Monday, March 26, 2007

The Carpet's Dead


I did it! I successfully ripped out all the carpeting from my dining room. Let me just say - eeeewwwwww. It was disgusting, and I'm very glad it's gone. It wasn't nearly as difficult to do as I thought it would be. For one brief, shining moment I thought I had beautiful floors under the carpet. Turns out it was glue on laminate and not in great shape. Michael was even kind enough to pick up all the old carpet and take it to his dumpster.

Sidebar - We've finally made peace with each other and our differences. We are simply not meant to be together. Thank you to Dan for giving me the final knock up side the head I needed to see it, and be finally be ok with it.

I pulled up all the tack strips, and Michael helped me lay the underlayment in preparation for putting down the laminate . We couldn't finish because I needed a saw with a special blade that I didn't own. Dad has one though, and he's bringing it today. With any luck I'll have a brand new floor tonight!

Dad is coming in to take my grandma to the doctor. Aunt Jean handles all of this normally, but true to form, when it rains it pours. Grandma's health is really going downhill. She is having trouble breathing and the fainting spells are increasing. She's afraid to leave the house to even get the paper. (Of course, no one mentioned this to me until yesterday.)

Normally, Jean stops over every day after work and makes sure grandma's ok. Last night, she called me in tears. She had just fallen down her steps and thought she broke her ankle. Her husband was at the store, but she thought he'd be home soon. I did find the phone number for the store he was at and had him paged. Unfortunately (fortunately??) he had already left and was en route home. Mostly she was concerned that I get a hold of dad and make sure he could take grandma to the doctor today.

After a visit to the ER visit it turns out she broke her left ankle, sprained her right, and tore some ligaments in her right. She is not allowed to put any weight on her feet for at least 7 days. She's pretty upset about the whole thing - and worried about grandma. Her husband got a wheelchair and a shower seat, and has arranged with his work to be with her for the first week or so. They meet with the orthopedic surgeon tomorrow so we'll have a better idea of how long she'll be down.

In the meantime, I have grandma duty. I'm going to stop by every night after work to see how she's doing - not matter if she says I don't need to or not!

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