I Am Woman Hear Me Roar!!!

So this was just too funny to not blog about. And I don't mean like funny-haha. I mean like funny-shoot-something-when-you're-done. So, ever looked at something you needed to do and thought, "Yeah, I can do this. No sweat." Well that's how this started. I am barbequing tomorrow without Andy's help. No sweat. However, we don't have a grill so I had to buy one. I bought one of the cheap $35 grills from WalMart because well, it looked easy to assemble and it was cheap. I bought it yesterday hoping Andy would be able to put it together before he left today (he has something at the church tonight til late and all day tomorrow). However as Andy left this afternoon, the grill was still in the box. Well, that meant I had to do it. I looked at the box and thought, "If he could do it, so can I." That was my first mistake, cockiness. Andy is a handy-man, jack-of-all-trades, including grill putting togethering. I am not. So I open the box, reach in and cut myself on the instructions. It was not pleasant but hey, it's a papercut. I should have taken it as a warning. So I read the instructions. 8 steps, no problem. Pull out all the parts. As an added bonus they labeled every part with a letter so that dummies like me wouldn't screw it up. Step 1- return policy-blah blah blah. Step 2- Attach handle and air vent. Easy as pie (however I won't find out til later but I forgot to put washers on the screws before putting them in) Time- 7 minutes. Step 3- attach bottom air vents. First, I screwed them in the wrong holes, then found the right holes and put them on backwards. In all- 10 minutes. Step 4- Attach legs, wheels, and bottom grid. This is where the cussing started. I won't go into detail (because we'd be here a loooong time) but it's safe to say that screwing four legs to the the bottom grid, then positioning the bottom of the grill on them and screwing that in place is a two maybe three person job. I did it by myself. Time- at least 20 minutes. Step 5- Attach side shelf. This is one of the reasons I got this grill. It has a handy little shelf beside it to put stuff on. Very handy. Had I known that it was an evil shelf who's only purpose was to make you wonder why you even bought the darn grill in the first place, I would have thrown the shelf over the fence and skipped this step. Time it took me to attach this handy little piece of crap with Terhan's help- 20 minutes (thank goodness for Terhan. He actually did help me). Step 6- attach lid (which I cut myself on when I grabbed for it) and step 7- insert warming rack. I read these two steps backwards and for 5 minutes was trying to hold the lid with my hand and my head and attach the warming rack with my other hand and then get it all to stay while I put the tiny screws in the tiny holes (which by the way, they put a little bit of oil on the screws to lube them up and I figured this out when I put them in my mouth to hold them). So when I finally figured out the lid screws on first THEN the warming tray goes in, it all came together. Time (including the 5 I wasted) 15 minutes. Step 8- Insert charcoal tray and cooking grid. Yeah this took all of about 1 minute. This is where I found out I had forgotten the washers to the handle. Fixing that mistake- another 5 minutes. And all this is happening while the sun in going down, Kaiya is fussing to go to bed, the kids are playing in the water, then getting cold and wanting to go inside and eat a snack. BUT I got it put together. One hour and 27 minutes, 3 broken nails, two cuts, 8 mosquito bites, an oily mouth, itchy arms and legs(from sitting in the grass), 18 cuss words and 18 forgive-me-Lords later, I conquered the grill. All I have to say is those burgers better taste pretty darn good otherwise that grill's gonna learn how to fly.