(More) Home Improvement

The men are coming tomorrow to thoroughly obliterate two bathrooms (as I have known them for 25 years). Should be interesting to see if everything comes together, or if I just sigh, bear the decorating error, and hope a future owner loves it. Doing everything piece meal at least gives me the feeling that I am making progress toward realizing the house finished before I retire or stop work.

I look back on the old days as a child that the bathroom in the rental house we lived in on Alameda street didn't have a window, so it would get all steamed up and my sister would peel the multiple layers of pink enamel paint off the wall. I hated to use the room after her because those were the days of sleeping on 2" round rigid curlers. My hair was baby fine, and no amount of Aqua Net could save me from the droop. As my Mother used to say that if you live with a group of women, the bathroom always smelled of farts and perfume.

Living with a house full of men I learned that it wasn't much different, just that the sweeter side was always under represented, and the bathroom always has this weird odor of onions, rank socks, and farts. Making their rooms safe havens for them was really a cop out on my part. It seems that after the sweet milky sleepy powdery baby smells left their bodies, the damp dog smells that come from busy little boys started.

I wonder what the two of them will think of "their" bathroom? It always seems to be the first place that they head when they hit the front door, normally to leave something (like a puppy still marking its territory). Will the change be a shock to their Pavlovian selves? Maybe I can turn this into a behavior experiment.

I ma guess that the tow little ones will be facinated with the colors and design, and will have lots of questions and comments.

Hope I don't break the mirror into a thousand pieces. The last two years has been bad enough, and another seven just might make me a woman who imbibes on a regular basis.
Hang on kidneys. You thought the "Stones" were fun...........

Home Improvement

I can't believe that I come up with these ideas. I found the Mr. outside in 100 degree weather staring at the flower bed.

What are you doing? (Another 5 minutes out here and I am jumping in the pool).
I think I'll do the rest of the stone border.
Today!?
Yeah.........
How bought you wait till October, besides I would like to do the tile inside sometime before I'm 80.

I went upstairs. Ten minutes later I heard something crash downstairs and the house was shaking.

What are you doing?
Bustin out the tile.

I went down. No cover on the furniture, dust and junk everywhere.

Two week later, I took three days off to clean house, wash drapes, shampoo carpets, and dust.

Tile looks great............................

Daydreams vs. Nightmares

Sometimes life is like a series of slip and falls. The challenge is getting up each time after the last fall. Did the last few years happen; or was it a series of gauzy vignettes that dissipated like puffs of smoke into the prevailing breeze? The purely cognitive me knows that time has passed, and so circumstances and life must have changed. But the wistful me wishes I could awake a little more spry and with less grey hair to muse what the (bright) future will bring.

For right now, it seems that everyone has scattered to their respective corners, licked their wounds, and resumed the fight. Absolutely fascinating...........