Visualization

Have you ever looked at the pieces in the ikea furniture box and thought, "Did I grab the right box?" I'm one of those people. I have spent hours going over the six 3x4 foot pages of architectural diagrams about our backyard but I have no idea how its really going to look when its finished. That's a pretty big deal when you are putting a ton of money into someone's vision of what they think you want.
I know there is cement, a pergola, and grass. I have a vague idea of where they are located in the backyard. I have a hazy idea of what I think it'll look like when its finished, but seeing the changes in the backyard is truly entertaining. Like going on a treasure hunt...
Look there's a hole! I wonder why there a hole here. Is this where they put the sleeves for the irrigation pipes? Or, wait no, there a spray painted G over there with a rod in the ground, so maybe this is for the gas line? Or is this the tunnel to the fall out shelter for the Giant Wolf Spiders in our garage? How did they get to the architect? I guess we could build them a pool too. 
Author's Note: We have some really large wolf spiders. When i say large, i mean like smallish tarantula size. You can hear them when they run. Did I mention they jump too? Delightful little monsters. However, they have a welcomed position in our garage and are encouraged to make themselves at home because they are really intimidating...and they eat black widows. Mostly the intimidating part though. 

Giant Wolf Spider Motto: Be Prepared!

At the end of the day today we have spray marks as to where the pergola will be going and some of the dirt has been re-arranged to form what will be the steps down to the grass. Now that I can see where things are going in the yard, it seems really big to me. And while the vision in my head is still try to adjust to the new proportions, they ask me about colors?
I assume the contractor knows I have no idea what I'm doing and he's just really nice about it. A.J. and I debated on the the color of the cement and the pergola for all of 15 minutes, then shrugged, and said, "I guess these". Now that we've picked it I'm having second thoughts. What if we picked the wrong colors? We were pretty limited on the colors for the pergola, and the cement colors looked like a box of crayola crayons. You ruled out 90% of the cement colors by just not being color blind and/or bat shit insane. We ended up with a pergola color that exactly matched the color of the house - which is amazing when you think that it took us three months of trips to and from home depot to properly match the paint color of our house. Yep, "Deer Run" was one of the six possible colors. I had intended to do a nice coppery black color for the pergola, but there were no dark color options. This made our choice of a dark gray cement possibly a little strange. 

And now this gets added to the list of things I worry about in the middle of the night:
What if A.J. dies?
What if my parents get sick?
What if I lose my job?
What if the cats get outside and get run over?
What if the house burns down?
What if I picked the wrong cement and pergola color?

I should really start keeping shoes and three cat carriers by the bed.