Want to see the ONE blueberry that grew on my blueberry plant?

These Are The People In My Neighborhood

So, I'm at Home Depot by myself. I'm looking at the drill bits. I have no clue about drill bits. There's an african american man standing next to me, with his friend, and he's complaining loudly about this drill bit he bought that won't go through stainless steel. He asks me if I know anything about drill bits. I fall right into his trap. I say, "no, but do you think this drill bit goes with this size nail?" He says, "yes." He says, "see, my problem is I buy this drill bit, but it doesn't work." I say, "maybe you should try a different brand?" He says, "I don't care if it's booty brand, I just want it to work." That's awesome. I start to laugh, and he apologizes for using the word "booty." I can imagine I'm really blushing, but I'm still laughing. Then he asks me what I do for a living? He guesses I am in the medical field. Take that guy way back when I had the Dresden doll outfit on who said I couldn't be a doctor because of the way I dressed! I said I was a winemaker. He said he was a chef and gave me his card.

I used to think all the african american guys were aggressive. I can hardly go to the grocery store without someone saying something. We have actually switched grocery stores because of this. When a black guy tells you you have a nice ass, that's a clear cut sign you need to go on a diet. But maybe they are just friendly. Being at Mizzou was my first real exposure to more than one black person at a time. I was always amazed at how they kept to themselves, and I was also amazed at how they all seemed to know each other. Maybe we should all be so friendly. Maybe our world would be much smaller then.

like the empty bottle of wine on the hardwood floor

Everything is finished but the quarter round trim. That will go on tonight, not sure it will get finished tonight, but we will work on it. John has a meeting tonight, so I have two minutes to catch my breath. I have to go to Home Depot, our second home before he gets home and buy finishing nails and a drill bit. He also wants me to return the extra quarter round, but I'm not sure how he expects me to get something that is 16 feet long in my Cavalier.

We're not pressed for time or anything, though. We have plans all but Saturday and John's sister and her husband and their new son come to stay on Sunday. Come hell or high water our house will be back in order.

We kind of have "make our house look nice" mode going on though. We bought a new entertainment center and curtain rods. We were going to buy curtains too, but realized we have no idea whatsoever about curtains. Anybody have any curtain advice?

The saddest thing might be that we are actually getting used to our house being turned upside down. John says he likes sleeping in the basement and I will have to admit that I love looking at the floors, and think it will be sad to cover them up with furniture.

We were planning a "come over and tell us how beautiful our floors look" party, and we still might throw one, but the one free weekend we had just got filled with the prospect of crushing 20 tons of plums. Woohoo!

The cleanest part of our house. How many of you have floors you could eat off? HUH?!

Would you look at that shine?

The dirtiest part of our house. You thought I was kidding when I said our entertainment center and our pull out sofa were both in our kitchen didn't you? Bart says it looks like a scene from Cops. That's just great. The most frustrating part of this picture is the fact that John decided we needed a new entertainmenter center, so really, we could have taken this one apart WEEKS ago.

This is our bed in the basement.

To be a kid again...

Anyone tired of the floors yet? I am. We just spent $180 on quarter round tonight, that was fun. =( Anyway, thought I'd mix it up a bit with this cute picture of Louis with spaghetti on his face.

This is where we stand tonight. Staining; finished. One coat of polyurethane on, sanded off, wiped clean, and this is the second coat of polyurethane being applied. The third will come tomorrow morning, then the floors will be finished. Then we wait MANY days before we can actually use this space because the polyurethane has to harden.

Staining. The camera wouldn't cooperate when it was time to stain so this is all I have. You can see the entryway and the inside of the closet is one color, while the office is another

There was a layer of linoleum, then a layer of wood, then another layer of linoleum, then another layer of wood followed by gobs of glue and seriously about 200 staples. Good times.

The evil linoleum

Can you see the rug stains?

The very beginning

Bitch List

Becky taught me in high school that sometimes it feels good to list everything that bothers you on a piece of paper. It really works, try it sometime. Here goes my current Bitch List:

1. My house is a mess. Everything I own is dirty. All my clothes are dirty because either we haven't had time to wash them because we are too busy with the floors, or the cats are laying on all the clean clothes all day now that we share their space in the basement. Our comforter is dirty because the cats lay on it all day and all night. Our entire house is covered in sawdust. Our kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes because we can't get to it because we have our entertainment center and our pull out sofa in the kitchen now because they were too heavy to move.

2. My hands hurt and are red because of using all this sanding equipment.

3. When we bought the tack cloth and the stain yesterday at Home Depot, the lady said "that is the hard part." So everything we have done up until now was easy?

4. We can't have our air conditioner on, so yesterday while we were sanding it was a mere 92 degrees F in our house.

5. We have so many previous engagements that we booked before we started sanding that at this rate we won't be finished for another two weeks. Dirty clothes, dirty comforter, dirty dishes for two more weeks.

Time Is Not On Our Side

I can't believe I have an extra hour on my hands. Crazy.

Refinishing the floors is going slower than expected. We spent all day Saturday ripping up linoleum, and moving furniture. We spent Sunday sanding with the wrong sander. We should have started with a belt sander, and instead we started with a vibrating sander. When we finally figured out we were doing something wrong, it was late on Sunday evening. On Monday we rented a belt sander, and sanded all the floors in 3 hours. Makes the day before seem SO frustrating. I liken it to running a marathon but you can only take baby steps. Next we use the vibrating sander to smooth out the floors, an edging sander to get all the ares we can't reach, and then stain, and then polyurethane.

Wish us luck and patience, with the floors and each other. ;)

Floor Update

Pictures

from the weekend here.