Sentenced to Hard Labor

Every six months or so I get this itch to move furniture. I don't know what comes over me. It's like I have to move something heavy and kill my back and legs, or life just isn't worth living. So last Thursday I set about moving stuff. To give you a little history, our last house was an 85 year old ranch style job with 5 bedrooms so there was plenty of room to cram stuff into. Then we were made a ridiculous offer on that house and we, not wanting to disappoint anyone, sold it and moved. I swore to myself we would find something smaller since I was the only one that was going to clean it; so we immediately bought a bigger house *DOH*.

We moved into this house, with only 3 bedrooms, 2 years ago and since there was a one car, drive through, detached garage, we turned it into a shop for the hubby so he'd have a place to sleep (do I need to explain anything here girl's????).

There is also a 2 car attached garage so we turned that into my craft room (aka crap room) and it is filled to the rafters with crafty stuff. Well, load sharing is what prompted me to move furniture. For those of you who don't know what load sharing is, let me explain..........It's where you throw LOT'S OF MONEY for air conditioning at your electric company, but only one end of your damn house stays cool and it's ain't the garage, or your damn bedroom. IT SUCKS.

Here in Texas we have 4 seasons. Summer, More Summer, Hotter than Hell and Winter (and Winter lasts about 4-1/2 minutes -- you sneeze and you'll miss it). It was easy to keep the craft room cozy in the Winter by leaving the doors open, and I was able to work out there with no problem. But thanks to load sharing, it's impossible to keep the crap room comfortable and then we (my husband) decided to just shut the damn doors...........so now one end of the house feels like Summer, the other end feels like Winter and it's Hotter than Hell in the crap room.

.......sooooooooooooo...........I started moving furniture. One bedroom is now designated the bead and paper crafting room and the other bedroom is the sewing room. I moved beds, desks, dressers and all the accessories into their respective places..........

That's when I found it.............orange marker underneath one of the beds on the white carpet...... and a little girl's name, in orange marker, on the front of an antique trunk that, I was told, was made in Russia in the 1700's and made it's way to Norway where my great grandparents packed it up and moved it to America (Minnesota!!!!) in the late 1800's........ Needless to say, I was a tad bit irritated (oh........ and Resolve doesn't remove orange marker from white carpets!!!).

So me, being the calm, rational, fun loving, and sweet person that I am, thought I should have a little chat with this little girl. Low and behold, she and her Dad happened to drop by yesterday afternoon. I told her that I needed to speak to her about something very important and proceeded to march her to the back bedroom where I pointed out the graffiti on the trunk and carpet. She IMMEDIATELY burst into tears and said she didn't do it.......that was her story and she was sticking to it. She was told that she couldn't use markers, or any other form of writing/drawing utensil in our house again until she could prove to us that she wouldn't go around marking her territory.........

So, the calm, rational, fun loving and sweet person in me said that this display of artistic prowess needed to be addressed so that this little girl would remember that she's not to draw on carpet, antique trunks, walls (in the other house), or anything else that didn't resemble paper. I came up with a unique punishment. Feel free to try this out on your children/grandchildren/ neighborhood kids, etc. It worked for about 30 minutes and POW she had markers and was at it again.....................until her cousin snitched on her.........that's a whole nuther blog.