I wanted to install new flooring in Bubs’ room. He’s newly adolescent, and it happened over night. No exaggeration: he woke a different person than when he went to sleep.
Reeling from shock, I realized his adorable Boy Room was no longer appropriate, plus, truth be told, the elderly incontinent, blind, deaf, adorable pooch who can’t see well enough to Go Toward the Light may have destroyed the already-aged carpet in the Bubs’ Boy Room.
It was time, in many ways, for a makeover.
I bought flooring, the click kind, as advertised in the three-minute video that assured me I could install the flooring all by myself. The video  promised. 
And I am gullible.
Long story short, and utilizing the skills of my dad and a full day of his time, I learned how to use a saws-all — I’m not certain that’s the correct trademarked name — and I also learned that once baseboards are removed, they expand.
Did you know that? News to me. Naively, I thought wood parts would retain their size after removal, but they don’t.
And the flooring that was so easy — according to videotaped footage probably filmed in the confines of Light and Magic — was NOT so snap-simple, amateur-friendly, easily accomplished by a desperate-for-the-boy-to-have-a-Young-Man-room Mom.
Nope.
I mean, NOPE.
Let’s just say, no one wants to look super closely at the final slats, when Dad had returned home, inserted at one in the morning in an exceedingly hot, increasingly tiny dwelling of a mere eleven feet by the same.
Because, dang, it’s ugly.
Ugly, mostly because of my new friend Super Glue. It’s true.
And the baseboards? Well…they’re back in place, with the help of a two-pound sledge.
Nails were not necessary. Those boards, they aren’t moving.
Unless I renew my love with this new “saws-all” thing I’m fond of…
Meanwhile, the room is beginning to retain odor, and I can no longer blame the dog — no, he’s not Found the Light; the teen’s door stays shut 24/7, whether inhabited or not — and clutter is obscuring the newly installed flooring as well as the giveaway shine of glue.
I feel cheated.
1. The room is really no different.
B. I’m not a carpenter. I really wanted to be good at that stuff. Sigh.