-in-love, Ron, was over visiting with Vince, they heard the sound of smashing glass.  They even thought it was one of our windows on the pool side of the house.  They came through the house running but the sliding glass doors were fine.  Even though it was dark, they stepped out the back door and looked around.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  They inspected the other windows on the other walls of the house, and everything seemed fine.  But, today, Vince noticed that our bedroom was exceptionally cool.  Then he noticed the shards of glass along the wall where the window was.  He opened the curtain and thankfully the blinds had held most of the glass pieces left behind caused by the empty bottle of rye that had been recklessly been thrown through the window.  Vince vacuumed up the glass and boarded up the window until we can get it repaired and called the police to report the damage.

Honestly.... why do people do such mindless acts of vandalism?  Since the news has been in the newspaper about our house possibly being torn down for a drugstore, many neighbourhood people have expressed how sad they are that we are losing our home.  Really?  We lost our home about 7 years ago when the people that bought the motel next door don't care about the clientele they rent to.  We haven't been able to use our backyard during the day because of people rolling joints, alcohol abuse and vulgar language whenever I want to be outside with my grandkids.  At night, we have to shut the windows because of the language and antics that happen until the wee hours of the morning.   Honestly, this isn't home right now, it's just where we live.

Home for us is wherever we go.  Home is where we are.  Maybe tonight we'll be at home at Swiss Chalet for supper!  :)  Hopefully, one day, we'll have another house that will become our home.