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It’s Friday, it’s after 5pm and I’m still at work; and will be for at least two more hours...blech!

D is at home toady waiting for the shower door folks to drop by and measure.  He called me a few minutes ago to say he was really glad that I had purchased a wet dry vac for his birthday.  On cue I asked why, and he responded because ‘now I can get all this water up’.  Ooooookay.  Why.  Is. There. Water?  Wait for it.  Because the toilet tank decided to crack.  Yes, that’s right.  While he was working on the other side of the house the tank cracked from the handle to the base and has been dumping water into the floor for the last couple of hours.  And yes, the new drywall is soaked, the new tile is soaked, the carpet in the bedroom is soaked ... but hey, D gets to use his new vac, so its all good, right? 

It sounds like a disaster but there are several bright sides to this. 1. It only ran a couple of hours, it could have run all day.  2. We now have an answer to the question “Are we replacing the toilet?”.  3. I needed a blog topic; thanks fate for providing!

With my creation of ‘Homeless Crafts’ I’ve been asked more than once if I sell things, and my answer has been no.  I have a bunch of reason’s but it really comes down to one, I don’t have to worry at how good or how bad the object turns out if its free.  I dare you to complain about the quality of a free item ... can’t do it, can ya?  I am protecting myself from the ‘unhappy customer’, and from admitting to myself that the odds-n-ends I tinker with might actually be ‘nice’ (at least to anyone who doesn’t sew).  This is probably how I fell in with a bunch of knitters.  We each think the other is doing magic.

Last week I read an article in ‘Body and Soul’ (Dare to Dream, by Cheryl Richardson; August issue) that seemed to speak on this very topic.  The writer, a life coach, was giving a workshop where she encountered a woman, Carrie, who was trained in a form of body work (massage) and was giving away those services because she simply couldn’t ask for money.  Carrie wasn’t sure what she was providing had value.  By sheer happenstance another woman in the audience stood and said she had received the same type of body work from a neighbor, who also refused payment.  She was so uncomfortable with not paying for the service that she never went back.  At this point our heroine, Carrie, had an epiphany.  It struck her that not accepting payment was, in a way, disrespectful.

I’m not sure I can come all the way around to ‘disrespectful’, but it is an interesting thought.  When I had the idea for ‘Homeless Crafts’ I knew the hardest part for the participants would be the asking.  Many of the folks who have asked have offered a craft or swap in return.  I do appreciate the thought but I feel badly that by giving something away I actually created a sense of debt in another person.  Whoa!  Not even close to my original intention. 

Yesterday a friend asked for three of the little smocks I am so enamored with for her grandchildren (yikes, I have a friend with grandkids ... where did the time go?).  She offered payment, which I declined but not without considering it first.  I know that I prefer being owed to owing; by giving things away am I bolstering my ego and my need to feel appreciated by squashing theirs?  Is this the type of disrespect Carrie was talking about?  Honestly I’m still not sure.  What I do know were selling things I’d be missing out on this ... and I ask you.  Isn’t that cuteness worth more than $20 any day? 

In the coming months I will give Etsy another try but I have no plans to eliminate ‘Homeless Crafts’.  If nothing else it will be a good way to find homes for prototypes, not-quite-rights, and Etsy no-sales and still allow me to craft at will.  No breath holding though, as the bathroom project is still first and foremost on the list of thing to do.  For the curious the tile is up and curing before we grout.  Thursday installers are coming to measure for the doors; I’m going to be a little sad covering up all that pretty tile, and this weekend we grout.  We’ll be showering again soon ... I bet the neighbors will be happy - heh.

I really can’t report that it was a great weekend, but come Sunday night we had finished laying tile and tempers had cooled back to a state of semi-normalcy.  D and I rarely fight; in fact ‘heated discussion’ would be an exaggerations for our disagreements, but we do occasionally get crosswise.  We are both ‘bottlers’, we say nothing for a long time until something little and unrelated sets us off.  Somehow we both managed to hit that point on Friday night (his birthday - sigh).  But we both said what we needed to say, I think we both listened and were left with plenty to think about.  And we are both making efforts in the areas discussed.  Still, it was not the best weekend.  Moving on.

We’ve hit prime vacation time at work, which funnily enough doesn’t mean I get a vacation.  Instead, I get to cover while everyone is gone.  Better yet, two of the four full time office people will be gone for the next two weeks.  Not only does that make me ‘on call’ for two straight weeks, but also triples my responsibilities.  Luckily we recently improved our computer system and I can now access work from home at an acceptable speed.  Rather than work late every night, I’ll just take it home where I can do it in relative peace.  It also means that I miss Miz Shoes, who is visiting Sarasota and I hope is sipping a drink pool side at this very moment – and oh, how I wish I were too.

We worked all day yesterday, and well into the evening last night and we are just a little over half way.  My aches have aches, and D’s back is barking at him becasue the saw is so dang short.  But today is another day, and we are on the clock with the saw. 

The photos seem a little dark to me, the tile is much paler in person.  Hopefully we’ll finish so early today I have some good light for the finished shots ... yeah, right.  Well I’m off to take an Aleve, and head for Home Depot; I’m out of spacers.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Today is D’s birthday.  After weeks of begging for gift suggestions he came to me on Monday of this week with a photo of something he called a ‘puck mouse’.  He allowed that it was probably too late and that it would make a good Christmas gift and I agreed.  Of course, once his back was turned, I was on the net searching for this mystery item.  I found it, paid for air freight and had it in my hot little hands Wednesday afternoon.  On the way home last night I picked up a new shop-vac and a super-fine dust filter to go in it, and a ‘talking’ birthday card. 

The vac is something we need, and served as the perfect camouflage for the good gift; the mouse.  So I hid the mouse down in the filter and stacked everything in the front hall till this morning when I told him where to find his new flat screen TV.  He masked his disappointment well, but didn’t bother to open vac and look at it, so I had to encourage him to do so.  He took out the filter, shoved it on one arm and informed me I should have given him two.  He’d seen the mouse, but it would kill him to act surprised so he ignored it ... until I delivered ‘the look’ whereupon he scooped it up and packed it in his bag so he could play with it at work.

But it is not the mouse he is enamored with, oh no, it is the card.  Like a baby at Christmas that only wants to play with the ribbons, or the dog that would rather demolish the paper than play with the toy, D has latched onto the card.  No less than three times this morning I’ve answered the phone on my desk to find myself speaking to Mr. Spock; who warns in his deep, monotones of the ‘total, utter, complete annihilation’ that will occur upon the lighting of D’s birthday candles.

Happy birthday honey, I’m glad you’re having fun.  I love your laugh, and appreciate that you make me smile ... even when you are really just entertaining yourself - heh.

D met me at the tile store last night and we traded out the ceramic for travertine.  The natural randomness of the pattern is so pretty, but truthfully probably nicer than my dumpy little house deserves.  Still, we gave up an Aruban vacation to do this, we may as well go ‘high class’.  I’ll rent the wet-saw* Saturday morning and start laying tile.  The travertine is much larger than what we originally planned on so I expect it to go up pretty fast.  I am a little worried about making the full run to the ceiling in one go; that’s a lot of weight.  I’ll probably run two or three courses, let them sit a while then run two or three more just to be safe.  Could you imagine my face Saturday afternoon, happily patting myself on the back for finishing so quickly, when the resounding crash of tiles flinging themselves to the floor fills the house?  Not a pretty thought.  Though we won’t get the grout in this weekend, we should be ready to measure for the glass doors on Monday – exciting!

Between now and Saturday morning I have to frame the door, and clear the dust.  I swear there is nothing worse than drywall dust.  It’s like a three year old went prancing through the house with an open two pound bottle of baby powder. Every flat surface is coated with an even layer of it, even on the far side of the house.  Of course it is at its worst in the bathroom where it can even be found inside the cabinets.  Cabinets that were closed while the sanding was taking place.  I’m beginning to worry that I wont get the house clean prior to Greenie’s visit in August.

Once the doors are underway we will paint and then direct our attention toward the vanity; possibly ordering a top around the same time we order the doors.  There is a very long way yet to go, but the tile going up should be a huge step forward.

In unrelated news we receive a wedding invitation in the mail yesterday.  Tucked inside it was a little card that read:

In terms of gifts, for your convenience, a money tree will be in place at the reception immediately following the wedding.

Is it just me, or would Ms. Manners have a field day with this?  I understand that this is a very young couple and that they are quite hard-up for cash.  I understand that silver and china and picture frames would not be the most useful gifts for them, but shouldn’t I get a say in what I give – or better yet, if I give.  The card suggests to me that a monetary gift is expected. 

Having never been married I’m sure that I cannot appreciate the difficulty involved with deciding who to invite and who not to.  I am technically ‘family’ to her, but haven’t shared more than a few words with her since she hit teenager and I hit too-old-to-be-important.  For me to have received an invitation is somewhere between ‘politically correct’ and ‘gift harvest’, and I personally lean toward the latter.  To me that little card says ‘we’re broke, so we’re getting married’.  Perhaps I’ll open a trust fund in their names ... if they’re still married in a year they can withdraw their $25 - schnort!

*Should you ever lay tile, skip the ‘scratch and snap’ method and rent a wet-saw.  Trust me you will be happy you did.  Just be sure to find a safe spot outside to use it, they make a monstrous mess.

I tried unsuccessfully to snap a photo of the new tile choices but the light and the flash just couldn’t cooperate.  We think we have picked out a replacement; the most expensive one, of course.  It is basically the same material as the floor, travertine, but in paler shades.  It is very pretty, but I am a little concerned about the additional care natural stone requires.  I guess we shall live with it and learn.

Today is one of those rare slow days when there simply isn’t much happening; interesting or not.  I’m going to leave you with a link I lifted from a friend (waves to friend).  It is worth spending some time digging around in this site, there are some funny, and sad things there.  The one that made me laugh out loud was ‘coochie wash’.  Any of you teachers out there that passed along the ‘job application’ I shared some time back will find this another fine example to show your students.

Update: Judy snapped these up super quick (thanks Judy!).  Don’t fret if you thought you might like a set, there are bound to be more!

This weekend’s sewing yielded three sets of coasters (tutorial up at StashBustin’ ).  Two of them are spoken for, but the orange/green/pink ones could use a new home.  Any takers?

Our weekend was much as any other, with a few unexpected hitches in our get along.  D had to work Saturday morning so I took advantage of a quiet house, cranked the stereo and did a speed clean of the main living areas.  It isn’t perfect, but I wouldn’t be embarrassed if you stopped by for a drink. If you do expect all the bedroom doors to be closed, and if you want to use the bathroom you’ll be directed outside.

Libby’s vet appointment was at 11:30 and I managed to be a little early.  As I pulled into the parking lot my nose alerted me that something was amiss in the cat carrier.  When I opened the crate and pulled her out the whole office knew something was amiss.  It was so foul the assistants were coming into the exam room to see what sort of animal created a stink so noxious. I was embarrassed and proud of her at the same time.  Not only that, but her nervous explosion seemed to solve her problem for her and he thinks she’ll be feeling better in a day or two.  I’ll keep watching her with the ‘worried mama eye’.

D and I arrived home around the same time and while he worked on the drywall in the bathroom I mowed the yard, gave the dog a bath and did some laundry.  Then I went to BJ’s and did a little super-sized shopping before returning home with a late lunch.  D finished the drywall, with exception of a few spots to touch up later and emerged looking like a plaster monster.

He’s not really angry in that photo, its just difficult to get him to smile for the camera.  Oh, and the two dots on his head in the second photo?  He tried to vacuum some of the dust from his pate.  Um, didn’t work but it did crack me up. 

After all that hard work we felt pretty justified in sitting down to waste time on the computers for a while, but when we did we discovered the cable was down.  Oh. The. Horror!  So D fired up the DVDR and I fired up the Husqvarna and we relaxed the afternoon away.  By evening the cable had returned and we joined Greenie and her friend for some lengthy game play.

Sunday D did touch ups and I sewed for a bit before taking a card to my dad and hitting Home Depot for further bathroom supplies.  When I returned we hopped back onto the game and finished the mission we had started the day before (thanks Greenie and T).  In fact our only other accomplishment for the day was to decide that the tile we chose for the walls in the shower looks like crap with the floor.  I hope to rectify that tonight by picking up some samples from the tile store.  Its really frustrating, but at least it is easily changed with yet another trip to the tile store. 

The weekend was crammed full of work, rest and play ... a fine weekend indeed.

The weekend will be busy as usual: Libby to the vet, continued work on the bathroom and general house keeping.  Toss in the need for some serious yard work, truck cleaning, and a trip to the tile store and you get a crazy weekend.  And that my friends is what lays ahead.  It may not, however, be what happens.  D and I both have some serious diversions drifting around this weekend and it would not be difficult to succumb to the temptation of taking a weekend off.  Hopefully we’ll find a happy medium between assignments and amusements. 

Me, I want to sew, which surprises me given the amount I’ve done recently.  Usually I move in ebbs and flows, but right now I just can’t seem to get enough.  I suspect that much of that encouragement is the advent of ‘homeless crafts’ ... I’m really diggin’ this gifting away of things.  Not to mention the gradual reduction of my stash.  The most recent gift-away hopped a plane this morning bound for Erika at mmmmbrains.* Up next will likely be coasters.  Yes, coasters.  Its an odd project, but a great way to use up the tiny scraps of material that I just cant seem to toss.  I’m also kinda hot to go through a couple of the fabric boxes and eliminate that which will never be used and I hate to not act on that feeling lest it pass me by.

I also want to start breaking down my growing boxes.  Yes, the very ones that I worked so hard to build.  Garden planting did not happen this year due to several unexpected events, and I think the neighbors might be a bit tired of looking at the weedy eyesores.  In a way ripping them out is part of my little project / big project challenge this year.  Right now they are an ‘unfinished object’ as well as one that I haven’t time to care for properly.  Under the ‘finish it or forget it’ rules off they go.  I’ve ordered some blanket flower and vinca seeds (both natives) and plan to scatter them willy-nilly the full length of the bed and let ‘em go.  Toss in a little plumbago, frangipani, and canna and it’ll still look like a weedy eyesore, but with flowers.

D, on the other hand, is being sorely tempted by the computer (ok, I admit it, so am I).  The game we indulge in is offering ‘double xp’ this weekend, ie double points.  Points are good, and we both have characters that are tantalizingly close to level 50 (the highest level) Yes, it should be very interesting to see what is actually accomplished in the next two days.  Oh, and its going to rain and you should be well versed in my ‘Sunday rain rule’ by now - heh.

* Erika has the best darn links around, including this one that I just couldn’t be more enthralled with.

I know someone who worries so much that she frequently makes herself sick.  Sometimes it’s over things worth worrying about but most times not.  If her husband says ‘I’ll see you in a little bit’ she is mildly flipped out in thirty minutes, and totally gone in an hour.  Even after he shows up she’ll have an upset stomach.  Stress, obviously, is not kind to her.

I can remember doing the same thing to myself once when I was a kid and my dad hadn’t come home yet.  He was very late, and my mom was very panicked.  The ensuing argument when he did finally arrive home was worse than the worry, and I resolved then and there to keep unnecessary worry to a minimum.

On D’s recent trip to Peoria he failed to call me one night.  I thought enough about it to realize he hadn’t called and then let it go and went back to my everyday.  In contrast I will lay awake at night wondering if I remembered to lock the truck and unless I get up and check I will not go back to sleep.  My night-brain is a much bigger worrier than my day-brain.  It ferrets out the most wondrous things to worry about, and if my day-brain tells it to ‘shut up and go to sleep’ night-brain simply inserts those worries into my dreams.  The house burns down (I left the iron plugged in), the dog gets hit by a car (I failed to let her in), the truck gets broken into (this happened once, and yes, I forgot to lock the door) and so forth.

Day-brain does some unnecessary worrying too, but where night-brain will chase it in a circle all night, day-brain checks it out and moves on.  Worried as I start the car at the gas station that I’ve left the pump nozzle in or the gas cap off?  Check the rear view mirror - done.  Worried that I might not have locked the front door and I’m already at work? Screw it, that’s what insurance is for – done.  Worried the last donut will latch onto my thighs?  Eat it - done.  Day-brain just doesn’t have time to tote night-brain’s baggage around.  Day-brain has stuff to do!

Have I accomplished the childhood promise to reduce unnecessary worry?  Night-brain says ‘no’, day-brain say ‘get a grip’!

I spent some time yesterday working on an idea for a new banner for this site.  When I tried to do a trim operation the program locked itself up and crashed.  Since then I’ve been trying to recreate what I had done up to that point to no avail.  Though I have a good idea of what I did I simply can’t duplicate it.  I was, of course, in love with it.  As I was doing this at work I figure it was karma. 

You may remember that I was working on another one a while back, some of you even got to see it (via email).  That one died a miserable death when the program I constructed it in, a trial version, expired.  I did go back some time later to purchase the program but it had gone from $119 to a whopping $450 –eeeeouch!  I’d love to customize my blog and change the scenery around here more often, but for $450 I could change my own scenery and spend a weekend elsewhere.

I have now ordered the ‘student-teacher’ edition of that program ($99).  Yeah, I’m not a student or a teacher, but I know a few and I’m hoping that counts.  What do you think the karma boomerang will be on that one?

Friday’s post was a little haphazard and confusing (not that most of them aren’t), so I managed a few shots of the first plan vs the second plan for the shower enclosure.

Our original idea was to use the travertine (natural stone) mosaic for the floor, 6x6 ceramic in a matching color for the walls and this border as a deco-accent.

But the more I worked with the travertine, the more I liked it. And the more I felt the border was too pale. Also, I was unable to find white 1x1 glass tiles to match and scatter on the floor. So I started thinking about cutting the mosaic down to about 6 inches wide and using it for the border.

Once I started down that path, I was also free to add glass ‘dots’ of our own choosing, and found this range that I fell in love with. Quality wise it is far nicer than that in the original plan.

D, happily, signed on for this new idea and Saturday I laid the bathroom floor. Sunday we sealed it, and grouted. . There were two surprises. The color of the glass tiles is determined by a paper backing on each tile, so when we added the grout the tiles changed color. White became soft blue-green, orange became gold and the gray-green became brown (we did not use the pale yellow ones). It is not in the least unappealing, just a surprise. Also the grout dried much lighter than expected, but may darken a bit when we seal it. Again it’s not a big thing. There are high-tiles, and low-tiles and a boat load of crooked tiles, but I’m really quite pleased with the result so far.

We’ll be on to the wall’s next weekend, then the curb and cap, and shower doors. The doors will take about two weeks and we’ve decided to go for broke and take on the vanity and walls in that time. The plan was to paint the cabinet front the deep gray/green of the glass, and replace the top with one a color similar to the tiles. With the color shift in the tiles though, I’m not sure if that’s still the plan. Shower first ... then paint!

June 6th heralded my 300th post, and it slipped by without fanfare or pomp.  I celebrated by doing some blog housework and creating categories.  I really need to update to the latest greatest version of Expression Engine (now about a year old) but frankly it scares the beejeebus out of me to take the site down.  It’s something I really need to sit down and try to figure out.  If I disappear sometime over the weekend you’ll know I gave it a go; and failed miserably.  If not, then I probably chickened out didn’t have time to try.

This weekend is all about tile, though there are several factors that must be addressed first.  This includes the fact that I changed my plan this morning.  I’ve been thinking about the vanity and how to tie it into the shower area.  The solution, I think, is to replace the vanity top, paint the doors a color that coordinates with the walls (whatever that is), install brushed stainless hardware and tile the back-splash.  And that’s where I changed the shower.  The deco border we chose for the shower is quickly slipping in popularity - at least for me, but I’m loving the floor mosaic.  So, I’m thinking about splitting those mosaics length wise and using them to create the border ... and do the same thing on the vanity back-splash.  The only draw back is that I would then loose the tumbled glass ‘dots’ that are in the existing border.  While I’m not as fond of the border as I was, I do love those ‘dots’.

At lunch today I slipped out of the office and off to the tile store where I purchased two sheets of 1x1 glass tiles.  The sheets boast four colors: off white, pale yellow, pale gold, and a khaki-greyish color that defies description (and yet is growing on me).  I had planned to use only the off white, but once I get it next to the tile I may be able to use some of the others.  These I will ‘dot’ through the border and the floor ... of course, that’s if I can sell the new plan to D, heh.

Saturday evening I’m going out to my grandparent’s for the great sort.  There is a quilt there somewhere that was promised to me long ago, but even that I wouldn’t fight anyone for.  I never did understand fighting over someone else’s possessions ... even if that someone is deceased.  I don’t expect it will take long.  Since its an hour drive, and my uncle lives nearby we are planning on catching some dinner and going bowling.  Don’t laugh, I can think of worse things to do with my Saturday night.