Bedtime Story: The Final Chapter

Summary of parts I and II:

Girl wants a tall bed. Girl gets tall bed. Tall bed dies. Twice. After second death, girl buys flatpack bed from IKEA, thinking it's the right size. 'Tisn't. Girl is still left sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

And now, what we've all been waiting for: The Final Chapter.

So the girl is getting really tired of sleeping on the floor. Her knees have mysteriously taken a leave of good health which makes entering and vacating the bed a less than graceful operation.

So she searches.

And she plans.

And she draws poorly drawn plans, because she hasn't a visually artistic bone in her body.

And she talks shop with her father, which was very exciting and very nervous-making. Every time she had a plan for building something, she would ask her father for help, and he would end up taking the entire project out of her hands. But not this time! This time he helped edit the plans, and he provided helpful tools.

Finally the girl decides "This is the day!" She draws yet another plan (for all the other drawings disappeared) and takes last minute measurements and off she goes to the hardware store! Pine! Carriage bolts! Nuts! Washers! Drill bit! Candy bar!

As she's watching the helpful hardware store employee cutting the boards, she feels a moment of horror. What if it doesn't fit in my car? Thankfully, it did. With a whole three inches to spare.



She totes the lumber into her house and begins work! After much cursing and swearing and candy bar-munching and a few extra holes here and there, the girl has a bed!


(I am terribly embarrassed by how fuzzy this pic is. Took it on my phone to send to my dad, then sent it to facebook, only to realise it's fuzzier than a bunny. Oh well.)

And the best news is that it holds the weight of the mattress. And the weight of the girl. And a boy child. And two rats. And no wibbles or wobbles. Sturdy as a rock. Needless to say, the girl was (and still is!) very proud of herself.

Georgia Aquarium

Camden, my mother, and I drove down to Atlanta, Georgia Thursday/Friday to visit my sister. I hadn't seen her since Christmas and she asked earlier this summer if I'd visit her. And to celebrate, Red bought us all tickets to visit the Georgia Aquarium. I've been to the aquarium in Chicago, so I was excited, but Camden has only been to zoos, so he was super excited. Plus, he's in love with sharks and octopuses and squid.





My sister, rather like myself, likes to get to things on time. And by on time, I obviously mean early. So we ended up getting to the aquarium about 30 minutes before it actually opened. Luckily, there was still fun stuff to peruse outside, like these dolphin statues. Cam's favourites were the super hero dolphin (when he saw it, he said "What!?" in the tone of WTF is going on here) and the "Bob the Builder" dolphin, as we called it.



They had five or six that were roped off and not readily available for posing with, but Camden really liked the "Peace" dolphin.



Flash wasn't allowed in most (read: any) of the aquarium, so my pictures of the animals all came out very poorly. Except the penguins here. Guess something made them all hold still for the five secondstime it takes my camera to open and close the lens.



This is another one that held still. He was in Camden's favourite tank-the ray and shark tank. They said it was around 100 yards long. There were two viewing windows on either end, then a big tunnel that you could go through to watch the fishes swim over you.



Cam's favourite part of the whole thing was the divers in the shark tank. I think this guy had a sense of humour, no?

job hunting

I'm graduating in December. YES YES YES! Originally, this graduation barely elicited a rather apathetic "yay" because I knew I'd have another year and a half of school. Buuuuut.... I'm skipping grad school. I don't want to teach; I don't want to teach music. I don't have the vocal ability to teach elementary children, and I don't have the ear to teach middle school+. So after 4.5 years, I'll be graduating with a fairly useless degree in a time of economic recession. Will the job market turn around by December? By gods, I hope so. But honestly, I don't see it getting better. (And to add my pessimistic view to the end of that statement: I don't see it getting better, ever.)

In the mean time, I'm scanning classifieds and job websites, hoping to find a place that will be a good fit for my talents.

Just today, I sent in my resume for a solar energy tech company in St. Louis, MO. And while my chances of getting a job with the company (they don't have any openings listed, but have a "Interested in working for us? Send your resume!" on their site) are likely incredibly small, I'm excited by just the possibility. I have no sales experience, but I know I could sell solar panels. This is a product I definitely believe in, and I'm hoping and praying and lighting candles and blowing on dandelion puffs to get this job.

But if not, I'll find something else. Probably it won't be as gratifying as I'm making the solar tech job out to be, but it will be a job. And if I don't find something else, I'll go build a hut on my parents' land and be self-reliant.

Bedtime Story Part II

So the girl's bed had turned into the teenage dream of a mattress on the floor. She didn't mind--not really. Then she started working. The work wore her out, to the point of barely being able to move. Suddenly, she missed her tall bed, where getting into it was nothing more than a step on this box then crawling in. Now, she had to lower herself to the floor, with a sore body and one knee that refused to cooperate. More so than climbing into her old bed, she missed climbing out of it, which was really nothing more than rolling over and putting her feet to the ground. TAH-DAH. None of this ridiculousness that is now involved, leveraging her entire weight from the ground to standing.

But she had promised herself (and anyone who would listen) that that bed was not coming back into her house. No how, no way. Besides, it was broken. So she decided to look online for a NEW bed. A factory-made bed. Flat-pack. And she found one! Inexpensive (and, considering where it was coming from, probably cheap as well), and, she thought, the right size. So she ordered it, checking and double checking and even triple checking to make sure that there wasn't a choice between Full/Queen/King listed. It came up in the "queen size bed frame" search, so it must be a queen size frame. Obviously.

Then it came. It came, it came! She did a happy dance and sliced open the box to look at the lovely pieces of wood. It was here!

That night, she pulled out her tools, moved the mattress up against the wall, and set to work putting together her shiny new bed frame. Suddenly, it was together! She danced in excitement, pulling out her queen size bed slats and laying them on the frame.

Wait.

What's this?

Why are they hanging over?

What?

What?!

FUCK!

She ran to her computer, pulling up the website, looking again. No, it doesn't say it's a full bed. It came up when she searched "queen bed frame." Why is it the wrong size?!*

Alas, the girl's dreams of a bed off the floor were no closer to fruition. Except now she has plans of building one on her own... Will there be a part three to this bedtime story?

*Footnote to add to the bitter tale of the new bed (don't want it ruining the amusement of my adventures in finding the perfect bed). I took apart the frame and called the company, hoping that they would pay for the return shipping, since it was due to their lack of size information that led to me ordering it in the first place. But the most they said was "sorry for your confusion." And looking up shipping prices, it would cost more than twice as much as the original price of the bed to ship it back to the company. So I took it to a consignment shop, where I'll get about a third of the price back if I'm lucky.