They Just Don't...

...make houses anymore the way they used to.

We rented a house in a fairly new (new since I left home anyway) subdivision. Let me just say that P. and I are very thankful that we are renting this house and don't own it. It seems like every day he finds something that irritates him about the "shoddy craftsmanship" of this house.

Our household goods arrived almost a month ago now I guess. I'm constantly amazed at the amount of "crap" we managed to accumulate in the four years we were in Vilseck. Even more than that, though, I'm still amazed that in almost twelve years of marriage, the longest time we spent in one place was in a foreign country.

But I digress...

P. and I have been very frustrated since our household goods got here because we haven't been able to find the keys to open our grandfather clock or the curio we bought in Germany. We have little keepsakes we keep in the grandfather clock, and the curio is big enough to hold all my China, plus quite a bit of other stuff. Stuff that has been stacked up on the table and in the floor in the dining room for weeks now. This evening, he managed to "pop" the lock on the curio. He was able to separate the door and frame enough to get the doors open without damaging it. Hallelujah!! We were finally able to get so much stuff put away tonight.

While we were in Germany, I started collecting plates. Everywhere we went, I usually picked up a souvenir plate, and sometimes a shot glass, and P. picked up a print. A couple of years ago, he built a plate rack for me to display my souvenir plates. After we got the China, glasses, and Polish Pottery that was stacked in the dining room put away, we decided our next mission was to put my plates away. As P. was trying to hang the plate rack, he got frustrated all over again. There was one particular wall I had in mind that was the perfect place for it, but we definitely had to make sure it was anchored properly to hold the weight of plates and shot glasses. So P.'s looking for studs in the wall. I don't know how many holes he put in the wall. I think he cursed each time he put a nail in the wall where he thought there was a stud, and there wasn't one after all. He worked in construction for a while before we came back into the Army, so he remembers how houses were built then. The more frustrated he got, the more I reminded him that it's not our house. He's very thankful for that.