REFLECTIONS ON YEAR ONE 2015: March RWR

By March, I had gotten away with building the clock tower in the guest bedroom, but space was already getting tight; besides, we needed to get rid of that storage room. Same could be said about money—it was tight—we stopped north pole construction and began transforming our guest bedroom into a more spacious studio to accommodate what was to come from storage and the express. And when we launched the studio, the living room got re-grouped.

We had all along wanted to vacate our storage rental and replace the queen size bed with a smaller and more 21^st century version. This transition remodeling required several trips to big box stores and mattress firms. In addition to the 20 some-odd decorative grass woven baskets acquired to fill the new bought shelves, we added new lighting, a remote controlled bed and wall mounted TV wired to cable . . . and a new modem for computer, installation etc. Each task required multiple deliveries and installations, and shuffling.

The rental storage space was reduced by 50%, which required sorting out our stuff vs. Kathleen’s. Our stuff moved to the new shelves and baskets. Her stuff required moving to a new smaller storage, new shelving and repacking. Meanwhile, appointments had to be kept over months with our dentist 100 miles away, for those 11 crowns for me (replacements, they were-the military can be hard on teeth).

The TV even required multiple visits to Ace Hardware in order to mount and recess electrical and cable wires. Only then all had to be rewired because I wired for basic cable versus HDMI cable. So, what the heck! I rewired the sound system in the living room while I was at it. The 1^st quarter of 2015 rocketed on.

 Concerns from the peanut gallery (INSERT: That’s me! KMR) in February had been that the structures were gaining size and scale, exceeding our allowable footprint! Not to be deterred and since our original concept was to have the Christmas tree in the center of the complex, we had gone on a road trip to acquire the remaining track and switches. Once we had the additional track and emerging clock tower in hand, we had gone about rearranging the living room furniture, laying the track out on the floor as based on the plan, placing the clock tower in its position, and ricocheting back and forth to storage to get the fireproof, faux tree, etc.

Mind you, we had that first go round (including setup and takedown) in February. In March, yet again, we temporarily install the Christmas tree back (out of storage) into the living room to make sure the overhanging branches will clear the proposed plan and future structures. Everything went well, I thought, except I was not going to have a chair to look at TV unless the plan was reduced from east to west. With a gulp, I got some changes accounted for in the scope of work, and then again put the Christmas tree back into storage.

At this time, it begs to be said in brief, that the tree came out AGAIN after the platform was constructed AGAIN in the studio, and then put back into the storage room. Karen would have no possibility of a crisis (as she called it) at Christmas.