My life in a nutshell

* The renovating gods are working hard against us, it seems. For Sunday, we lined up not one, not two, but four of our friends to come help us rip up carpeting (and the eleventy billion tacks holding it down) and slap some paint on the walls. Well, two of them had to cancel pretty early when their vet told them to stay home and keep an eye on their dog. That was OK because the two remaining ones are our super friends… now with added home improvement skills! One came with– no lie– at least eight bags of tools to fix electrical, plumbing and lots of other stuff I know nothing about (the other came with doughnuts, so he was my favorite).
In any case, we were so excited to put our super friends to work on our house. It went pretty well in spite of them sending the least-qualified person (that would be me) to the store to buy the correct wood to build pantry shelves. I don’t know how much time you spend in Home Depot, but you should know that they sell many different kinds of wood. And many of them are appropriate for pantry shelves, so don’t think you’re going to be narrowing down your options without a panicked call to the fiancé and super friends. Just sayin’…
Anyway, the super friends were there for less than two hours when one got a call from his wife that their cat knocked a bottle onto one of the pipes in the bathroom, which was then spraying water everywhere and the shut-off valve didn’t work and for-the-love-of-God, where is the main water shut-off?!? So they finished what they were working on, but then had to leave to deal with bigger issues.
The Pretend Husband and I? We’re good workers and all, but we could have used the super friends for more than 45 minutes.

* A girl on my soccer team twisted her knee the other night during a game. While we were comforting her, a girl from the other team (wearing short shorts and with very questionable soccer skills…) came over, picked up the player’s leg and started trying to figure out what happened. She asked her where it hurt, had her press her foot different ways, told her to make sure she goes to a doctor even if it begins to feel better, told her it wasn’t a torn ligament, etc. Then someone asked her a question and her reply? “Oh, I’m not a doctor, I just played Division 1 soccer and saw a lot of this.”
Excuse me?!? I’ve seen a lot of car accidents, but that doesn’t make me qualified to estimate the damage to your car!

* My brother called on Sunday (I think he was answering my message asking if he perhaps wanted to come work on our house) to say he was in the emergency room. He ended up getting admitted to the hospital with tonsils that are so swollen, they’re touching (I know because I used that little light thingy doctors have to check them out) and some other aches and pains. Turns out the guy went out and got himself Mono. He’s actually still in the hospital while they try to get the swelling down and get him back on solid foods. All very depressing and kind of gross.
The first night, I was with him in the E.R. when my dad called for an update. I explained what was going on and then said to my bro, “Anything else?”
“No, that’s it in a nutshell,” he rasped.
“And this is me in a nutshell,” he said, pantomiming being trapped inside… well, a nutshell. And that's when I knew he was going to be OK.