How I Got My Headache Yesterday
Thanks to the spring break this week, my schedule is light all week long. Yesterday I only got one item on the calendar--piano tuning. My piano tuner John would come to our house at 2pm. I would need to be home, open the door, accompany him while he bangs on it, and then write him a check afterward. Easy, right?
Oh, right, and before he comes, I would just need to tidy up the family room (where the piano is), so that he'd have some room to work.
Well, things got a bit challenging when I moved into this "tidy up" part. You see, the piano is located at a corner of our family room, and the way for John to access to it from our front entrance is to take 3 steps of walk from the door to our kitchen, 2 steps to get to the opening between the kitchen and the family room, and then another 5 steps in the family room to the piano. The first 5 steps may take him 10 seconds at most. The last 5 steps, well, it would depend. From what I could see yesterday morning, it might take John a good 10 minutes to figure out where the darn family room floor is before he could take any steps.
10am yesterday morning, the whole family room floor was covered by dozens of mini cars parked in a lot made by dozens of wood blocks and adjacent to hundreds of puzzle pieces, surrounded by another hundreds of lego pieces. Then there were cards from Crazy 8 or Go Fish, plastic pieces of monkeys or frogs which were supposed to hop into a bucket and stay there. Books--Maisy, Disney characters, Dr. Seuss, animals, Babar, Dora, Diego. Drawing books, pencils, handful of erasers. Piles of pennies and other coins. Pieces and paper money from the Monopoly game. Pieces of Blockus or Othello. Chess pieces and box. Ian's tools. Ian's old PDA. My old cell phone. Kids' Walkie-talkies. Trucks. Airplanes. Firing rockets. Balls, bouncy or not. Marbles, big, small, medium, peewee, in millions of color combination. Candies. Play doh jars. Coloring pens, papers, paper puppets, drawings. Remote controls. Wii game controllers and Nunchuks. DVDs. Stuff animals.
No, kids didn't hate the piano, nor John. Actually they didn't know John was going to come and tune the piano. That was just the usual scene in our family room. Frankly, day in day out, it didn't bother me at all. But I was not sure if it'd bother John. I mean I only met him once and spoke to him less than 10 sentences, so I was not sure what he'd think on such messiness, or more importantly, if he could still function as a competent piano tuner in such background. It'd be very possible that instead of thinking 10 minutes about how to take the jump, he might take 2 seconds to turn around and never come back. Even if he would stay, I wouldn't dare to take any chances, just in case he might really bang on the piano and make it worse after tuning. So finishing the cleanup before 2pm was the only thing I would have to do. And boy, I wish I could trade to be exiled to Siberia had I been given the choice.
OK, to be fair, collecting books was easy. But where to put them became a problem. Our built-in bookshelves in the family room were supposed to hold books as well as games, but there seemed to be no place for either. So I spent the first half an hour re-organizing the bookshelf (just the one for kids for the day). I shoveled all the kids' stuff on the floor, reset the shelves, and started putting books and games back in by groups. Then I picked up all the game pieces and sorted them to their boxes and shelfed them accordingly. A good half to one hour later, I still had 90% of the room to clean. So frustrating. I had to be more aggressive and less caring. I brought from the basement an empty toy basket and two empty toy bins and started to toss anything that didn't belong to a set to the basket. I filled the bins with mini cars and wood blocks, collected all Lego pieces to one box and marbles to another, returned all the cards to their set, chess pieces to their box, monkeys and frogs to a bucket, pennies and coins to another bucket. All the pens, pencils, erasers to the stationery drawer. All the drawings to the recycling basket (no, I had no energy to woo or ahh over their creation). By the time the floor was visible again, I could see the color spots that weren't supposed to be there, but I had no desire to remove them. Nor could I, with a splitting headache that was developed between sorting Lego and puzzle pieces and tossing blocks. By 1pm, the headache was accompanied by nausea and a growling stomach. I IMed Ian asking for the whereabouts of Advil while fixing lunch. After taking both, I had to lie down in the more or less cleaned family room to wait for the headache to go away.
John came and banged on the piano for 2 hrs and left. My headache was gone by then. Another hour later, kids came home, admired the clean family room for a good minute, and started their endeavor to restore the fun place again. John asked to come back in a year. I am not sure a year would be long enough for me to forget how terrible the headache is. We'll see.
Oh, right, and before he comes, I would just need to tidy up the family room (where the piano is), so that he'd have some room to work.
Well, things got a bit challenging when I moved into this "tidy up" part. You see, the piano is located at a corner of our family room, and the way for John to access to it from our front entrance is to take 3 steps of walk from the door to our kitchen, 2 steps to get to the opening between the kitchen and the family room, and then another 5 steps in the family room to the piano. The first 5 steps may take him 10 seconds at most. The last 5 steps, well, it would depend. From what I could see yesterday morning, it might take John a good 10 minutes to figure out where the darn family room floor is before he could take any steps.
10am yesterday morning, the whole family room floor was covered by dozens of mini cars parked in a lot made by dozens of wood blocks and adjacent to hundreds of puzzle pieces, surrounded by another hundreds of lego pieces. Then there were cards from Crazy 8 or Go Fish, plastic pieces of monkeys or frogs which were supposed to hop into a bucket and stay there. Books--Maisy, Disney characters, Dr. Seuss, animals, Babar, Dora, Diego. Drawing books, pencils, handful of erasers. Piles of pennies and other coins. Pieces and paper money from the Monopoly game. Pieces of Blockus or Othello. Chess pieces and box. Ian's tools. Ian's old PDA. My old cell phone. Kids' Walkie-talkies. Trucks. Airplanes. Firing rockets. Balls, bouncy or not. Marbles, big, small, medium, peewee, in millions of color combination. Candies. Play doh jars. Coloring pens, papers, paper puppets, drawings. Remote controls. Wii game controllers and Nunchuks. DVDs. Stuff animals.
No, kids didn't hate the piano, nor John. Actually they didn't know John was going to come and tune the piano. That was just the usual scene in our family room. Frankly, day in day out, it didn't bother me at all. But I was not sure if it'd bother John. I mean I only met him once and spoke to him less than 10 sentences, so I was not sure what he'd think on such messiness, or more importantly, if he could still function as a competent piano tuner in such background. It'd be very possible that instead of thinking 10 minutes about how to take the jump, he might take 2 seconds to turn around and never come back. Even if he would stay, I wouldn't dare to take any chances, just in case he might really bang on the piano and make it worse after tuning. So finishing the cleanup before 2pm was the only thing I would have to do. And boy, I wish I could trade to be exiled to Siberia had I been given the choice.
OK, to be fair, collecting books was easy. But where to put them became a problem. Our built-in bookshelves in the family room were supposed to hold books as well as games, but there seemed to be no place for either. So I spent the first half an hour re-organizing the bookshelf (just the one for kids for the day). I shoveled all the kids' stuff on the floor, reset the shelves, and started putting books and games back in by groups. Then I picked up all the game pieces and sorted them to their boxes and shelfed them accordingly. A good half to one hour later, I still had 90% of the room to clean. So frustrating. I had to be more aggressive and less caring. I brought from the basement an empty toy basket and two empty toy bins and started to toss anything that didn't belong to a set to the basket. I filled the bins with mini cars and wood blocks, collected all Lego pieces to one box and marbles to another, returned all the cards to their set, chess pieces to their box, monkeys and frogs to a bucket, pennies and coins to another bucket. All the pens, pencils, erasers to the stationery drawer. All the drawings to the recycling basket (no, I had no energy to woo or ahh over their creation). By the time the floor was visible again, I could see the color spots that weren't supposed to be there, but I had no desire to remove them. Nor could I, with a splitting headache that was developed between sorting Lego and puzzle pieces and tossing blocks. By 1pm, the headache was accompanied by nausea and a growling stomach. I IMed Ian asking for the whereabouts of Advil while fixing lunch. After taking both, I had to lie down in the more or less cleaned family room to wait for the headache to go away.
John came and banged on the piano for 2 hrs and left. My headache was gone by then. Another hour later, kids came home, admired the clean family room for a good minute, and started their endeavor to restore the fun place again. John asked to come back in a year. I am not sure a year would be long enough for me to forget how terrible the headache is. We'll see.