A woman, a tent, and a cat

Hello and welcome to a cool Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is August 8th.

My big adventure last weekend was setting up a canopy tent I bought at Menards the prior weekend. I've been analyzing, calculating, and trying to woo the hubs into a 3-season porch renovation - heck, why not four seasons?! - for at least two years. It's a tricky thing, wanting to put a porch on the upper level of a split-level home. So, we settled on a compromise. Instead of a spendy remodel, we'd test drive my fancy notion of rest, relaxation, and party-hosting inside a tent on our current deck. I got in on the ground floor of this investment/experiment for a reasonable $230. To celebrate, I added an outdoor area rug for another fifty bucks.

I'm not sure if it's a result of getting older, or supporting technical higher education (Mechatronics) in my current job - maybe it's both - but, gosh, I grabbed that instruction manual with gusto and had at it.

There were a few mishaps and misunderstandings like most assembly projects. But I had enough IKEA experience to trust the process to keep going.

The first challenge was deciding how loosely to leave the bolts. The kids and I have acquired lots of experience building shelving units for the Czech relatives. The lesson learned from that was not to crank the bolts too tightly as you work your way around the perimeter, but rather to do a snug fit, then hop over to the opposite bolt and have a go at that one, gradually tightening all four sides so the piece doesn't skew and wobble.

The second challenge was affixing the four side frames to the six-foot columns, which reminded me of past experiences like assembling bed frames or gingerbread houses. For this task, there was no milk carton like they use in the ECFE graham-cracker houses. Instead, think of a very large bed frame, on very high stilts. 

Hubby to the rescue!

His height made him the ideal candidate to screw the frames into the columns, while the rest of us held all the pieces aloft. A side note: during this time, I was especially pleased with my own stamina and strength, not tiring during this incredibly long process of tightening those bolts a teeny-weeny quarter turn at a time with the provided Allen wrench. My morning strength training was paying off.

As dusk and mosquitoes settled in, we concluded our efforts on Saturday night with only 3 of the 4 frames successfully affixed to the columns. And thank the good Lord that we'd unknowingly set all the columns up in the proper order to align all those little nuts-and-bolts openings/holes.

On Sunday, the At-Home Oldest child and I resumed the grand task, and attached that last crossbar-frame-thingy. Next up: the canopy.

We were cruising now. She worked ahead on assembly of the roof beams/cross bars while I steadfastly winched-winched-winched those little Allen-wrench quarter turns. We even threw up both canvas roof pieces - a smaller top square for ventilation with a 6-inch skirt of mosquito netting - and the larger lower piece. We encountered our next hiccup when the velcroed skirting of the larger portion wouldn't align with the roof beams. (Here, Bob Ross and his "happy little clouds" came to mind. I wanted - needed -those happy little clouds.)

"I told you we put the long frames on backwards," I lamented to my husband. "No worries," said my savvy guy. With the structure firmly supported on all four sides, and the roof in place, it was easy-peasy to unscrew the backwards frames and turn them around. The slow unscrewing and tedious rescrewing of all the bolts didn't even bother me. And when the velcroed bits from the canopy roof neatly aligned, I felt a satisfaction similar to putting the finishing touches on a fancy cake. Voilà!

The last thing to do before furling out the rug and setting up my pod rocker camping chair was to hang up the mosquito netting.

This step took some internet searching and installation videos because I really wanted the netting to hang outside of the metal tent structure so the string lights would hang inside the tent. Alas, two attempts at making that happen concluded in a no-go. At least for now.

By Sunday evening, it was time to move on to other important projects - like staying on track with knitting an Irish sweater that's due by Christmas. 

Monday, it rained like someone upstairs forgot to turn off the faucet; Tuesday, the area rug needed to dry out, so it wasn't until Wednesday that I was able to sit inside the tent and give some relaxation a whirl. I noted gargantuan mosquitoes on the outside of the netting and felt pretty proud of myself. 

Fuzzy, our cranky cat, came up to the deck in search of some breakfast. I spied him, hoping he wouldn't figure out how to get into the tent. (Another reason we got a tent: to keep this nippy feline out of my space.) Alas, the cat is smarter than I give him credit for. He slipped right under the netting and promptly hopped into my lap, where he proceeded to demand my attention lest I get a good chomp.

I acquiesced, feeling enough guilt about giving him only a spinkle of love crumbs all summer. I comforted myself with the success that at least the mosquitoes had stayed out.