Everyday Stupidities

It was another one of those Tuesday/Wednesday "weekends" which went on for longer than 48 hours. Out of it there's one item others find worthwhile because it's tangible: my fireplace tiling project is done. I started in on it about 5pm on Tuesday, getting the grout laid by 7pm, and spent the rest of the evening on and off (watching baseball on TV) cleaning off the haze. It came out better that expected but as good as we'd hoped. Today I presented a printed photo of the whole fireplace, as well as of the frontpiece alone, to the guys at the tile store for their gallery and they were quite impressed.

Tuesday morning: The plan: meet up with Karen a couple blocks from my work around noon. The result: Since time was not her own, no one else was as game to go anywhere or do anything as she was, so I went over to her brother's house across town and hung out with her family for a couple hours, until they had to get ready for the redheaded neice-child's graduation. Which was pretty cool, I haven't seen her brothers in twenty years or so and got to meet their kids, as well as Karen's son. Just between me and you, the reason why I've been so interested in meeting him is because, well, had things gone differently half a lifetime ago and different [ahem, better on her part, if I may be so bold] choices been made, he could have been my son. You're welcome to think this is the wrong mindset to have, but it's the one I carry and I needed to face that spectre to make peace with it. I have now. I see a lot of his mother in him visually, but he is his own person in personality and is a very upbeat young man. And not everyone can wear a leather tricorn and look as cool doing so. :)

Wednesday morning: This time the plan went down better; there was a gathering of Karen, her two kids, her graduate neice, and her parents (who I also haven't seen in twenty years) down in the Antique Row downtown. We wandered around for a couple hours and I bought a blown-glass mushroom Christmas ornament of as-yet-undetermined origin and age. So we had a great time together and didn't really talk to each other a lot, but I was more social and bouncy than the last time we met so I feel pretty good about my performance. Oh, and I remembered the birthday card this time. I did have one snicker along the way: in one of the larger antique places there was a four foot high wooden pedistal with a hidden compartment, and I said "All these years I've been putting you up on a pedistal, Karen, and here it is." I bent over and cupped my hands for her foot. Even her mom laughed.

Okay, now that the fireplace is done, I'm not sure where we go next. We don't have the budget to do the kitchen cabinets as intended and there hasn't been further talk about the guest bathroom, but putting up drywall over the fluorescent fixture's rectangular hole and mounting the swell spots we got at IKEA did come up in the conversation the other day. "My brother the contractor says to start at the ceiling and work your way down," my wife says, so I guess that might be our next project. Fascinating new skill set, one I will undoubtedly become acquainted with soon, as well as rewiring ceiling electric. I've done plenty of electrical work before with lights and holes in the ceiling, but I have never had to make the ceiling first plus plan the lighting hookup rather than retrofitting. But it's gonna be damn fine. Or at least the lighting part; we'll see on the drywalling, and I suspect a texturing and painting of the ceiling will be required make the fixed fixture fissure invisible.