As I mentioned earlier, my daughter and her husband are rehabbing a house around the corner. Through my own aesthetic visions or their lack of time to pursue their vision, I have become their project manager. I love doing things like this. And it is so much easier to do a house thirty years after you have done one yourself.  I did my first house piece-meal, a room at a time, a dollar at a time. With the housing market as it is, they got a great deal and are able to do all the messy stuff before move in day. And I love the challenge.

But, if I start talking Burlap vs. Ostrich walls and Ancestral vs. White Dove trim, their eyes glaze over and they say they hear a baby crying, even if it is the neighbor’s.  I, on the other hand, see the project as a giant puzzle just waiting for me to fit the pieces together.  I envision a beautiful little cottage like the one that I can see on the puzzle box cover.

When I told my daughter it was time for lighting decisions, I saw the sheer panic in her eyes. But when I said we could find most of them at Lowe’s, I saw the grip on her wallet relax and she agreed to go only if her good friend Selvin, visiting for Christmas from California, could come. Selvin shares my interests in the aesthetic.  He also had a camera to take pictures of our options so we didn’t have to lug 10 boxes home and return five fixtures that didn’t fit because of color or size.

I’ll share with you a little trick about Lowe’s house fixtures and hardware. You can get great stuff there for half the price of a place like Restoration Hardware.   But you have to be careful of two things–weight and material. Some of their lighting looks great from the ceiling display and is feather weight plastic when you open the box at home. Same with kitchen knobs.  Pretty on the wall but you must hold them in your hand to see if they are at least heavier than a marble.  And I mean the super size ones, not the little guys that come with a Chinese checker board.

My only stipulation for this outing was that because of my foot cast, I would have to ride the “Call me please, Jenny Craig” cart. My daughter rolled her eyes but when she saw I was dead serious, she said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.’

Before you judge my name for said cart, I will explain that every time I see someone in one of those contraptions, rarely, I mean very rarely, are they infirmed or carrying a big green oxygen tank.  No, in my experience, they are usually about 200 pounds overweight and cannot walk on their over-burdened knees or hips far enough to buy a light bulb. My judgment might also have to do with the fact that I own a house in West Virginia, the third most obese state in the country,  and the Walmart there has more riding carts than grocery carts.

As our party of three arrived at Lowe’s, my daughter and Selvin walked ahead to start scouting fixtures and I lagged a bit behind hobbling over to the riding cart section.  When I finally caught up to their aisle in my mean machine, I turned the corner with a “Look , Ma, no hands!” pose and didn’t realize until Selvin texted this picture yesterday, he was playing paparazzi rather then snapping images of floor lamps.

Some say a picture can say it all, and this one does.  The last few posts, I have talked about “needing a little help” and I didn’t even notice the sign on the cart until this photo arrived.

We had a great time. We found a few fixtures. I went aisle to aisle in my cart.  It even had a horn for close calls, which most often happened when I was tailgating my daughter’s behind.  For a few hours, I was thinking about everything and everyone but myself.

And oh, it was such a relief.