Therapy of My Own

I'm a therapist.  I work with little children all day long, doing all sorts of different speech and language related therapies.  I play games, I chase, I hug, I restrain - when need be, I make weird faces and weird noises, and I fight constantly to stay on top of the psychological game that is working with children.

Therapy is tough.

And sometimes, therapists need a little therapy of their own.  Today's therapeutic exercise involved a rake, gloves, and lots of bug spray.  The pathways leading up to both front door and side door of our little red house are made of small pebbles.  The original owners, in their ingenuity and all-powerful intelligence, must have had a good reason for using this kind of material.  I, on the other hand, have yet to be graced with that knowledge.  The amount of weeds that come up through the pebbles at an almost constant rate.... no wonder they had three children.  Talk about cheap weed pulling labor.  I don't even want to look out of the window because I know I'll be able to see them growing.

The flowers keeping me company while I worked:

While I cursed and spat and raked and hauled in the front yard, Justin slaved away over the deck in the back.  He took about a week off for rain, and another week off just for fun, so now he's back with a vengeance.  He had finished one half of the deck before his little 'siesta', just enough, apparently, for the go ahead to purchase deck furniture.

Oh, Home Depot.  The deck furniture issue should have been a good enough reason to check myself into actual therapy...  We had it ordered to be transferred from another store.  They gave us a date to pick it up, one week later.  We went, and it wasn't there.  Another date, another try, still no gold.  Another date, another try, and by now the little lady at the customer service desk knew who we were, and I could see her cringe whenever we walked in.  After about 5 more dates given for pick up times by Home Depot and no furniture in sight, we were a little furious, to say the least. 

We were also apparently famous at HD.  While we stood there waiting for the customer service gal to wrack her computer for any information about the whereabouts of our missing furniture, one worker actually walked up and said, "Hey, are those the folks that have been waiting on their furniture for a month?" to her.  Yeah...

Needless to say, the people at the other store finally got off of their rears and sent the furniture, and we were soooooooo happy to pick it up.  I'm sure the customer service gal said a little prayer of thanksgiving at having us off of her back.

Fast forward to this week, and I walk over to the outdoor furniture section, and what do I see?

Our same set, on sale for $350 less.  I almost choked.  I walked, stone faced, back to the stain section, and told Justin.  He was nearly sick.  We both walked over to the customer service desk and had a polite conversation with the nice people there.

I've never actually made money when shopping, but I can honestly say we made $350 on that trip out.  One can only hope that lightning would strike twice, in this situation.  And all the hullaballoo was for this:

Hot, isn't it?  I thought so too.  We also have two matching chaise lounges with a little beverage table to put between them.  Justin wanted to highlight the sexiness of the deck by spraying water all over it before taking pictures.  Apparently our deck got to have a personal wet t-shirt contest.  Oooh, and a special thing that the former owners' children would appreciate:  we saved the 50 year old dogwood that was directly in line of the deck flooring.  My husband is one special man when it comes to power tools.