The Honeydew List vs. The Wine List

The theme of today’s blog also explains my week-long silence.  The Honeydew List.

I was first introduced to the idea of The Honeydew List while watching Friday Night Lights.  (Best show ever if you’ve never seen it.)  Remember that great moment when Coach runs into Jason Street at the local hardware store and they’ve both got a long list of shit their respective ladies have ordered them to do.  Coach calls it “The Honeydew List”.  As in, “Honey, do this.  Honey, do that.”  Get it?  “Honey-Do List.”  

As a new homeowner, I currently have the world’s longest Honeydew List.  Trouble is, I have no honey to do any of it.  So while today’s blog should be titled “The Honeydew List”, in the case of the single homeowner, another title feels more appropriate.  And so I bring you,

The Wine List 

As in, I whine that I have to do this all by myself.  And I whine that nobody will change that out-of-reach lightbulb for me.  

While the Honeydew List has nothing whatsoever to do with its melon namesake, my list has a deeper double meaning since it actually requires at least one (okay four) glasses of wine to get through it.

The dining room built in bookcase was the first major project on my Wine List.  Okay, so the word “major” might be a tad hyperbolic.  But the closest I've ever come to building furniture is screwing together something from Ikea Birkeland collection.  So just go with it.  

My house was built in 1988 and the bookcase was clearly part of the original work.  It harkened back to a time when hair was bigger, eyeliner was bluer, and plexiglass was a sexy idea in home furnishing.  Take a look…

I know.  Hideous right?  Not only is the plexiglass super ugly but it’s completely non-functional.  It barely supports the weight of a pea so how could I expect it to support my decorative vases?  Or my Martha Stewart book collection in the way that Martha deserves?  

So I took a trip to Home Depot.  The idea was to buy some wood and have them cut it to size for me.  I have to admit I felt pretty badass carrying my giant piece of wood through the store and confidently striding over to the professional saw area.  I leaned against my cart like Bob Vila himself and told the saw dude the dimensions I needed for “this little home improvement thing I was doing.”  Yeah.  I was awesome.  I was independent.  Who needs a Honey when you’re this much of a home improvement goddess?

But then I got my shelves home and tried to fit them into their slots.  Logic had told me that each shelf would be the same size.  But… well… Logic screwed me.  Turns out that every shelf is a slightly different size.  I still don’t quite understand why.  But starting at the top, each shelf gets progressively wider.  The bottom shelf is a full inch and half wider than the top.  And since I’d taken my measurement from the bottom, the higher shelves wouldn't even fit.  This is about the point that the whining started.  And so did the wine.  

But then genius struck.  Since I don't have a saw (and didn't feel like going back to Home Depot for the 20th time in two days) I decided to work with what I had.  Basically I just sanded the shizz out of each shelf until I'd successfully whittled it down to the proper size.

 

Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but the result is pretty awesome.  And when I got the little buggers painted and stepped back to admire my work… Well….  Remember that part in “Castaway” when Tom Hanks finally lights the fire.  He dances around the beach laughing and pointing.  “Look what I've created!  I have made FIRE. ”  That was basically me with the shelves.  

Look what I've created!  I have made shelves!

The moral of this story is that wine beats the crap out of honeydew.  Because I did this.  I made those shelves.  There was no man.  There was no honey.  This is all me, bitches.

-Sarah Watson

A Single Homeowner