We're Cookin' With Gas!

My planned "WooHoo! we have a kitchen" celebration planned for Thursday night was postponed and transformed into a "WooHoo! I feel human and I smell food cooking" celebration last night. After nine long weeks the smell of real home-cooked food wafted through the house. There's a definite difference between food sizzling on a gas burner and food warming up in a microwave or cooking slowly, sort of, on a hot plate. It was a simple skillet meal but it was awesome.

The two days previous to this postponed celebration were not fun. Here are the highlights leading up to my total physical deterioration Thursday afternoon:

**Monday the counter guys were supposed to arrive and begin installing counters but didn't arrive until late Monday. I have a cold I'd picked up on our visit to Delta and felt kind of icky but I thought the house would have counter guys in it so I went to work.

**Tuesday the counter guys began work installing counters. I still felt bad from the cold but I don't want to stay home with guys working in my house. Tuesday night the counter guys aren't finished and I have the electricians coming Wednesday. I'm cranky but I'm not rescheduling--again.

**Wednesday the electrician arrives promptly at 7 a.m. and counter guys sometime afterwards. They manage to work around each other. I go to work when all I really want to do is curl up on the couch with a cup of tea, a pillow, blanket and nap all day.

Wednesday evening the counter guys are finished, yippee!, but the electrician needs to finish up the next morning. There's a mini-scare when they tell me that to meet code they have to put a plug into the end of my "peninsula" which they think is stupid and I am not happy about because it will cause the pots and pans we have in the drawer to bang into the plug every time the drawer is opened or closed. He promises me he'll try to talk his boss out of it and I ask them not to put it in without my permission so I can fight somebody about it. I have a splitting headache and muscle aches all day that will not stop. And my ears are hurting. I just want to take a sick day.


**Thursday I'm at work by 7:00 a.m. I go off to work feeling pretty miserable and come back home at 8:00 a.m. to meet the plumber. When I get home the electrician is finishing up and nothing is said about the peninsula plug-in so I'm assuming it's okay. I'm not going to bring it up! I go over all the plumbing needs with the plumber and head back to work innocently assuming I will be cooking and having my own little kitchen party that evening.

**8:30 a.m. the plumber calls to tell me the stove is 1/4" too large for the opening. "It's physically impossible to put it in. I've measured the opening and the stove. Maybe you can have them move the cabinets. Do you want me to go ahead and install it and leave it out in front of the cabinets?" There are hundreds of pounds of soapstone counters on these cabinets by now. I know there's no way on God's green earth those cabinets are going to be moved. All I can picture is a beautiful kitchen with a stove in the middle of the room.

**I make a frantic call to cabinet lady and make them interrupt her meeting with another client. She calls cabinet guy and he assures her the opening is exactly what it should be. She tells me to tell the plumber to try adjusting the legs because if it's not exactly level that can cause difficulties. And that the stove is meant to be tight so nothing will fall down between.

**I call the plumber back. He tells me "I measured. The opening is 29 15/16" and the stove is 30 1/16". It's 1/8" too small".

**Call kitchen lady back. She says she'll go over and if the plumber can't get it in she'll have her appliance guy make it fit.

**Kitchen lady goes to my house and talks to plumber and calls me laughing. He hasn't even tried it yet. How can he know it doesn't fit if he hasn't tried it? I told him to try putting it in and call me if it won't fit."

**Noon. Plumber calls me. "It won't fit. I've hooked it up and finished with everything else but pushing it in's not my job." I say, fine, I understand and he heads out on his merry way. I have a sink, faucet, dishwasher and stove in the middle of my kitchen. My head hurts, my ears hurt, every muscle in my body hurts.

**Call kitchen lady back. She says, "I told him to call me, not you."

**1:10 p.m. Kitchen lady calls. She'd gone over with her appliance guy and they'd pushed it in with apparently no problem so I now have a stove where it belongs. I thought the stress relief would be physically noticeable but instead of feeling better I keep feeling worse. I'm sitting at my computer thinking, "I have to work until 5 p.m. today to make up for taking off to meet plumber, ...I don't know if I can do it...why don't I feel better now? Is this a delayed stress reaction or what?"

**2:15 p.m. I'm pretty sure I can't work anymore. Chills are just under the surface so I head home.

**3:00 p.m. I'm on the couch with chills, fever, every muscle crying out in pain, head pounding and ears aching.

**6:15 p.m. I rattle off a list of symptoms to Dean because I want him to call the doctor tomorrow and see if they can prescribe somthing for me over the phone because there is no way I can get off this couch, crawl into a car and sit in a doctor's office. Absolutely not....no way....not happenin'.....uh uh.

**6:30 p.m. I am in the car on the way to Urgent Care clutching my trusty garbage bag lined with a plastic bag--just in case. I felt like hell, looked like hell and to be honest I wouldn't even have cared if I'd had to put that garbage can to use in the waiting room. I didn't. Not until I got home anyway. I just sat hunched over on the chair with my head almost touching the floor until I finally dropped over and laid curled up on the chairs, asking Dean "how much longer? how much longer?"

**7:30 p.m. I'm home in bed gulping down antibiotics and various prescriptions.

**Friday a day on the couch drinking apple juice and napping.

**Saturday we begin putting the kitchen back together.

**2:00 p.m. while rinsing nine weeks of dust and dirt off the dishes in the now installed and connected dishwasher it quits draining. Called the repair place to schedule a day next week for service while adding $75.00 to my already somewhat over-budget kitchen. He's a great guy who gives us a possible solution and tells us to call back if it doesn't work. Turns out when Dean installed the dishwasher originally he set it to drain into the drain pipe. The plumber set it to drain into the disposal and there was a little round thing you had to pop out which had never been done. It was a pretty easy fix which we managed to accomplish in only 1/2 hour. I'm sure when I stuck my hand down the disposal to retrieve the popped out but still hanging bit of plastic it didn't meet OSHA standards and to be honest, I wasn't thrilled about it. But it solved the dilemma, the dishwasher now not only washes but drains and I have all my fingers.

So...................even though putting the kitchen back together didn't happen til yesterday things are going together pretty well. I even finally feel like I'll live and I think once Dean gets the million bottles and cans of spices put in their homes we'll pretty much have the kitchen put together. Then we'll begin on the rest of the house. It's collected nine weeks of not only regular dirt from just living in it, but all the dust and dirt that comes along with contractors doing their thing for nine weeks. It's in a sad, sad, state.

We actually took a two hour break and went to the art museum for some cookies and seasonal music. Bad thing for me was I had to change out of my sweatpants and brush my hair. Good thing for Dean was I had to change out of my sweatpants and brush my hair.

And last but definitely not least, I baked my first batch of anything in nine weeks.

I wish I could say we were completely finished but tomorrow the cabinet guy is back to install the appliance garage and hopefully the glass doors and two of the doors we reordered.

Wedesday another person will be installing the microwave and framing in the two doorways and installing baseboards. Tilebabegroutgirl arrives Friday to help us tile the backsplash. Then we will "only" have some painting and staining of woodwork to do which I am positive will not happen for many, many, weeks.



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We're Cookin' With Gas!