Kerrie, Queen of the Laminate

For the past month, Josh and I have spent every possible moment repairing and cleaning a rental house from which we had to boot a (unpaying, manipulative, lying sack of) tenant. "Every possible moment," of course, being defined as "half the weekend" because one has a lot less every possible moments when one has one to three children that (depending on the minute)  one cannot trust as far as one can throw them. Which might not be that accurate of a measurement, being that the smallest one could probably be thrown pretty far.

Anyway. During this time, we have made a surprising discovery: I have a marketable skill.

We paid someone to paint. I'm great at painting, but I just don't have the kids-mucking-around-in-the-paint-free-time. And neither does Josh. We paid someone to put in carpet. Paying someone to put in a laminate floor would have been another $500, and Josh was really not big on shelling it out. He struggled with the directions and the pieces for awhile, gave up, and called me in to try. I looked at those suckers and did not have high hopes for myself. But I DO like puzzely things, and it WAS something non-kid oriented to try, so I played around with them for a bit. And I figured it out.

I put in a whole freaking floor by myself.

(Ok, ok. Josh helped when I called him. And he did the cutting. I had an unfortunate instructor in Power Tools for Artists during college. The kind who tells stories about people accidentally sawing their own ears off and long hair getting tangled in drill presses resulting in holes through the hair owner's head and embolisms caused by pneumatic gun misusage. So, although I KNOW how to use all the power tools, and could successfully operate them if some one was threatening me in a way that was scarier than getting my hair tangled in it if I didn't rip a board for them, I really prefer not to.)

I can't even TELL you how proud I am of myself. Legitimate, measurable success that your husband brags to his friends about. A person could get addicted to that, I tell you. Not something I get in my normal day.

Plus, look at what a good example to my daughter I am:

The Cuddle Bear "built a fwoor, like Mommy!" All by herself.