Am I Doing This Right?

I fall into quite a few “white girl” stereotypes: a Jetta-driving, sorority sister that loves Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks and has to resort to self tanner to not look sickly during the winter (or really, any time for that matter). That last one is an integral part to this story. 

So I ordered these wire shelving units for my garage for the original purpose of storing all the half-empty paint cans from my painting adventures. But then I did some research and I found out that its actually not recommended to store paint in a hot garage in Texas. Who knew? But I had already ordered the shelves and I figure you can never have enough storage so I just went with it instead of cancelling the order. 

My town home is located in a gated community with five others. And even though I left a gate code for the UPS driver when I placed my order, I don’t exactly have a lot of faith that they won’t just pull one of these. So after work on Thursday, I waited around at my house for the UPS delivery man so I could not only be there in case the package needed to be signed for, but also to spy and see how exactly they delivered to my gated fortress of a home. I know it’s not easy to break a wire shelving unit in half or anything, but I guess I’ve been on my Mythbuster’s binge on Netflix long enough that I considered this an experiment of sorts. 

I used the last hour of daylight to do some work in my front courtyard while I waited for the UPS driver to deliver my unnecessary shelves. Because this is Texas in August, I was wearing shorts and a white workout tank top to try to hold the inevitable heat exhaustion at bay for as long as possible. 

7:45 rolls around and I hear the rumbling of a truck making its way down my narrow street. My shelves! That I don’t need! I’m oddly still excited. 

I run out toward the gate to meet the UPS driver before he can even think of throwing these over my gate. I thought he would be relieved that someone had saved him the extra twenty steps to my front door, but his face conveyed a different emotion - a mix between confusion and disgust. Okay, weird. But maybe it’s just been a long day for this glorified post man? 

I cheerfully took the packages from him and told him to have a nice day. But before he turns around to leave he quietly asks me, “Are you okay, ma’am?”

I respond, “…yes?” 

And he just nods and gets into his truck and drives off. Although I swear I can still see his lingering gaze in his side mirror. 

Confused, I dropped off the packages inside my garage and went inside to finish rearranging some other furniture. That’s when I caught a glimpse of myself in my powder room mirror. 

I looked like a rusty tin man. During my outdoor work, I inevitably sweated (because this is Texas) and consequently I gained some unusually-colored sweat stains on my white tank top. Because I had applied self tanner earlier that morning, my sweat became a freakishly oompa-loompa shade of orange and it was seeping through my top in the most unfortunate of places. I’m fairly certain that the UPS driver thought I was being prepped for surgery with iodine or that maybe I was doing some crazy medical experiments in my unassuming yellow town home. 

I bet he will throw all my packages over the gate in any future deliveries, because I’m pretty sure I scared the pants off this guy. Poor thing.

But on to the shelves! I got the chance Saturday to set them up and I’m pretty sure I built them completely wrong. 

Note how the instructions told me to put the WHEELS on these things first. It’s like they’re just hoping the setup will be disastrous. 

Am I doing this right?

How about now? Probably not.

Regardless, I got them both upright and into my garage. But you can see that the one on the right is a little wobbly. I just call it “swagger”. Unfortunately its actually a little too weak to actually hold anything, so I’m going to have to get some help on this one eventually. 

So if you make it to my house, probably best not to lean on this one either.