EVEN MORE FUN WITH TOOLS!!

My sister came in town for the weekend to help me with unpacking, organizing etc. At the moment, she's napping.

But earlier she painted the pantry, then we went to Lowes to buy new shelves for the pantry. This was not the quick trip I thought it was going to be.

I just wanted some boards that were 16.5 by 35. Oddly, shelves apparently come in every dimension but what I needed. We finally made our choice, but needed help to determine how to fasten the brackets to the wall. I spotted a guy wearing a vest that said "Customer service, I can help with anything." Then the name "Doug". He was standing by a counter and tossing something in the air, kind of bored. When he saw me approach, I swear he looked annoyed. "Oh, darn. I'm going to have to do something" was what his expression told me.

We showed him what we were buying and asked how to fasten them to the wall. He told us we'd have to go to hardware and get something called "butterfly sinker."

We toddled off to hardware in search of said butterfly sinkers. I had a feeling "Doug" made that up; that there is some sort of running joke among the guys wearing vests saying "Customer Service. I can help with anything." We'd get to hardware and would ask for a butterfly sinker only to have the guy there slap his knee and laugh saying "Doug sent you, didn't he. That guy! What a riot."

Or, we'd end up with some kind of fishing tackle.

We went through a series of customer-service-I-can-help-with-anything guys who gave us varying degrees of help. We finally found an older gentleman who looked at the toggle bolts we had been advised to use (which also have the name of butterfly sinkers --go figure). He asked us more questions, then took the toggle bolt/butterfly sinker away from us, gave me something else that looked less scary and wouldn't leave as big a hole in the wall.

As soon Carol wakes up, we'll see if it works.

Of course, if I start banging on nails to hang some pictures in the hallway, she might wake up earlier.

;)