Bananablog: Waiting For You To Return

I am assuming the only way to pull myself out of this depression is to keep myself busy and have lots of projects. This was my project today:

Drek and I have collected a lot of games. When we moved into this townhouse, the only place to put the games was on a bookshelf that did not match the other shelves (and the games didn't fit too well either).

I have been looking for a replacement shelf for almost three months. Again and again I have scoured D.I., browsed furniture stores, yard sales, discount stores, craigslist and other .coms. I have even sunk so low as to search Wal-Mart and Target for the perfect shelves to house our games. Alas, I found nothing.

Until yesterday. Yesterday it seemed I had found my shelf. There was a small picture of what appeared to be nice-looking black shelves, a little small in one dimension, but hey, it was only $5!! And all proceeds went to the Christian Community Church, so what did I have to lose? This morning I got up early and drove the twenty minutes to pick my shelf. It was in the basement of the aforementioned church. All I can say is: Gross. Old, stained, orange carpet, paint peeling walls, dirt and dust everywhere, and that was where the two guys worked. I think they were computer guys? Thay were talking about ow their site was hacked and how someone had yelled at them for having moldy pizza. The two guys weren't that great either; very overweight, stains on their shirts, hair very unwashed. Ew.

So the one guy shows me the shelf. I can tell right away the dimensions posted on the Internet was wrong. This shelf is too small. Also, this is not a shelf. It is a media cupboard with the glass door taken off. Sigh. But here I was, I had come so far, and they sleazy guy was already telling me he only accepted cash. I gave him the $5.

The guy said I could look around and see if I wanted anything else. The other things were. . . D.I. rejects. I looked around the room looking for other shelves that might be better.

"Do you want some coffee?" The guy asks me. I am taken back. Somehow, I always forget that the rest of the Christian world is addicted to coffee, and even the vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists are addicted to caffeine. I am also surprised that he would offer a pregnant women coffee; I am obviously pregnant. Also, is the coffe machine next to the moldy pizza? I shake my head no, thank him, and say I'll just take the shelf. He shrugs and says, "Well, I'd help you carry it but I just had my rib replaced." Seriously? A rib? I didn't know you could do that. Again, I would like to point out that I am obviously pregnant. I pick up the shelf and the bottom breaks off. How do I explain this? The shelf doesn't fall off, the wood doesn't come apart, the wood was already broken, like, splintered, and it had just been lying there, not even trying to be fixed, pretending to be fine until someone picked it up. I put it back down and look at the guy. He shrugs and says "I'll open the door for you." What a gentleman.

So I carried the broken shelf passed the other sleazy guy, up the stairs and across the parking lot. I loaded it into my car and could not get out of their fast enough. I am not a fan of the fundraisers for the Christian Community Church.

All the way home I debated about what to do with the piece of crap in the back seat. I finally decided it wouldn't hurt to see how it looked, do Drek brought the shelf in, I cleaned it up and loaded the games onto it:

It was too small. Also, it was ugly and broken. After thinking about this dilemma more, I realized we had a shelf the right size, just the wrong color that was almost-not being used. I traded that shelf for the old game shelf. Drek had some left-over black spray-paint (which I had intended to use on a shelf that needed spiffing-up, but this shelf was way passed spiffing) so I got right down to it. Ironically, I had painted this shelf last year. I blogged about it. And now I'm doing it again.

Before:

And then I ran out of paint.

I went to the store to get more, but the kind I used was discontinued. I bought some I thought would be close. It matched perfectly. I continued painting. And then I ran out of paint again.