July from Mary - Slapping on - part 1

 

Mary's July envelope is adorable and it was nice of the USPS to skip the cancel. I'm even more impressed that Mary managed to get her envelopes sent while she was on a fairly strenuous journey. From home in Wisconsin, she headed east and picked up two of the nephews who regularly spend summers in Wisconsin. They took the long way back to Plymouth and meandered along the southern shore of Lake Superior. Mary can correct me if I've garbled the itinerary. The point is - she was on the road - and took pre-designed envelopes and filled them in, while on the road, and mailed them. None of my *on the road* envelopes are this cute. But -- that's OK. Comparison is the thief of joy. We're just happy to have our little posse of envelope exchangers.

Continuing on a topic that Mary contributed to...

On July 17th, the blogpost was about gluing and adhering and I invited people to add to the list. Mary had a speedy response - she wrote: Place it, situate it, position it, orient it, cohere it, slap on, attach. Some of these work if you don't always affix it in the proper and tidy right hand corner. If I am in a hurry and not thoughtful about placement I've been known to slap on a stamp.

*Slap on* jolted me back 41 years to the summer of 1984. We had hoped to get a kitchen renovation done before the second baby arrived. The renovation ran a little long - and I was a week past my due date - so I was not in the best frame of mind about the delays with the kitchen.

The entire contents of the kitchen had been shoved into the baby's room. The crib was overflowing with stuff and there might even be a photo somewhere - I remember taking one. The kitchen cabinets had been painted and the doors were removed - so the last thing to be done was put the cabinet doors back on. 

As the guy who showed up to put the doors on heaved his heavy tool belt onto the brand new laminate countertop, he said, "Well, I guess all we need to do is slap the doors on and we'll be done." I did not like the sound of the *clunk* and I did not like his choice of words. I waited until he left to see if he had dinged the countertop.  - and of course he had. It was small enough that I just let it go - because every project has some kind of imperfection. But 41 years later, I still get a little twinge when I hear the expression to *slap on* anything. 

Part two of this story..... tomorrow. I'm not sure that my ire at the ding in the countertop sent me into labor - but the way the rest of the story unfolds - that might have been what happened.