Graduations, End of Semesters, and an Old Bed

This past week my girlfriend graduated from college with Bachelor's degree in Communication with a minor in Psychology. I'm way proud of her! Here's a picture of her and her sister at her graduation. Congratulations Amy!



Today I was faced with daunting task of getting my room assembled. Each semester I am forced to remove all my possessions from the room at my school, and find some manner of temporary abode for them in my room. Fortunately, my mother had some spare boxes and I was able to store much of it in an unused corner of the garage.

But I get ahead of myself. Before I could even think about what I was going to do with all the junk that was filling up most of my car, I first had to make space for it in my room by getting it cleaned up. As I began the first round of cleanings, I had an awesome idea. Earlier, my mom had mentioned that since the frame for my bed was broken, I should just use the frame that my Grandfather Bennett had made for me when I was 8 months old (By 6 months, I had made it quiet clear to my mother that I would not stand being in a crib).

It should have been easy, right? I take the pieces out of the garage, dust them off, put them together and I'm done. 30 minutes top. I have come to adopt a new moto in life when it comes to projects: "The easier a project should be, the more time it's going to take". Things started out bad when my shoulder informed me that I had slept on it wrong and was going to make life unbearably painful the more I tried to use it. But I was determined to get this done, so I muscle through the pain and attempt to do this two person project by myself.

Fortunately, my mom came to the rescue with an extra pair of hands and a pair of Aleeve tablets. We managed to get the frame together when I realized that the box frame (the thing that the matress sits on) was too large to fit in the frame my granddad made. Oh well, that's no big problem, for as long as I can remember, we've always just used a piece of plywood with this bed and it's worked fantastically.

After a short debate with my mom about how wide I should get the plywood cut, I run off to Lowe's to procure my item. As I'm walking in, I decide that my mom was probably right about erring on the side of caution with the width of the board and decide to get it cut to the exact width of the frame. A short time later I leave with my cut plywood (which cost me an extra 5 dollars since someone had mislabled a section of plywood), arrived home, and carried the wood upstairs. With mom's help we set the plywood in place only to find it was an inch to wide. Oops.

Thankfully, mom is used to dealing with frustrated Bennett men, and we quickly cut off an inch of the wood and fit in back into place with no problems. I hope that this bed will continue to last me for another 24 years and my kids will get to enjoy the bed that their great-grandpa made for their dad. All in all, it goes quite nicely with my wood shelves, the Benny's Place sign, and the bookcase, the desk, the floor... my room is very woodsy. Here's picture of the bed.


The washcloths are there to keep the metal bolts from damaging the mattress, and the suitcase is only there because I'm going to use it tomorrow to go see my best friend (who isn't Amy ;) ) in our annual Christmas time get together.

Oh, and after we finally got everything worked out with the bed (7:30) I was able to get my stuff in from my car and got done around 10:30. It was a very profitable day which started at 11:30 with me heading out to do the last of my Christmas shopping!

Graduations, End of Semesters, and an Old Bed