THE MAGIC CARPET RIDE

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Looking for fun and excitement? World not proving thrilling enough for you? Would a little change do you good?

Then, brother, do I have the cure for you! Get new carpet! It’s what I did, and look at me – my life has taken on a new world of excitement and wonder, including the relocation of my home office to a workbench in the garage!

For those of you without a Cynicism Meter, I am not feeling very at home right now. You see, ever since my wife and I moved into our house, she has been pestering me for new carpet. Actually, it is the next-to-the-last thing on her list of Things Mike Will Buy If He Really, Really, Really Loves Me. Previous purchases include couches, a bed, a kitchen floor (well, covering for the kitchen floor; it’s not like we had a bottomless pit for a kitchen when we moved in), stereo, a dresser, and a China cabinet. I’m sure you will be reading about a new car purchase in a few months, at which point she can start a brand new list, probably with New House to Store All of Our New Stuff first on the list.

So I finally caved in and agreed to get carpet for our house. Our house came carpeted, but it was what the professionals call "Builder’s Grade." It is what I call "Just a Notch Above Having a Dirt Floor, Only Not as Stain Resistant." The carpet that came with the house was not meant for traffic of two people and three pets. Actually, I’m not sure the carpet was designed for traffic of any sort. I think the original intent was to serve as a warning to those carpet shopping: "Do you want your carpet to look like this? Then you better buy the Super Stain Crippler 6000 Carpet!"

My wife dragged me to the carpet store so that we could look at various samples. We even took home some samples to see how they would look, assuming our floor was one square yard. I suggested that we keep going to various carpet stores, getting similarly colored samples, and eventually I could string them together, perhaps with super glue or duct tape, and make our own carpet. That idea was shelved, along with so many of my brilliant ideas (living room urinal, fire pole exit, catwalk for weekly lingerie show by internationally known supermodels; once again, my genius is wasted).

We (she) finally settled on a color. It’s called "Harvest Wheat." To all of my fellow guys out there, that means "Tan." Personally, I couldn’t tell the difference between most of the colors ("Honey, they’re all tan. Just pick one and let’s go.") but my wife insisted that there is a HUGE difference between the Harvest Wheat and the Wheated Harvest or the Golden Harvest or the Golden Wheat.

Quick sidenote: The woman who sold us the carpet was the same woman who sold us our kitchen floor. I now fear this woman. Every time I see her, I end up having to pay additional bills for years. I hope she’s slipping my wife some of her commission, because they’re a fantastic team when it comes to putting me in debt.

Back to our story. Prior to the installation, we had to remove all of the little stuff from the carpeted areas. They would move the big things, but we had to move all of the little things. Apparently, a 29-inch television is included in their definition of "little," but I wasn’t going to argue the point. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to just do as I’m told.

It ended up taking my wife and me close to two days to package up our entire house and cram everything into the kitchen, garage, and bathrooms. It was during this time that I became very thankful for the close proximity to my parents’ house, as we realized almost too late that we had crammed so much stuff in the bathroom, our facilities were unavailable. Not good planning, Mike.

Once the installers arrived, they would assume the job of heavy lifting. First, they moved every piece of furniture into the living room so that they could put the carpet in the back bedrooms. It was during this time that I retreated to the backyard, where I could not see or hear the installers. I made this move after they began to move a dresser, and it sounded more like a couple of rhinoceroses fighting. I figured that ignorance was bliss, and I wanted to be the happiest man on the planet when it came to knowing exactly how they were moving the furniture.

Over the course of the next two days, the installers managed to pull up the old, nasty carpet and put down beautiful, new, stain-resistant, debt-inducing carpet. It actually is a dramatic improvement. For one thing, it’s a lot thicker, so none of our doors could close post-installation. Granted, that was easily solved by inviting a friend over. Nothing like a couple of guys, a power saw, and a few beers to get those doors working! (Editor’s note: Mike’s kidding. He would never be so irresponsible as to use a power saw while drinking. Plus, his friend came over on Sunday, so they couldn’t buy any anyway. Perhaps those blue laws do have a purpose – keep Mike’s fingers attached.)

So now my wife and I are going through the long ordeal of putting our house back together. Both of us agree that a lot of the stuff we took out is not welcome back in our house. I’m not sure when we’ll get the time to sort through all of the stuff and figure out what we’re going to do with it, what with all of the car shopping.