What happens when you are sleep deprived, hungry, and frustrated that your home renovations are going painfully slowly and you mess up every. single. thing, that you touch?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I generally end up crouched over, weeping on the floor.

Which is exactly where I was on Sunday evening.

On my knees, head on the floor, tears streaming from my eyes.

Wilzie and I had already done  as much as we could with the hall floor for the day, and had moved on to patching up some screw ups minor mistakes in the kitchen floor.  For me, this meant cutting out a square of the floor around a spot that we had torn while moving the fridge, and fitting a new piece into its place.

Sounds easy enough.

I cut out the (approximate) square, traced it on to another piece of flooring and cut along the lines.  When I pushed it into place, it was too big.  So I cut a bit off one side, and bit off another side and re-fitted it back into the hole in my floor.

Only to find that it was, now, TOO SMALL.

Grrrr…

I sighed heavily at my stupidity and traced the original cut-out on to the back of another scrap piece of flooring, and cut out another (approximate) square.

Too big.

I trimmed slightly.

Still too big.

I trimmed a little bit more.

Now its TOO SMALL!

How the fuck did that happen!?!?!

At this point. Wilzie, who was already done the spot he was patching up, suggested we take a break to grab a bite to eat.  It was getting late, and neither of us had eaten since breakfast.

Pizza was definitely in order.

But as I combed my hair and started changing from my “work-around-the-house” clothes into my “somewhat-respectable-to-wear-outside-of-the-house” clothes, something inside me (OCD) just wouldn’t let me leave without that (approximate) square of floor in place.

So, standing in front of my closet, half-dressed, I started to cry.

Wilzie came in to see what the hold-up was and just sighed, “What’s the matter?”

“I can’t go anywhere!”  I sobbed.  “I have to finish that fucking floor!  I can’t eat while there’s a gaping hole in the floor!”

He didn’t say anything – he just turned around, walked to the kitchen, pulled a couple of hotdogs out of the freezer and popped them in the microwave.

I assumed my position on the kitchen floor.

I, once again, traced the original cut-out on to the back of ANOTHER scrap piece of flooring, and cut out another (approximate) square.

Too big.

Alright, fojoy, you’ve been here before.  Do not fuck this up…

I trimmed ever-so-slightly around the edges.

Still too big, but close…so very close…

I trimmed a tiny bit more and fit it into place.

TOO

FUCKING

SMALL!

It was at this point that I threw the scissors across the room (now there’s another spot to patch up…), laid my forehead to the floor and wept.

Wilzie just looked at me.

He has seen this display before and knew if he offered any sort of consolation, or help, he would just get yelled at.  So he tried to set his face into a look of compassion, while giving me a wide berth.

When I cried myself out calmed down, I lifted my head, dried my eyes, wiped the puddle tears off the floor and finished the job.  I picked up the last piece that I had cut and slid it back into place.  I sifted through the mountain of trimmings piled up beside me, and I and found one that could be squeezed into the small gap around the patch and glued that into place.

And…voila!

Done.

Almost, kind of, but not really, good enough.