So the Lady from Memphis came out this morning to measure.

1. Why does Home Depot in Oxford, Mississippi contract with a company in Memphis to measure? Doesn’t anyone in Oxford know how to measure?

2. Measure. You know what that means, don’t you? To paraphrase, Let’$ $ee if I can help you $pend $ome more dollar$ on $stuff I $ay you $hould have.

(By the way, the amount of stuff Daughter C designed into the new kitchen for the Greenhouse Apartment at High Water Hill that we are not putting in is amazing.)

Anyway– I took the Lady from Memphis up to the Greenhouse Apartment so she could mea$ure and sure enough she said, “You aren’t doing wall cabinets? Or putting in an island? Or a dishwasher… .”

And I said, “No.”

Then she said, “What about shelves? Shelves above would look great! You have so many collectibles. Think how great shelves would look.”

3. I agreed with the fact that shelves would look great but if we are going to put shelves up they will be BOOK SHELVES.

4. Did you catch that, though? I thought I had a bunch of crappy old stuff and as it turns out I have “collectibles.”

And then she said, “You’re an artist, right? I can tell you’re an artist.”

5. ROTFLMAO. Me. An artist! Ha.

She did her measuring– and said I was in big trouble if the backsplash was 4″ tall– and I didn’t buy shelves and she started working on the installation estimate and remarked that she had no service– meaning internet– service. I said that was common and she said, “Yeah. Some times when I’m out in the middle of nowh…” catching herself before she said “nowhere” because I suppose she thought it might be insulting to someone who has “collectibles.”

6. When she said that bit about the backsplash I thought to myself, something is wrong. Daughter C is not from Memphis but she does know how to measure and she doesn’t make mistakes. So I asked the Lady if she didn’t want the end of her tape measure to be on the ACTUAL FLOOR instead of on the top of the baseboard and she was a little embarrassed.

7. First, it isn’t really the middle of nowhere. Memphis is only 2 1/2 hours away. Second, we live here on purpose. Why would I be insulted?

We left the Greenhouse Apartment and went into the kitchen in the Big house and she did some more estimating and when she was done I keeled over and fell on the floor.

After she left I picked up the phone and called our local plumber and asked him how much he would charge to hook up water and drain pipes if everything was already installed and the lines were just right there. He told me he’d have to make two trips– he lives closer than Memphis– but he figured he could do it for about a hundred bucks or so. He laughed and laughed when I told him how much the folks from Memphis wanted to charge.

The End