Happy wife, happy house, or at least that is what they say! And what does a woman happy, besides receiving presents with clear sparkling stones of many shapes and sizes embedded in them? The answer is simple: Renovating and redecorating her house. I know it is a terrible fifties cliche’, but I had to find an opening for my post.

Last weekend I was a very happy wife in a very happy house but not because we installed new upstairs windows and a new front door. It was more of psychedelic collateral effect happiness.

The job was supposed to be done on Thursday but because the alarm guy couldn’t come to disconnect the wires before Friday, we had to postpone everything to Saturday.That, in total honesty, it didnt make me happy at all. The last thing I wanted to do was getting up and be ready by 8 am on a Saturday, but, it was not really up to me.To optimise the time, I asked the girls to sleep in the guest bedroom on Friday night so that I could cover all the furniture in their rooms the night before, and on the Saturday morning, I only had to prepare my bedroom and bathroom.

Friday evening, the travelling husband who was not travelling but working in the Dublin office, rang me saying he had missed the bus and had to wait for the next one at 6.45. “Right, what a coincidence and what a pity he had missed the bus on a Friday night and had to go to the pub to wait for the next one just when he could be home enjoying covering furniture with dustsheets in your wife company”, I think.
Was I annoyed? Mmmmm, maybe a little, but after we covered our bedroom furniture together the following morning, I realised that him missing the bus, had been a blessing……for me! While we were working as a team, in fact, I had a definite feeling that we were one too many in that room.Of course, none of us said anything but our poorly concealed frowns said it all. If I was pulling one side, he was pulling the other and for one side of wardrobe covered the other would be exposed. If I was to cut the sellotape, the pieces were too small, but if he was doing it they were too long, and half of them end up rolled around my fingers instead of that on the sheets to keep them still and steady.

Back to Friday night, I started with daughter number one’s bedroom and progressed to daughter number two ‘s. Asking the girls to get from their rooms anything they might have needed because they would not have been able to reaccess their bedroom until the following evening, made my job pretty easier as they took me on parole and moved half of the content of their bedroom in the guest bedroom. The essentials, according to them, that as I discovered after I already sealed their wardrobes, obviously not included a pair of clean knickers and socks for the following day. .
When I was nearly done covering everything my vision got a bit blurry, I blamed my glasses on being dirty, but that didnt explain the fact that I was feeling a bit dizzy too. Maybe it is all that up and down the ladder, I said to myself but as more as I was working away with the dust sheets and as more the feeling of dumbness was stronger.
I was not feeling unwell. I was feeling…..strange.Everything around me had a funny light. It was like to be in a Jimmy Hendrix video clip. When I had finally finished my balance was affected too, or at least I thought, and I could swear my eyes’ balls were wide and wild.
I didn’t know what to think, but because it was so absurd, I just decided to ignore the whole thing, thinking it was probably me imagining things. Except, daughter number one came to me saying, “wow, these sheets are cool, if you look at them for a while, they make you feel and see funny”.
So it was not me imagining things, those were not simple disposable colored dust sheets, they were psychedelic free mental trip dust sheets, and I was looking at them for a while now. No wonder I felt like Mowgly after Kaa tries to hypnotise him.
Glad I was not imagining things, I quickly closed those bedrooms doors behind me and still feeling dumb I went to take a shower hoping that feeling of just had an LSD trip would vanish.
It didnt, but in the meanwhile, the travelling husband came home. He cautiously stepped in not sure how my mood was: was I upset because I had to do all the work on my own? You bet I was, but that was before I experimented with the disposable dust sheets. Relieved I was in a good mood, he offered me a glass of wine, that leads to a second one …..Guess how happy I went to bed that night, wobbling but serene.

If you are wondering if I had another dust sheet trip the following morning packing up my bedroom, well, with extreme disappointment I have to say I did not.
I think those things work only with the dark. While the dark activates their flower power color source, for some reason the light impairs it. So here it is my recommendation: if you ever want to feel a bit ……”.seventies”, cover up your furniture with disposable coloured dust sheet but make sure it is dark outside.

Was it the lack of psychedelic trips or was it all the cleaning after the workers left, on Saturday the wife was not happy, and neither was the house.
In fairness to the two guys who installed windows and doors, have been brilliant, quick, precise and nit. The only problem was that they were identical twins and I spent the entire time they were there repeating over an over the same things because I was always speaking to the wrong brother.I kept saying to myself to memorise what they were wearing to help me remember who I said what, but I kept forgetting.
When they eventually left, and I had finished the cleaning, we were tired but indeed delighted of having noise and drafts proof windows in our bedrooms and a flashy red new front door with no doorbell to drive the dogs mad and no sleeved letterbox bringing every possible lousy weather in, along with our post.
That delight didnt last long because soon we realised that we had not thought about our posts. Where were we going to receive the correspondence? We needed a wall mounted letterbox, and we need it now or else on Monday the postman would have not to know where to leave our post.

Thankfully, the most popular day for DIY is either Saturday or Sunday, and the shops are opened all weekend. As on Saturday, it was too late, Sunday we went. We bought a new wall mounted letterbox, and the travelling husband fitted it, as neither he nor I would trust myself with a drill.
Unfortunately Sunday there was also Ireland vs Italy for the six-nation rugby tournament, and it is superfluous to say that the husband was not impressed to be out shopping and drilling instead of being in front of the tv. Graciously he understood that we had no choice: we could not afford to have other posts missing or lost!We needed that letter box before Monday!

Guess how many letters we received Monday?None ! And Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.No post has been yet delivered after we got the new letterbox.
Does the travelling husband know? Of course, he doesn’t! It s been all week I put old correspondence inside the letterbox. Last thing we want is for him to have the impression he had missed the rugby match and waisted his Sunday …..all for nothing,right?!