Oh What a Night

I woke up to the sound of rain against the window and the first thing that came to my mind was "Oh no, my chest!" (because it was on the porch "drying"). I got out of bed to tinkle and saw that it was just after 2:30am. When I opened the bedroom door I saw that V's eyes were opened, so I said to him "It's raining. What if my chest is getting wet?!"I told him I was going to go check on it and he asked if I needed any help and I said no, I'd be fine. Then he asked me if it was still on top of the plastic drop cloth and I said yes, so he told me to wrap the drop cloth around it and tape it together so it will keep it from getting wet. Good thinking! So I grabbed the roll of masking tape out of the kitchen drawer and headed out to the porch....at 2:37 in the morning (lol). The whole time I was out there I was thinking about how if it is a little damp then covering it up with this plastic wrap is just going to make it more damp and I'll practically be back to square 1! About 15 minutes later, it was taped up and I was so so tired. I walked inside and just before closing the blinds, I decided to pull it as far away from the screened walls of the porch as possible. As I closed the sliding door and put the stick down, I thought to myself "I might as well just bring it inside now!" So I did. Then I realized after I pulled it inside that there's no point in it being wrapped up in this drop cloth...so I unwrapped it. Now I can go back to bed.

Well, my pup Ellie

doesn't like when it rains. When I first came out of our bedroom she was sitting at our door instead of asleep on the couch next to Lacey. I didn't think much of it because I was worried about my chest being ruined but when I walked down the hallway towards our bedroom to go back to bed, I spotted my poor Smelly Bell hiding underneath our "indoor tool box". She shimmied out and looked up at me with those little brown eyes and I picked her up to bring her to bed with us. When I opened the door V asked how it was and I said "Okay, I think" and told him I had Ellie, but I would try and keep her on my side so she wouldn't bother him. I put her on the bed and she jumped down and made herself comfortable on one of V's pillows that had fallen on the floor. As I laid there in bed, trying to go back to sleep, all I could think of was Luna

jumping up on the top and stepping in the wet-ish stain and getting Jacobean paw prints all over the house! Then I finally convinced myself that she probably wouldn't jump up on it because she wouldn't want to walk on the drop cloth (for whatever reason?), and finally fell back to sleep.

Here we are, about 22 hours from the initial staining and some of it is still wet (or looks wet...)

I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I'm definitely not 100% happy with how it looks, but I think it looks considerably better than it did when it came through my door on Tuesday afternoon.

When we were at my aunt and uncle's house for my cousin's birthday dinner last night, my soon-to-be brother in law told me that I should sand it down again and re-stain it and then cover it with a matted varnish. We'll see about that. sanding took a long time and I know today isn't a good day to be working on it at all; it's cloudy and muggy outside. So I guess I'll leave it in the dining room and just stare at it all day until I think of something else. I knew it wasn't going to be completely even because the left side had some pretty serious water damage...I just wish it was a litttttle more even looking. IDK! The rest of it looks pretty good so maybe one day I'll get a cute cushion to set on top of it and then no one will see the unevenness! :]