Out with the Old (relatively speaking) #firstworldproblems

Picture, if you will, the following chaotic scene:

I'm delighted to report that my kitchen appliances were delivered a few days ago. The refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, and microwave all match. (What?) This is a first for me in my lifetime. And I'm very happy, but I'm still not quite sure how to act.

However, I couldn't stall the delivery of them for another week, which meant the painting happened just a few hours (!) later. So that was our weekend. Moving stuff out of the kitchen and piling it into boxes and storing everything in the dining room.

WARNING: Real life photos of the mess we've been living in. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The stove needs a special installation because our house is so old that the old gas valve didn't speak the same language as the new stove and so I am without a way to cook, and just to make things more interesting, the stove is sitting smack dab in the middle of the kitchen. (So high is my stress level that I just used the phrase, "smack dab.")

My old appliances were happily being hauled away at about the same time.

While all this was happening, the painter was in the midst of turning my kitchen a beautiful seafoam green.

And because of all the traffic and painting, the floor ended up needing a serious deep-cleaning. (Many thanks to Eric and Jonathan and their trusty toothbrushes. Love my guys.)

So we're in the throes of packing stuff and moving and painting and cleaning and avoiding the walls because of the fresh paint, when, in the middle of all the crazy, I remember that it's my weekend to have my mom and I'm late picking her up, so I drop everything and haul over to her house to bring her back with me and this is what happens next…

Here's Luza in her mink coat, sunglasses, and walker. She strolls (or "rolls" if you want to get technical) into our home and declares,

"What a mess!" (To anyone not familiar with the Cuban culture, Cuban grandmothers are allowed to say pretty much whatever is on their minds at any time, and nobody even thinks twice about it.)

"I died my hair red. Do you like it?" (For those not familiar with my mother, she will be 98 next month and this moment pretty much sums up her entire personality.)

She then sat down right in the middle of all the chaos and started commenting* on the painting, the cleaning, and the entire mess.(*commenting is Cuban code for "criticizing every detail," but that's not important right now.)

What I learned from this experience:

1. My family is pretty amazing.
2. I love seafoam green walls.
3. My mother is a piece of work.
4. They don't have support groups for Adult Children of Cuban Mothers. (Just trust me on this one.)