Sheet Manufacturers Listen Up!

I hate changing the bed linens – it’s such a pain particularly now that my shoulder and back hurt.  Thankfully Devoted Spouse helps.  He not only changes linens, he does laundry, folds the sheets, and puts them in the linen closet.  Watta guy!

I used to have a very nice, neatly arranged linen closet – I followed Martha Stewart’s suggestions and even labeled the friggin’ shelves – towels for us, towels for the guest bath, double-size sheets, queen-size sheets, etc.  I drew the line at wrapping up the sheet sets in ribbon – that’s too much nonsense even for me.  But it was pretty, neat, and I could find everything.  It sort of looked like this:

Then one of my friends made fun of me and I ripped off all the labels and decided to do it alphabetically with the double sized sheets on the first shelf and the queen sized sheets on the next shelf – easy, huh?  The problem here is that each sheet manufacturer places their little (and I do mean little) tag denoting the sheet size in a different place on every sheet.  So when you take the sheet out of the closet you can’t tell immediately which size and which bed it is for.  Why don’t they make the tags bigger and all of them sewn in the same place on the sheet so we can find them???

Now, to make a short story longer, while I am still incapacitated, I am in the queen-sized bed and Devoted Spouse has taken up temporary residence in the guest room double-sized bed.  Last night was sheet changing night.  Now, since I’ve taken off the labels and we’ve gotten a bit lax in where we actually store the sheets, I just started pulling out sheets like crazy and looking for the stupid &*%%$% labels to tell me which bed they were for.  By the time I actually found two complete sets, one for each room, the linen closet looked like Freddie Kruger from Nightmare on Elm Street had hacked his way through it.  I just grabbed everything left and literally crammed it back in the closet and shut the doors.    This is how it looked after the tag fight:  Unbelievable! I’m horrified.

This is how it looks today:

I wouldn’t open that door for all the Timbits in the world!  Maybe tomorrow…

I want my Valium back.  I hate to think how long it’s going to take me to re-arrange this horrid mess I made and I have gotten the bright idea to find a black laundry marker and mark on the underside corner of each sheet what size it is so I never have to go through this again.

Please tell me I’m not the only one who goes through this ridiculous nonsense.

Uh-Oh I Got That Funny Feeling Again

Do you know that it’s the first of April? Do you know what that means? I’m not talking about April Fool’s Day and I’m not talking about computer viruses. It means there are only 11 more days until Easter. And what haven’t I done yet this year? The annual Linda thinks she’s Martha Stewart and can craft hundreds of marvelous Easter eggs. Yes, it’s that time again.

This time last year you may remember my Easter egg fiasco ended up with an entire bottle of green acrylic paint being ground into my grey dining room carpet by the one and only EmmaLou, Number One Golden Destroyer. This year I’m going to keep her away from not only the dining room (where I do my crafts because my actual crafts table in my crap/crafts room is covered with extraneous school junk), but I’m also keeping her away from anything resembling paint.

Speaking of decorative paint, I can’t locate my paints. Seriously, I have turned this house upside down and there is a huge plastic box of acrylic paints (at least 50 bottles) that have completely disappeared. It’s ridiculous — I’ve found all my decoupage materials, all my brushes, all my varnishes but where in the blue blazes have the paints gone? I’m telling you this stuff only happens to me. Remember the other day the story of the lost eyeglasses and the $400 replacement glasses only to later find those original glasses. Gah. It’s happening all over again.

So, yesterday Devoted Spouse patiently walked with me around the local craft store while I stocked up on some more wooden eggs (they’ve mysteriously disappeared also) and a few bottles of paint.

What reminded me of the fact I’m running behind on Easter crafts was a note from Amazon.com on a new Martha Stewart (b*tch) crafting book that Amazon felt I just had to order. Not a chance. I’m not stupid enough to think I could ever compete with Martha (although I do feel just a little superior since I’m not a convicted felon) but she is the Queen of Crafts.  I actually have a few of her books and I’ve subscribed in the past to her magazine but frankly I have a hard time following her instructions.  Especially since I’m not going to be entertaining 150 people over the Easter holiday and have to set a special table.  Good grief – this is just me and Devoted Spouse and a couple of rinky dink Easter baskets.  But I always like to add something I’ve made specially for him and I do like to decorate wooden eggs.  Plus, when I mess one up, it’s easy to repaint and start all over again!

I dunno – Friday may be the day I tackle this.  Then again I could wimp out and just say my hand isn’t quite feeling up to the task of all the detailed painting, decoupaging and varnishing.  Nah – I bought the paints, I’m going to go for it!

I promise to post pictures of what I end up with – even if only to give you all a chuckle and so you can be thankful my eggs will not end up in your baskets this year!