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Archive for the ‘Free Stuff’ Category

At 4AM on Saturday morning, my husband’s cell phone blared loudly, shocking me awake from my sleep.

Here’s my deal about middle of the night phone calls, my husband and I both work two jobs and he attends night school on top of it. Unless someone is dead, don’t call at 4AM on a weekend, otherwise, it will be your funeral I’m planning.

Fortunately, no one was dead. It was my in-laws calling to ask my husband for help fixing their water heater that had sprung a leak and flooded their basement. The water had long since been turned off but I’m guessing since they had been up since 2AM cleaning the mess, 4AM seemed like a semi-decent hour.

My husband went over to help fix their pipes and uncovered some other problems with the gas line while he was at it. Having gas line problems while using industrial heaters and fans to dry out a flooded area seemed a bit on the dangerous side, so he fixed those as well. He ended up working on their plumbing until 3PM.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal but we had already promised to move my brother’s father-in-law’s stuff out of his condo in exchange for some much needed furniture. Unable to postpone the move since the property closed on Monday, we worked until 11PM (with some great help from my brother-in-law’s) before finally giving in to sleep.

My husband spent Sunday morning re-piping the neighbor’s bathroom in exchange for helping us finish moving the furniture. The neighbor’s plumbing had problems too (surprise surprise) so we didn’t get started again until about 3PM. We finally finished moving, vacuuming, and sweeping around 8PM and made our way back home. After unloading and rearranging the furniture, we didn’t to sleep until after 10PM.

Monday morning, as our alarm clocks chimed at 4:30AM, my husband whispered, ‘I changed my mind. I don’t want tools for Christmas, I want a weekend of sleep.’

Can’t say I blame him.

But the weekend of hard work paid off with some furniture we could never afford to buy ourselves.

We moved the wonderful, fabulous, awesome, smell good couches this weekend (more on that later) and I love, love, love them.

My parents always told me that people don’t appreciate what they don’t pay for. They especially loved using this when I asked for a car. ‘You’ll treat it better if you pay for it yourself!’ was their mantra for all my teenage years. They said it would build strong character.

Whelp mom and dad, just like you lied about Santa, you lied about appreciation.

I’ve had the free couches for two days. So far, I’ve asked three people how recently they’ve showered and screamed at two more for getting their shoes within 3 inches of the ottoman.

‘Ahh!’ I screamed and ran to cover the couch with a towel when my husband attempted to sit.

He looked at me confused, ‘Honey, I just got out of the shower. I’m clean!’

‘I don’t want soap scum or gel on the couches’ I said sheepishly.

He muttered ‘Dear Lord, I’ve married a whack job.’

Have a little mercy on me. It’s the first time we’ve had nice couches. I’m sure I’ll loosen up after a few months *cough* or years *cough* but until then, guests are welcome… they just can’t sit on the sofa.