A Mystery Solved

Rural Denton County reminds me more of New England than of Texas. The streets have a curious history of being repeatedly washed away and sloppily repaved--they rise like an elongated mound of pebbled blacktop barely wide enough for two cars to pass, both cars tilted sideways. One time we found ourselves head to head with a "doolie", a farm pickup truck with two tires on each rear axle, and we had to pull over to the side to let him pass--our two right tires were completely off the pavement.

In the fall, large elms and oaks blot the sun into jigsaw-patterned shadows on the road. A small wooden bridge spanning the creek was finally washed away in a "gullywasher"--a large flash flood rose over ten years ago, taking a car off the bridge into the woods and drowning the driver. A month or two later when I drove by there was a sign which read "My Dad Died Here". It made me reflect that it was a lonely place to die.

The numerous short, straightly-arranged post oak groves led some people to say "Oh, you live out in the 'sticks'..." I'm not sure if there is an intentional reference to the river Styx in mythology, but that is the way the term is often applied--as though one in this area lives at the edge of the world. And even though it's not far from the main drag, turning onto this road makes you feel as though you might be at the end of the earth. It is very quiet.

My brother-in-law, Greg, and his family live in a single-level ranchhouse nestled along this road--they love the solitary feeling of being surrounded by the trees and spreading land--and I don't blame them. They live on 25 acres, with a large red barn full of spiders and mice off to the side of the property. A freshly dug farm pond sits along the northernmost border of the lot. At night you can walk out and see thousands of stars that you can't see in the city--choked out by the blaring lights.

Greg is not really fit for country living, particularly because he is afraid of all animals, great and small. One of the funniest memories of my life is trying to help him round up cows which had gotten in with a neighbor's herd. I could tell that Greg didn't want anything to do with touching the cows, which at first made me laugh--I mean, did he expect them to follow him home like the Pied Piper of Hamlin? So, the farmer who wanted us to collect our cows just dropped a couple of feed cubes into a tray and shook them loudly and then the whole herd immediately ran in our direction--Greg's eyes swelled with fear and I laughed and laughed. We moved the cattle into a pen and let them out one by one, keeping our cows in the pen, roping them, and then "walking" them home. They didn't want to move, so we somehow got the bright idea of tying the other end of the rope to a truck bumper to give them a tug. Luckily, we didn't pull the cow's head off, although I believe we got close. Eventually, we untied the cow and she, tired of our idiocy, just took off running down the road--guess I didn't realize that a cow could outrun a person--and jumped the fence into her own pasture. We stood, mud-soaked and embarrassed, near the guillo-truck.

One autumn day a few years ago, Greg pulled out onto the rural street in front of his house. After getting ten seconds down the road, nearly to the edge of his property line, he spotted a man slumped over in the ditch near a fence. Terrified, he hopped out of his truck and discovered, to his horror, a worker hired by his next-door neighbor--he had been out working in the area for a few weeks now. The top of his head was sheared off, much like the top of a jack-o-lantern. His brain had come out of his skull and was laying next to him on the ground, along with a thick chunk of bone. The loud droning of the still-running gas-powered trimmer permeated the air. Unthinking, and seemingly in slow-motion, Greg reached down and flipped the switch to turn it off.

There was clearly nothing to be done for the man. His body was still warm when Greg touched him on the arm.

Almost immediately, another car pulled up and a man got out. He held his hand over his mouth in astonishment at the sight. Greg could bring himself to say nothing, but dialed the police on his cell phone, and then his wife, just a few hundred yards away.

The men conjectured that the worker could have fallen and had an accident--perhaps he had injured himself with the trimmer, or cut himself on a piece of metal on the ground. They didn't try to solve the mystery at the time--they were anxious to get away from the grisly scene.

A few weeks later, the police released a report with the conclusion that the worker had been shot from a distance with a high-powered rifle.

Obviously, everyone felt a sadness for the loss of the worker, and then fear set in. Someone was stalking these remote woods with a high-powered rifle, and it was pretty scary. From the site of the murder, one could see a fishing spot where I would take my young son. Sitting by the pond and aware of the shooting, I could envision someone watching us through a rifle scope. The police had no leads, no ideas--not even a traceable bullet fragment.

The worker, a poor man who lived with his parents and was driven to work every day, was briefly mnourned but seemingly forgotten a little too easily. Years started to tick by with no resolution.

Last week, one of the infamous D.C. snipers admitted that, before their well-publicized shooting spree in Washington D.C. and Maryland, they committed a practice run in rural Denton County, killing a worker on the side of the road.

Case closed.

Geocaching

At the beginning of each year, I write up a list of things we should do during the year. So far, I've just been doing this with my 7-year-old son, but I'm really looking forward to doing the same thing when my daughter gets a little older. It's kind of scary--they say that a father has a lot of influence over his daughter's self-esteem in particular--not sure if I completely but that it has a different level of significance, but why take chances?

When the opportunity arises, I make plans to check things off the list--I'm still trying to get a horseback riding trip and more archery (they closed the public range near our house). Sometimes we do spontaneous stuff like a few weeks ago when we teamed up and dominated at laser tag (no, I wasn't the oldest one in the game..but I did get, ahem, 2nd place in overall scoring).

Anyway, I've had "geocaching" on my list for over a year now as something that might be fun for Ryan and I to do. For those who may not know what that is, it is a kind of treasure hunt that is done with a GPS receiver--people hide a small box with a log book and provide exact coordinates to the location, along with perhaps some clues to help you find it when you get close. There may even be some trinkets or something to take as a souvenir--you leave something in return. It's kind of a fad thing, I guess. Okay, maybe it's a nerd thing...

I can see that it will be fun--a quick search of www.geocaching.com showed me that there are about 100 small caches just in my immediate area. I thought it might be fun to find 10 or so--I saw where some people found over 60 in one day...

If it's lame, I'll let you know. I'm trying to find caches that have reports of still being there--seems that they get pilfered occasionally--one was hidden in an ammo box and the bomb squad detonated it. I want to do some easy stuff with Ryan so he doesn't get discouraged. Oh, and I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to make this GPS receiver work--I borrowed it from a friend.

Keeping us in Stitches

We had a nice weekend...right up until the point where Ryan cracked his head on a coffee table at my parents' house and started bleeding everywhere. I had to take him to the hospital, where he got 8 stitches above his eyebrow. He was really tough about it--he stopped crying right away, but crawled up in my lap and rested while we waited for the doctors to come sew him up.

This is some kind of karma--I'm getting paid back for all the trips to the emergency room I put my parents through when I was growing up...including stitches in the same place where Ryan received them.

We think the main cause was the fact that he is going through a huge growth spurt, and may have lost his coordination.

Don't worry, he's okay.

UPDATE: To add to the effect, poor Ryan lost his upper front tooth today, so now he looks like he lost the fight...

Random Thoughts

Woke up this morning very early and turned on the TV. There was a campy movie set in New York--it made me think of a trip we took there in 2000--we were on a bus which took us all around the city--I'll never forget the alarmingly skinny, hairy man rollerskating in a yellow bikini down the middle of the street in Chinatown. The bus driver, catering to us tourists, pointed to a round, mirrored surface of the World Trade Center over the street and slowed the bus down--we took a cheesy self-portrait. I bought drawing of the New York Skyline from a street vendor and put it in a modest frame and hung it on the wall in my office. A couple of weeks after the September 11th tragedy I was in the middle of leaving a voicemail for someone when that drawing caught my eye--it prominently featured the twin towers of the WTC--I was in mid message and I just froze and completely lost my train of thought, realizing that I could never see that view again. I hung up.

Walking down Broadway, being in New York--it felt like being in the center of the world. Like, if I waited long enough on a park bench, I would see anyone I ever knew.

We had the funniest experience--we had taken a handsome cab ride through Central Park--for some reason all of the carriage drivers are Irish--when we were through we started walking back to the hotel, and stopped in an antique gallery. the store was absolutely stuffed with gilded mirrors, statues, and furniture. The median price was about $20,000. We pretended to be interested, just for fun, for about 10 minutes. The store owner offered to throw in free shipping.

-----

Had kind of an eye-opener this week. One of the wedding guests wrote a diary about the wedding--they were an older, British couple who were visiting the US for the first time. They didn't know very many of the guests, and were pretty quiet. I ended up sitting next to them at the rehearsal dinner, and we struck up a very nice conversation--The husband, Roger, worked on computers when they were first invented, and I knew something about the history of computers, so I think it tickled him a little that I knew what a UNIVAC was and how it worked. You know, goofy light conversational-type stuff. I'm very good at that.

I was talking it over with a friend of mine, and I think we've decided that I'm pretty good at making a first impression (one of my unsung superpowers).

----

I told Ryan that if he listened to a set of CD's that I have on conversational French, I would buy him a model boat to build this summer. I don't plan to give him a quiz or anything--my theory is that he will remember some of it because kids that age are supposed to be good at learning language. He's only listened to CD #1. Today, we were driving in the car and the song Lady Marmelade came on, you know, with the lyric Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Ryan translated all of it except for coucher (thankfully). Then asked me question after question, refusing to let it go. I was blown away that he had picked it up so quickly--guess I need to be more careful about what I listen to in the car.

About Today...

I have an extremely bad attitude this morning.

Lots of things sitting on my desk to do, but absolutely no desire to do them. I've been working my ass off for the last 6 months and feel like I haven't gotten much accomplished. Now, it's starting to get me down.

This afternoon at 3:00 I need to be at a workshop to help some students. I have begged for some items to be shipped to me from across the country, and they are scheduled to come in today. I am absolutely positive they will get here about 3:00--but an hour across town from where I need to be. They could have been shipped here for early delivery, but no...I doubt they were. So I'm going to get an ulcer worrying about it all day and then still be empty-handed and foolish when 3:00 rolls around.

I'm struggling to hold it together--sometimes, when I get down like this I get a short fuse and snap at people who piss me off, rather than let things roll off my back.

Here's an example:

My parents just moved. The called and asked if I wanted to come over and check out their assortment of old stuff before it gets sent to the dump. Uhhh, no, but thank you. Seriously, they had some camping equipment. Still, no.

So, my dad had a bunch of important papers for me, like my original birth certificate and every report card I ever had growing up...I did want those so I went over to their house 1 day before the move. And, sure enough, I ended out in the garage being forced to examine old camping equipment.

"How about this shirt? don't you want it?"

"Mom, take a look at me--this shirt wouldn't even make it around my arm!"

"How about this campstool?"

"No, thanks. I appreciate it, though."

"Don't you need a cot?"

Hmmm. We could use one in case Ryan's friends stay over or something--we usually just set up a sleeping bag on the floor. But is it worth storing a cot all the time just to use every once in a while? I really don't care. I know they kind of want to feel like some of this is going to good use--my dad, smiling, handed me a 35-year-old box of caps and lids to cover over exposed bolts on swingsets. He was proud that his super-storage capacity was not in vain. But back to the cot...

"Okay, that I could use."

"There are three of them--maybe leave one in case one of your brothers wants it."

"Fine. I'll take this one." (the cleanest looking one).

----

Two hours later. I'm back at their house because in all the cot business I forgot my important papers and they need the box moved out before tomorrow. I've already been home and unloaded the cot in the garage.

----

Brother P: "Hi. I heard you got a cot?" I could tell he was stressed and had been going over this again and again in his mind. He went straight to this point with his fists and jaw clenched and seemed that kind of confrontational way where you are trying to act casual.

"Uh, yeah."

"How about we switch it out? That one was mine." Sounded rehearsed, with the upbeat tone of 'Hey, I've got a great idea, why don't we do it my way...'

Me (went from zero to pissed off in about 5 seconds): "No."

"Seriously? You aren't going to switch?"

"No, I've already unloaded it at home. Just get one of the other ones. They're all the same." (they aren't--the one I got was clearly the best of the group).

"But that one had my name on it!" (reminds me of what his initials are and how that signfies that it is his...we used these for summer camp when we were kids so my dad would sometimes carve our initials somewhere because every kid at summer camp shipped in a cot and they looked alike).

"I didn't see any name on it. Just grab one of the other ones. Who cares? It's just a 15-year-old cot."

Thinking: why should I end up with a crappy one after I got my arm twisted to take one and I already lugged it home? I already had to convince Fran that we could actually use that one, and now all this nonsense. They've been here for a freaking lifetime, so why argue about it now?

Brother P: "I can't believe you seriously aren't going to switch."

"Oh well, believe it." (Now, a thug with an Uzi would have to shoot me to get it back).

----

6 days later:

"I can't believe you took my property without asking!"

"What?"

"It had my name on it! But just forget about it--I don't even want it anymore..."

I went into the garage and looked for about three minutes and finally found tiny initials carved on the frame.

Whatever. Come get it if you want it. This reminds me of people going to court over estates when someone dies. Just petty nonsense. But I hated feeling like the unyielding antagonist in this scenario. Normally, I'm the one who just caves in to smooth things over, especially since I didn't really care to begin with. Is this really as much a matter of principle as I am making it out to be?

People are pissing me off...

Terrible Two's

Wow--when I break out of a slump, I do it in style, huh? Sorry about my 1000-word treatise on how I made over a 20 square foot space in my home. It kind of felt nice to dive into that project and live through it happily. Some of my friends had cocked dubious eyebrows at my endeavor, even...

Now that Kaitlyn is two, Fran and I figured that we would start working on her baby book. Maybe it's a cop out, but two years gives you a little perspective on the child. It's always fun when people have kids that are like 3 months old and exclaim "Oh, they're so fun!"

What's so fun about a completely self-absorbed lump of flesh that wakes up crying every 2.5 hours to drink milk and shoot it out the other end?

If you asked me about my kids when they were 3 months, you would have gotten "Oh, he/she is so smart/fun!" Like I said: perspective.

After two years: They are so smart/fun...

I got this really cool camera nearly 2 years ago, so we have the most documented children on the face of the planet. Seriously, I took like 5000 (000) pictures last year--available in the DVD box set...

We have this problem--I tend to be the type A, overachiever, hurry-up-and-write-everything-in-the-baby-book kind of person, but Fran actually has the legible handwriting. Also, she is the one who documented every occurrance, such as--first tooth, first time to smile, first steps, etc. So it takes a little team effort. Plus, it would kind of be bad for me to do it all--Fran would feel negligent.

Tonight, I got all of the documents/photos/the 90% blank Baby book, and plopped them in Fran's lap and I bathed the kids and got them into bed to give her time and privacy to work on it. She's still sitting next to me writing furiously (yet still legibly somehow) in the book and asking me questions:

"What was the name of that bank where I worked?"

"Do you want to fill in this part about how you felt when you first held Kaitlyn? (No, not really--do I go for purely factual or overly sentimental? I feel like I'm being set up...)

So, now Kaitlyn is in the midst of the terrible two's. I may not be an expert on much, but I feel that I have studied and have some insight on this time: This is a period of some kind of exponential brain growth during which kids realize that actions they take have repercussions in "the real world". Kaitlyn will squeal with delight while knocking everything off our bathroom vanity and seeing us freak out. Or watch intently to see our reaction when she dumps a pitcher of iced tea. She also flexes her independence by going and pulling a bag of chips or cereal out of our pantry and ripping it/them open for a snack.

These are the kids that you see in the store/restaurant/whatever and think "I can't believe they brought their kids here! What a pain!"

A couple of weeks ago at a wedding, Kaitlyn thought it was really funny to squeal loudly as the bride walked down the aisle--Nothing I said or did could stop her, so I finally had to leave, missing the ceremony itself (seriously, I couldn't care less--I had never met the groom and had only met the bride, my wife's cousin, one or two times before).

The confusion and uncertainties of these times are so hard on little kids--I have a couple of pictures (told ya') taken less than 60 seconds apart--in one of them she is smiling broadly and in the other she looks like she is deathly fearful. Sometimes she starts walking toward another child saying "Hi, Baby!" and by the time she gets there she is interpreting her feelings as anger or jealously and she takes a swing at them. Sometimes I've seen her get emotional about something and then misinterpret her emotions to mean something else. Other frustration comes from having thoughts without the communication skills to express them.

As their physical skills, social skills, mental capacity, and boundaries mature, kids start to settle down and are more fit to be around. I think pretty much every one that reads my blog won't relate to this, so: sorry again!

Extreme Makeover: Mike Edition

I'm Finished!!! Thought I'd show what I have been working on for the past several months. Our kid's bathroom was very dated with some seriously ugly wallpaper, and carpet on the floor, which was creeping Fran out...So I proposed to "do it myself". I wanted to redo the walls and lay tile down on the floor.

I'm pretty good with my hands, but there were a couple of obstacles to overcome: One being that I've never done serious work on my home other than painting. The second is that I knew nothing about tiling floors. The third is that I didn't know where I could find the time to work on such a major undertaking. Lastly, long-term, undone projects constantly haunt my thoughts and cause me to lose sleep--I would have to get over that.

When I was in college, I had this absolutely awful physics class--the instructor was unintelligible and insisted on verbally assaulting us with complex formulas without writing them down. It was very traumatic. However, one great example has stuck with me: the Thought Experiment, where circumstances are visualized, leading to a hypothesis and conclusion. I love that idea, versus regular experiments, because there is much less cleanup afteward...

So, I conducted a thought experiment to determine all the different ways I could abuse this room in my house, and what the steps were going to be to accomplish this feat.

I got my biggest inspiration last September, when my brother-in-law Nate came down for a hunting trip. We drove down to the tip of Texas and back in a period of two days, so we had lots of time in the car--Nate and Nicole buy houses, fix them up and sell them, which makes me tired just typing it out. But Nate knows exactly what he is doing, and I managed to coax some tips out of him on how to put the tile down in the bathroom...Just that bit of information, and some things he told me to watch out for, gave me confidence to move forward.

Here were the steps:

1) January 2006: Packed up all the stuff that was in this bathroom--moved it out to the garage

2) Took pictures

3) Borrowed my dad's crowbar (held onto it for 5 months...sorry, Dad) and ripped out the baseboards and carpet tack strips. I tried to be careful with the baseboards so I could reuse them, but ended up splitting one of them that was firmly nailed into the stud. Then I realized that I was going to have to sand them, repaint them, and figure out where they all went...decided I would just go ahead and get different baseboards.

4) Started taking wallpaper off the walls...The top layer came relatively easily. Turns out the owners of the home had experienced difficulty in deciding the covering for this room...there were three layers of wallpaper--each being uglier than the previous. I had to use several techniques--one of those scoring disks with rotating blades to puncture the paper, then applying a warm solvent to eat the glue off. Worked on this for days and days. Ended up picking 1-inch pieces from the wall--ended up taking to top layer of sheetrock off, exposing a fuzzy cardboard side.

5) My friend, Anon, mentioned that I should use Joint Compound to smooth out the fuzzy cardboard residue--it worked great! Took another week to get the room ready for applying a new wallpaper.

6) Fran make an executive decision that we should consider painting a faux finish instead of putting up wallpaper. I really liked this idea--I think I was mentally locked into the wallpaper idea because that's what we already had on the wall to begin with. Took us a couple of weeks to research this.

7) During this time, I took the toilet off it's mounting--I knew this would be necessary for tiling, and, since I had no idea how it all worked, I was very nervous about turning any knobs over there. I envisioned the scene from The Shawshank Redemption when poop water comes shooting straight up in his face...It was kind of funny to have the toilet sitting askew in the middle of the room--then I got nervous that one of Ryan's less-gifted friends might be playing at our house and make a tragic mistake...for me to correct. So I taped the lid shut with duct tape.

8) Fran decided on a three-color blue glaze faux finish, which would kind of look like clouds. This helped solidify the theme of the room as "The Beach". It would also help dictate the tile we used: we wanted it to look like a white sand beach and have a cool, but never cold, feel under our feet with a little bit of texture, you know, kind of like you are walking on the beach...

9) I printed out the directions to the faux finish technique...three different times. Man, was I nervous...Brother Noel came over after work and helped me move the large wall mirror downstairs. I was resigned to breaking it, but somehow it ended up surviving the whole process.

10) For the first time in my life, I decided to apply primer to something: the walls. I call primer "sucker paint"--you know, only suckers use it. Seriously, why waste the time and money on a flat, ugly layer of paint that you're just going to have to go over again? Why not use the same color and just add to the depth of the overall color? Okay, I learned my lesson. At least I learned it with positive results...

It seems like a theme which can be learned is: Mike, slow your ass down! Realize that going slowly and taking your time will lead to better results.

11) Also realized that the sheetrock/joint compound walls were completely flat: This showed every seam, imperfection, and non-flat area along the wall. The first coat of primer (yep, I used TWO coats of "sucker paint") told me that I had to add texture.

I chose poorly.

A certain brother of mine, whom I'll call "Don", recommended adding texture to the paint mixture rather than spraying on texture and "knocking it down". He's been redoing his whole home, so I felt compelled to take his advice. There is a box of little texture pieces that can be mixed into a primer coat--I picked the medium size. When I was finished, it looked like one of those '70's styles. Fran walked in, gasped, and then started teasing me about how "pimp-like" it looked. She aked me if we were going to hang a disco ball and get shag carpet. She asked me if we were going to get a pink toilet and a lava lamp. I almost cried. I think she actually did cry.

12) Salvaged this whole thing by using a couple of sanding blocks. I went over the walls, sanding them to a much flatter texture which perfect matched the rest of the house (whew!).

13) Painted the faux finish. Actually missed a crucial step and didn't add the $50 glazing compound to the mix, so the first effort was very lackluster: it just looked like I painted the room solid blue. I was a little ticked, because it had taken hours and hours, and I was sweating like crazy, for a relatively boring result. (But what should I expect? It was unlucky step #13?)

14) Repainted the faux finish, this time using the actual directions in a careful manner. Luckily, I had enough paint to try it again. I used a technique where I painted a layer, another intermediate color on top of it, dots of darker accent color on top, and then using a rag in circular movements to mix the paints together. Turned out nicely. Overheard more than once from Fran's friends "Your Mike did this?"

I walked out dripping in sweat and paint with a brush in one hand and a rag in another. My head was drooping: I felt like River Tam after slaughtering Reavers...

By this time, everything had taken about two months (March). Went a full two weeks without doing anything else.

15) Looking in the room, it was clear that the warm colors of the (damn) cabinets was going to clash with the new, cool colors of the walls. This also dictated that we were going to definitely have to repaint the baseboards anyway. I got bright white trim paint, which seemed like it would be easy enough, yet it fell under scrutiny under the interior design eye of Fran. That skill must reside on the 2nd x-chromosome of all women, along with the ability to find babies cute, tell pretty dishes from ugly dishes, and the need to pull sweater cuffs over their hands when in a cold room...

So I ended up pulling off the cabinet doors, sanding everything down, sanding them again, and again, and again. My friend says that in the trades, they comment that you can cover up any remaining imperfections with "a 1/4 inch coat of paint", which seems to be the strategy employed here.

16) Then it was time to tile. My thought experiment regarding tiling ran around in my head so much that the execution of this seems to be anti-climatic. Luckily, the skills involved increased in complexity, from least to most complex. Not that I knew this until it was all over.

The first thing to do was pull up the grubby carpet that existed. I had left it as a drop cloth during the whole process. It now resembled a Roarschach test of primer, blue paint, grease, and dirt.

17) I went an extra step and reinforced the plywood along the seams before I laid the Hardibacker board on top. Then I made my measurements and cut the pieces with my new circular saw. Had to get a hardiboard blade for it--the woodcutting blade had started smoking and I could see what looked like hot embers along the cut. The new blade cut like a knife through butter. My measurements were perfect and the pieces were an absolute fit. I refinforced with hardibacker screws--but the tips stuck above the surface slightly. I suppose I could have left them, since the adhesive for the tiles would be deeper than the tips, but it was bugging me, so I pulled up all the screws and countersunk them so the floor would be even.

18) Picking out the tile turned out to be a chore as well. I was utterly humiliated (okay, slightly embarrassed) when the interior design lady at the swanky tile store mocked my idea of using 6-inch tiles. She scoffed, "I haven't seem that design for at least 10 years!". So we used the recommended 12-inch tiles--who am I to argue with a Ph.D in tile-ology?

It also turns out that I have no idea on how to pick out nice-looking tile, or match colors. Despite testing, I'm not sure that I'm not at least somewhat color blind... Fran and I kind of worked off each other's ideas--we went to several stores one day, and I got an idea of what she was looking for. Of course, she took us to premiere shops which were happy to see us because they were trying to zap us for $5 per tile. We were given loaner tiles to take home and examine against our freshly painted walls to see what would look best. Once I saw what she was looking for, I went to Lowe's and found a pallet of sale tiles for $1.80 each--didn't tell her the price until she was already thrilled with them, then bought exactly what we needed.

I also borrowed a tile saw from my brother's friend for a weekend.

19) The actual cutting and laying of the tiles was relatively uneventful, except to say that I threw myself into this project heavily for a week. I ended up being more nervous about what to do with the toilet than anything else. There is a covert world of wax rings, flanges, valves, and ballcocks (hee hee) which sounds more like stuff to make an S&M movie than to attach a toilet to a floor and make it work.

I even surprised myself at how well I had measured and fit the tiles, and even did a great job on some complex pieces which go around door frames and shower tiles. I laid everything out, using plastic spacers to make sure the grout lines were perfectly straight, then pulled everything up so I could lay the tile.

This was the part that Fran was most in doubt about. She checked out five different "How to Lay Tile" books from the library. One of them had a whole house made out of tile--on the walls, the floors, the fireplace, the doors--everything out of tile. Ugh. Fran had also threatened to make me take a class at a local home improvement store. I told her she would have to lobotomize me first.

Again, it was surprisingly uneventful--put the adhesive down with a trowel, raked in an even groove, then laid the tile down using the spacers to make everything lay straight. Used a level to make quick determinations that the floor was ending up level--it was. Let the tile cure sit several days before grouting.

20) The grouting part was also kind of funny. I bought a packet of grout and figured I needed to add water. I had saved this project for a Saturday. So I sat in my chair on the Saturday morning of "Grout-hog day" and realized that there was a whole package of solvents for this fancy grout which I needed to run out and get, which pushed my cost of grout from $3.99 to...$28.75. Here's my question: if you need both packet A and B, why not sell them together? Huh?

Also, I guess grout is now some kind of undiscovered decorator item, because there were all sorts of wacky things you could do with grout. I guess the word "grout" is a marketing nightmare in itself--not only is it by definition wedged in between stuff, but the word sound like something wedged in between dirty toes...So, it's not surprising that they've thought up creative and eye-catching grout ideas, like "glitter grout" and "glow-in-the-dark grout". I passed on the "scratch and sniff grout", though.

This turned out to be nerve-wracking, also. There were extremely explicit instructions which were somehow still difficult to follow. I think they were written by that Physics professor guy from college. Things like: "mix to the consistency of thick toothpaste, but not bread dough"...Huh? YOU guys put this kit together, why don't you just give me the right amount instead of making me go through these subjective judgements? It had four lines of instructions and 15 paragraphs of disclaimers, as if to say: "Hey, buddy, here are the directions...if you screw it up, it's on YOU!"

">As I squeezed the grout between the tiles, I realized that I had to work kind of quickly. It was exhausting on just our tiny room--I was amazed at how much detail work it took. As I started working, I felt like my big grout investment was overkill and that I would have a ton left over...as I continued to work, I realized that I was in danger of running out before I was finished. I started freaking out, because if I had to go invest another $30, it would have almost cost more for grout than the tile itself, and I felt that was somehow morally wrong, and definitely inconvenient. I ended up having about a tablespoon of grout left--then there was the curing process--letting it sit, coming back an hour later to smooth out rough spots with a wet towel, then letting it set for 72 hours before doing anything else.

21) There were little touch-ups to do--buoyed with confidence, I actually repaired some of the grout in the shower area. I painted the ceiling and cleaned off all the fixtures. Noel, aka Mirror-Man Extroidinare, came over and helped me re-mount the mirror. He was impressed with the tile job.

22) The cabinet doors were a curse. I had to get special paint-stripping sandpaper and other devices to get the thick paint off the cabinets. Turned out to be tough because of the contours of the framework in the cabinets. I resorted to cursing as I sanded with my detail sander and Dremel tool. Paint had been slopped everywhere, so I thought a couple of coats of bright white finishing paint would cover once I had prepared the surface--it looked like absolute crap. More sanding. More painting. More like crap. These ended up taking hours and hours to get to the finished state that I wanted.

23) Then there was the dumbest issue in the world: hinges for the cabinets. Seems petty, huh? When they were originally installed, the workers just slapped paint over the hinges along with the 1/4 inch of paint on everything in sight. I decided this looked ugly, and determined to replace them. I picked nice silver hinges--I thought I was clever because, rather than worry about hanging the doors straight (Anon warned me this could be tough since I have no clue of what I'm doing), I just found hinges with exactly the same footprint on the door, then I would just screw everything back into the same holes. I should have learned by now that such shortcuts couldn't work out. The doors didn't line up--they looked terrible. Also, the "hinge box" at the store had them all mixed together, so I had carelessly gotten 2 of one style and 2 of another. I picked the style I needed, went back to the store, and got 2 more. Ooops...I got 2 more of the incorrect style. So back I went to get 2 more of the correct style. Put them on and realized that this style of hinge didn't actually hold the door closed tightly--they just rotated loosely. So, when the door was shut, it would bounce back open--maybe wide open, maybe just slightly. Either way, irritating as hell. Had to take all the doors off and remove all the hinges again.

Anyone interested in eight sets of crap silver hinges?

So, I made the decision to reinvest in hinges. I went to the store and got all new silver, spring-loaded hinges which will hold the cabinet doors shut. By now, I had painted and repainted the doors four times each, and the paint covered beautifully. I had even gotten Ryan in on the act in reminiscence of Tom Sawyer inviting his friends to whitewash a fence.

Taking another tip from Anon, I built a prop (okay, I used two sponges) to line the doors up to the correct height. They turned out very nice in the end after all the work.

24) I now needed to cut baseboards for the job. Looking around the house, I realized that I was making over the one room in the house with diagonal wall surfaces--requiring measuring angles and precisely cutting them with a miter saw--another challenge and another tool to somehow borrow with the help of my brother Noel.

I'm realizing that there is a vast underground of guys who have cool tools that they really don't use all that often--maybe they get them for a project and then they sit in the garage. As long as you take care of them, clean them up, and return them promptly, they are pretty much willing to let you borrow them.

That being said, I used to have a manual miter box a few years ago. After wasting 40 linear feet of expensive crown moulding while unsuccessfully trying to cut compound angles for my cathedral ceiling, I sold it in a garage sale. I muttered to myself during that process that life would be so much easier of I was just dealing in two dimensions instead of three--turns out I was right. I made some sample cuts with scrap wood and my angles were perfect (if you google "protractor", there's one you can print out for free and fold it into the angle in your wall--I came up with that idea myself...)! I used a beadboard trim for the baseboard because it reminded me of a beach house where I stayed for a week one time (the time that Gar got seasick). Ryan and I painted it and I went to the "cool tools" blackmarket to borrow a compressor and finishing nail gun (this time from my friend Joe) and attached the baseboards one afternoon.

Used filler putty and touch-up paint on the baseboards.

25) I also learned another secret: caulk. At first, I thought this small room would use about 1/2 a tube of caulk. I ended up using 7 tubes! I went caulk-crazy.

I recaulked the shower, and around the sinks and cabinets. I put caulk down at every step of the flooring--around the plywood, around the hardiboard, the tile itself, and then above and below the baseboards.

I was joking around that, if we ever had a flood, I'm heading for that bathroom, because it's more waterproof than a battleship. I was remembering a water battle that I had with Ryan in that room before, and cringed at how wet the carpet/plywood floor had become--bring on the battle now, though!

26) The last part was the completion of the decor. Fran happily blew the budget on getting new towel rods and a ring for handtowels. I was a little freaked out about putting holes in my freshly faux'ed walls, so I measured about 10 times and checked for level before proceeding. I used toggle bolts and reinforcements to ensure these things were solid enough to withstand the inertia of kid energy ripping towels off the bar. I was very satisfied with this--the previous two towel rods came tumbling down due to poor installation, so again I took my time and over-engineered them.

27) Got a simple 2" white faux wood plantation blind for the window--we had talked about shutters, but could only custom-order them for the window, whereas the blinds were only 18 bucks on sale.

28) Fran picked the shower curtain, and I took some photos of parts of the fish-themed shower curtain, cropped them, and put them into decorative frames which matched the trim--this gave a kid-oriented ocean/fish theme to the bathroom, which we can change when they get a little older. Found the frames on sale for 1/2 price, along with a matching candle and other little items. New towels, cups, toothbrush holders, outlet covers, etc.

Finished this weekend! Whew!

The Memory of Trees

This time of year, I have to wait for my moment. I have to look painfully nonchalant as Fran bustles the kids into the car to head for the store, for a visit, or some distant place or time-consuming event. I need at least two hours.

It's a confidence play--she can't suspect a thing. And when she turns the corner, I've gotta move fast. Maybe give her five minutes just in case she's forgotten something and has to come back--I would hate to be caught.

It's time to trim the trees again.

For some silly reason, the condition of the two beautiful Bradford Pear trees at our house are a source of furious controversy. As they've grown, the branches, particularly the lower ones, seriously need to be trimmed back. Otherwise, the grass underneath them starts to die, and the yard turns into a swamp. Even the thick branches need to be thinned out or the tree can become unhealthy. Also, if the branches are too low, we can't walk around under the trees and enjoy them--they even block people passing in front of the house on the sidewalk.

We will be having a block party in a month of so, and safely maneuvering under a shady tree canopy will be nice during the heat of the summer.

Fran objects to my altering her trees in any way. In fact, she requires a PhD. in horticulture before she accepts any advice on gardening or arbiculture. When she catches me heading around the corner of the house with a saw, she yells in terror "But you don't know what you're doing! You're going to kill it!" Even Xeroxed and highlighted chapters about care of Bradford Pear trees doesn't seem to help my case in her eyes. In Texas, these trees are known to live only 25 years or so and are susceptible to having too much surface area to withstand the strong winds we experience in the spring--these winds can break the trunk.

The man who built our house, as he reminded us several times, was a commander in the US Navy. He was a nice enough guy, and we can tell that he paid special attention to certain areas of the house as it was being built. A running joke we have is to say "Well, the commander wanted it that way..." when referring to some oddity of construction, electrical outlets, wallpaper, etc.

Another nice thing the commander did was document the house when it was first built, including the two little saplings that have grown into our majestic ornaments (notice the Texas Flag hanging in front of the house: The Commander liked it that way). They now have grown to completely cover our western exposure, so the blazing Texas sun is shaded against our house during the heat of the day (one of Fran's objections is that by trimming the branches our house will somehow be significantly warmer--bah!).




It's pretty interesting to compare our trees today to the commander's pictures and see the growth over time. I've also made a point of documenting the appearance of our home during different seasons of the year--they turn a beautiful shade of orange in the autumn, and have dramatic contrast on the winter. In the spring, they bloom with white flowers for just a short period before leafing out into a beautiful green.




We had some bizarre and particularly annoying neighbors who were always watching things we did and commenting on our activities. One time, they mentioned that they had seen Ryan playing with a particular toy through our window in the back of our home....ewwww, creepy. Turns out that they planted two symmetrical Bradford Pear trees in front of their house...just like ours--they later admitted that they waited to plant trees, then, after living in the area a couple of years, walked around the neighborhood and made notes of which trees did well and which ones didn't: News Flash: get a life... It kind of bugs me to be someone else's unwitting testing ground. It really bugs me to be told that with a certain air of smug superiority.

Just a few quick cuts helps these trees be more functional for us, and then Fran comes home--she always does the same thing: stands on the front porch, crosses her arms, and pouts. She sadly eyes the huge pile of severed limbs on the curb, shakes her head, and states "they look terrible!".

This reminds me of a bad haircut--even if it does look a little awkward, it will grow out and look more natural in a very short amount of time. But like any change of hairstyle, yes, it does look different and may take some time to adjust to...

Be Happy

I'm up very early this morning--early enough to see blue light oozing through the blinds--soon it will turn to orange light, then yellow. I'm craving a cup of coffee but can't take myself away from my chair to get up and make some. I can't deal with the delay in satisfaction right now. Plus, I might disrupt the quiet of the house. Ryan is an early bird like me, and he wakes up ready to watch TV, play computer games, or anything he can get me to do with him. I'm just realizing this may be one reason I haven't been blogging lately--working much longer hours into the night, then waking up to an energetic 7-year-old.

Even baseball hasn't sapped his energy--last night they had the first game of a weekend tournament. We were getting the boys ready to play and we were two boys short of the number needed-the coach called their homes--one of them had suddenly become sick, and the other had forgotten about the game. Our coach, Lance, screamed at the mother of the forgetful boy to get him up here right away. I mean, he literally screamed at her. Unbelievable.

He approached the other coach who told us, "Let's just play the game...I want my boys to play." I thought that was pretty generous because some teams were forced to forfeit and play in the "Losing" bracket of the tournament because they didn't have enough boys to play.

Shorthanded, we still beat them 12-2.

After the game, the other coach came up to us and said "So, how do we decide who won? Are we just going to go by the score?"

Incredulous, Lance replied, "Well, yeah." I guess the other guy was having second thoughts about his generosity and wanted to see if he could take it back after the fact.

I put Ryan to bed, and he was talking about one of the other coaches on his team yelling at the boys. I asked him "Do you think he was really mad at you?"

"Yes."

I told him "Ryan, he almost certainly wasn't mad. Sometimes the dads get very intense because they want you guys to do well. It's more fun if you play well. Besides, that dad is a coach for older kids, and maybe it is frustrating to him to see the mistakes that younger kids make...but he isn't mad at you." (thinking to myself: he does seem to be short with the kids an awful lot).

Ryan: "But, Dad, you don't get that way with us." (a big relief to me--I do get excited sometimes during the drama of their games, but try to keep everything positive).

I replied "Ryan, to me these games are supposed to be fun. I just want you to grow up and have happy memories of when you were seven. Maybe playing baseball will be one of those things for you, like it was for me. Maybe not. I just want you to be happy and have fun."

"I am happy, Dad. I'll always remember how much fun we have together."

I guess that means I'm doing something right...

Hanging Out...

I feel bad for being out of touch. There's a ton going on--some of it good and, of course, some bad. Nothing horrible or life-threatening, but enough to make me want a couple of aspirin (or a couple Bailey's on the rocks).

It hasn't been my best month--I've swamped myself in work trying to get some projects finished, and have gotten out of touch with writing--It builds up to where I put pressuure on myself to unleash some literary masterpiece, which causes me to just put off writing, and the vicious cycle goes on...

Not that there hasn't been anything exciting/interesting to write about: Mike D's wedding was very nice and fancy. I was there without Fran, and I went out with a bunch of couples to hang out--a little awkward. It was also kind of interesting that, as we were walking back to the hotel, we found out that someone had just hanged himself on the bridge right next to the hotel. Pretty creepy.

Had a long talk with the cabdriver about "The Da Vinci Code" on the way to the airport. He ended up confessing many sins to me, like stealing to support a drug habit, and told me how he had cleaned up his act. Again, awkward. And scary. Not sure why he picked me to "come clean" to. I've decided that my life is just destined to be small gaps of filler space between dramatically awkward moments.

Making new friends, learning new skills (I've gotten pretty good with a bowstaff, as it turns out), going new places--sounds like an ad for the Army or something.

Well, I'm headed out to do battle today--meeting from the US Sales Manager, who is in town from New York. Chance of awkwardness: 100%.