Nicole's New House and My Fight with the Lazy Susan

To those of you who read our Christmas letter, you know that it has been a very busy year at the Siegfried house. The holidays were no different as it has been our custom to do a little traveling each Christmas to visit all our relatives.

For Christmas, I bought Francine a Lazy Susan shelf to help with access to the corner cupboard. But before I could get to work installing it, I needed a helper to crawl into the cupboard as it is rather deep. Even my long arms can't reach all the way inside, lest my back give out. So our little helper Nicole volunteered to crawl in and retrieve the remaining cans, jars and assorted goods that had been lingering in there for years. For instance, we found a box of cereal that was two years expired. There were also four jars of unopened peanut butter Fran didn't know she had and a container of olive oil that had been camping out since we had moved in almost five years ago.

Nicole did a great job clearing out the cupboard. But just when I was gearing up to begin installation of the Lazy Susan, Nicole declared that the cupboard was her new "house". We had not planned on our daugher annexing part of the kitchen as her own. In retrospect, giving in to Nicole and letting her keep her new home would probably been preferable to shoe-horning in the Lazy Susan shelves. I had to be a bit of a contortionist to get myself in there to drill holes and stuff that thing in, but two hours later we had two spinning shelfs with easier access to our goodies. It will probably add 5 years to each of our lower backs.

Nicole still asks if she can go in her new house.

Sure. If you can fit, kid.