Hello?

The heat is on... deadline for getting hand/guardrails is fast approaching. So for the last two days, my husband has been pounding away on boards, getting this thing together. We could have gotten away with something rather minimal and ugly, but since we're also about to sell the house, figured we'd do something kind of nice (but not fancy!!!!). The front deck is nearly done - just need to get the handrails for the steps up. So my husband decided to start on the back deck. It's much smaller and should be easier. Guess not. My idea was to take the mobile home steps that we'd been using as a second set on the front deck, move them around back and attach them so that there would be steps back there (currently there are none, we just jump up and down on to it). But how hard could it be to just build some steps? We'd only need, like, three. Judging from the words I just heard floating out of the back yard, it's harder than we thought.

This whole deck thing is a real pain. In an effort to save time, I went to Lowe's to get more lumber so my husband could keep pounding nails. Weekend - lots of home improvement projects underway, right? So how come you can't find anyone to help you???? After half an hour of finding some stuff I needed and not finding other stuff and watching another lady wandering around looking too, I was getting VERY frustrated. She'd gone to the checkout girl to ask her to page someone, but apparently with no results. I told her to cover her ears and then standing in the middle of the aisle, legs spread, hands on hips and head thrown back, bellowed, "Does ANYONE work in the lumber department????" Checkout girl's eyes bulged and she grabbed her in-house phone to call for help for the crazy lady in aisle 2. Other lady doubled over laughing and gasped that she wished she'd done that half an hour ago.

Oh, good. Now it's raining. Think hubby could use a break anyway...