“What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it.” ~ Juliette Binoche

Although I would prefer to have large blocks of time to spend working on the house, in reality I have short segments of time in which I can accomplish small steps towards completion. Earlier this week, I spent time pulling up carpet tack strip.

Carpet tack strip is like a hardened noodle which is stuck to the bottom of a pan yet covered in prickly cactus spines. You don’t want to scrape the pan for fear of scratching it, but you have to remove the dried noodle. All the while you must watch out for the prickly cactus spines. In real life, this requires a skill level and ability to avert pain better than any video game could EVER devise.

So there I am: pry bar and hammer in hand. Tack strip nailed securely to floor. If you’re lucky, you can get a large strip to come up, otherwise it comes up in bits and pieces as the wood which forms the basis of the strip is small pieces, easily splintered. I was actually making quite good progress along one wall when a piece broke free of the nails securing it and swung up. In a split second, I had a tack from the strip embedded in the pad of my thumb. I responded by dropping the small, lightweight pry bar. However, I didn’t just open my hand and let it drop. Oh no . . . that would be too easy. Instead I tossed it into the air as I dropped it at which point it flipped and banged into my face, just above my eyebrow.

This was the signal to me that pulling up carpet tack strip was complete for the night.

Two injuries from one tack strip. House 2, Karen 0.