Anticipating Cut and Click Laminate

Anticipating Cut and Click Laminate
Friday, November 20, 2009

In bed by ten pm and up by three am – ostensibly to check if my alarm has missed going off. I don’t want to be late. I am meeting Glen at 7 am to begin laying Honey Oak kitchen flooring, delivered to the middle of the front room floor by Richard last night.

“I have never done this before, so I will need a couple of hours Fridayh morning to think out how to do it,” Glen said on the phone to me last week.

Wyona translated Glen’s sentence for me yesterday as she and I were painting the cupboards. “Two hours of thinking for him? He will sort out the puzzles in 20 minutes and then get going on the project. He is not one to spend time over-thinking. He gets into action and thinks as he goes.”

I was telling Wyona that the up-side of renovations for me is that I can squat, reach, bend, twist, and crawl into spaces into which I didn't think I could ever fit. I can find the tool to open tight lids of paint cans, connect the hand drill to its battery when it has no more juice, pour products from large containers into small manageable ones, and wipe up spills on floors, and see blotches on walls that need just a bit more paint.

Home Depot is my best friend and I have my own credit card for that store. I have learned how long isle 23 of a big box store really is. As well I shop Quality Paints, never believing before that their selection of cutting brushes and paint rollers would have such fascination for me. Last night I thought to myself … time for me to get an extension to put onto the handle of this paint roller so that I can reach into the deepest of cupboard corner. You know the place – way back there where even if I am laying inside the cupboard, my feet stretched behind me on the floor and my arm reaching out as far as I can to the 2-point connecting spot of 2 walls, that spot where I just can’t reach. I talk myself out of the purchase, saying, no other person in the world is going to get back in here and notice this isn’t painted. Still, when I am at Quality Paints, I will probably be asking the clerk to show me that extension.

I was musing yesterday, wondering if I will ever go into a Home Sense or Linen and Things and shop for dishes again. That possibility is remote given my new interest. When I picked up Wyona yesterday I was looking at her kitchen cupboards, the grain in the wooden doors, and remarking to her – never let anyone paint these. The wood grain has such charm. She said, “I will show you what needs to be done”, and then she proceeded to show me the skylight that needs attention, baseboards that need to be lowered, for carpet has been pulled out, but the boards left at their original spot – leaving a gap to the floor – all things I have never noticed when I have been at her house but that now leap out at me. Maybe she and I will cooperate with shared renovations. She surely started the shared work by picking up the brush and helping me yesterday.

Yes. A life of retirement, figuring out which hobby to take up... and which one to lay down.

I was watching Tim Oldham put a puzzle together a few days ago, while he was waiting for Lurene to get back from picking up pizza. I don’t do puzzles. I do like to watch the faces of people who are doing puzzles. So I was hanging out at the table, just watching. Wyona told me that they said to Zoe a few days ago, “Come and help with the puzzle.”

“No, “she said.

“It will be fun. Come over and help.”

“No,” again from her.

“Think of all of the puzzles you have done. We need you,” they said, renewing their invitation to her.

Zoe made them laugh when she ended the conversation with, “I have retired from puzzles.”

So … three of us in retirement now.

Wyona. Me. And Zoe ... from puzzles.

Slipping back to bed now, so that I can get up in an hour and begin to enjoy another day of volunatary retirement.

Love,

Arta