News from Shakes Manor

This weekend, Iain spent all day Saturday putting new flooring in our office. He worked for about 12 hours straight, pulling out the shitty old carpet squares (which we put in as a temporary solution after a certain person who I won't name accidentally set a fire in the office back when he was a smoker), installing the underlayment, and then laying the planks.* This amounted to basically spending an entire day doing squat-thrusts, while busily ignoring any suggestion that perhaps the entire project didn't need to get done in a single day and maybe he should take a break and, gee, how about if he SETTLED THE FUCK DOWN.

Guess who tore every muscle in both thighs?


And this, Shakers, is someone who rides his bike all over creation every chance he gets, whose legs literally have not a trace of fat anywhere on them. He said, "I could feel that I'd pushed my muscles past the point of failure, but kept going, anyway. I guess that was a bad idea." Huh. Ya think? LOL.

Now, the poor fing can barely walk, so I'm waiting on him hand and foot like a giant adorable baby who drinks way too much coffee. He also completely fucked his knee, so I strapped on an ice pack with a soft belt from one of my long cardigans. He called me "Nurse McEwan" and I told him to shut up and try to take a nap. He's the worst patient ever, but eventually the body wins out when it needs to heal itself.


I heard him trying to get up a few minutes ago, and I yelled, "What are you doing through there?" to which he replied, "I've got to poop!" Well. I guess that's allowed.

He just now stumbled into the office to admire the floor. "At least it looks great!"


[Click to embiggen.]
That much is true.**

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go wrestle a bored Scotsman back onto the couch.

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* The flooring is Bruce Locking Oak in gunstock finish, which we bought at Lowe's, if anyone's curious. Not as nice as the real hardwood Iain put in the living room, but the engineered stuff now costs about as much as the real hardwood did five years ago. It is, however, also much easier to install—and it's a newer product that's thick enough to be refinished a couple of times. So if you're on a budget and/or are looking for something easier to install yourself than hardwood, we recommend this flooring (so far!) as a good alternative.

** There's more stuff in our office than that, but we only managed to get the computer back up yesterday. Between Iain's legs and my perpetually-fucked back, just putting the computer back up was a comedy of "OMG how am I going to get off this floor now?"