When in doubt, look for the gray button

Last night I could not fall asleep.  At 2:30 a.m., I turned the television back on and watched an episode of “House Hunters International.”  A Canadian couple was searching for the perfect vacation home on a Honduras island.  I think.

I fell asleep some time after 3:00 a.m.  My iPhone alarms were set for 6:05 a.m. and 7:45 a.m.  The first time I woke up, I checked to make sure my 12-year old was up for school.  Then I went back to bed.  The next time I woke up and got dressed so I could open the door for the carpet-installer guy.

At 8:17 a.m., while in the middle of writing a snide comment on Facebook about the lateness of the carpet-installer guy, his white van pulled into my driveway.  He was due to arrive between 8 and 8:30 a.m., so he was right on time.

I welcomed him into the echoing Boy Cave.  Last night, we had to move all the furniture out of the Boy Cave into the family room:  2 twin-sized beds, one full-size electric piano, two end tables, one computer desk, two IKEA chairs, and a small kitchen table holding an enormous old television set.

(Yes, moving all that stuff from one room to another was just about as much fun as you are imaging.)

After the guy had a good look at the room and I explained where the various doors led (storage room, laundry room, family room, closet, heat pump), I told him I’d be upstairs, probably sleeping.  And that’s what I did.  I went upstairs and made my bed and then sort of slept under the spare comforter we keep on the bed.  The noise from downstairs sounded like he was hammering off the roof of the house.

By noonish he was done and gone.

So, I got out my newish vacuum cleaner so I could vacuum all the bits and fuzz from the new carpet and the brush wouldn’t rotate.

I’ve had this trouble before and it’s weird because sometimes the brush rotates and sometimes it does not.  This problem is quite maddening.

I had the good sense to turn to the Internet where I learned from a Google search that there are TWO BUTTONS on that vacuum cleaner.  There is a red power button and right below it was another button in a shade of gray that perfectly matches the handle all chameleon-like.  I never, ever noticed that particular button before.  And do you want to guess what that button does?

It turns on the rotating brush.

Sometimes, unbeknownst to me, I accidentally turned it off and other times, I accidentally turned it on usually while turning the vacuum on its back and smacking it around and growling in annoyance because the brush wouldn’t turn.

In due time, the room was vacuumed and the furniture was returned to the room only slightly rearranged.  (My teens were adamantly opposed to moving anything from its original position and lucky for them, the television had to stay in place because of the cable connection and thus, everything else had to stay pretty much the same, too.)

(Oh!   Did I mention that the door to the heat pump won’t open at all because it is now obstructed by the height of the carpet?  Oh, yes, real fun.)

This was the final big household improvement, so now the real estate agent comes on Thursday to take a look and very soon the house will be on the market and then I’ll be bobbing in that curious space between terror that the house won’t ever sell and fear that it will sell too soon because then what will we do?  Negotiate a closing date, sure, but what if, what if, what if . . . we’ll live in our KIA van?

Adding to the delight of this day (during which I worked nine hours), my 8-year old was home sick.  She has a cold and was sick enough to stay home but not sick enough to stay in bed, so she interrupted my work-day a hundred million times and then tried to convince me to take her to McDonald’s for dinner.

And tonight, even though she seemed so bored all day, she asked if she can stay home from school tomorrow.  And I said no, but even as I looked at her while saying it, I noted the dark circles under her eyes and her reddened nose and realized that missing another day of second grade probably won’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Plus, that would mean I could sleep in.  So, there’s that.