Final Preparations

Once of our last "nesting projects" was to put down some soft carpet in the extra room we created a few weeks back when we removed the old, rusty windows that used to separate our living room and sun room. For some reason, this last project just didn't come easy, perhaps a good primer for parenthood. First, there was the inordinately creepy and kinda-sweaty-for-a-salesman guy who came over to show us samples. Then, what was supposed to be a week-long process to custom fit our space turned into a month-long process. Then, when they finally called us to pick it up, the place was only open from 8:30 a.m to 4 p.m. weekday. But, they said, if I wanted to come by Saturday morning to pick it up, I could do that to. When will they be there? Between 5 and 7 a.m. So much for one last weekend of sleeping in.

And so, that's how I found myself in Anaheim this rainy morning in a huge carpet warehouse, ready to complete one of our last missions. As I was talking with the nice warehouse supervisor, it dawned on me what a great card this whole "first baby" thing is to play. I used to think the greatest scam Niki and I could pull off was to tell every hotel check-in person we saw that we were on our honeymoon, just to see what they'd do to upgrade us. (Haven't ever done it, but I'm just saying...) But now I think we should just tell people we're days away from having our first baby, even once Nub is a grown man, just to see what people will throw in to the deal. In this case, a casual conversation about how we were planning to use the carpet turned into a deal on a carpet pad and roll of duct tape to boot! Doing this on a regular basis years from now probably wouldn't be the best lesson to be teaching Nub I suppose, but in this case at least it was a true story. And even better, our last major home improvement is now complete.