Lyda here. Question: Why is it that Saturday and Sunday fly by, and Monday crawls?
Quantum Theory Answer: Because Time is a human construct and expands and contracts according to each human’s whim. Reference: Terry Prachett’s collected works, especially Thief of Time, and the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know?” which you should certainly have seen by now, people!
Poet’s Answer: Because Saturday and Sunday are beautiful butterflies, and Monday is a caterpillar just dreaming of flying.
This weekend, I did the following before the days flitted away:
* Saturday night, I had dinner with my Gorgeous and Younger bro and my wonderful bro-in-law, in LA. See, there are some events I’ll drive into LA for! I did decline to have dinner with them on Friday, as this would have necessitated getting on the Freeways of Doom at 5:30, and probably driving through Scary Water Falling From the Sky. But I digress…
They were in town to visit friends, and see a concert, and me too! We had a wonderful time eating Italian food and catching up and drinking a bottle of wine together and wondering what the waiter’s real career is, this being LA. Bro insisted that he could not be an actor because actors are more experienced waiters, so we decided that he was a newly-arrived screenwriter looking for his big break. Fabulous!
* Sunday morning, I had a semi-date. With a menz. We have been good friends for such a long time, and it was good to see him and very comfortable just talking. As for romance - I’m thinking, not. Friends is good sometimes, ya know?
* Sunday afternoon, I went to a friend’s in Long Beach (yes, driving on the freeway yet again!) for her annual, first-day-of-fall ”Take Back the Beach from the Tourists” party which I actually don’t know if she has annually. Fun, although I declined the free-flowing mimosas and other alcohol as I had to drive home again. Damn!
* Sunday night, during commercials, I completed a massive purge of the “bills and such” drawer of my filing cabinet, and then I filed my backlog of papers. My rule is that if it doesn’t relate to taxes, health, school, my writing or my art, I don’t keep paper files longer than 6 months. No one needs 30 years of electric bills, ya’ll, although when my mother-in-law died, she had them. They lived in that house for thirty-plus years, and yes, I found their first electric bill, along with the envelope it came in and the newsy insert that came with it. Everything stuffed into kitchen drawers and cabinets, each drawer a year frozen in time: every bill, letter, card, and piece of junk mail. Going through all of it was so sad. You can imagine what the closets were like. We had had to do the same thing when my mom died, as Mom used much the same system.
This is why I purge so often, ya’ll. I don’t want anyone to have to plow through layers of crud when I’m gone. Morbid, but true. Plus, this way I have one filing cabinet instead of eleventy-twelve.
But I digress… yet again…
* Saturday morning, with all the upcoming swanky activities (Dinner with two of my favorite men! Beach party! Semi-date!) I actually used the pedicure gift certificate I received for Christmas. Yes, last Christmas. Yes, the gift certificate had been in my purse for 9 months. What? I went crazy and got a manicure too, my first since… high school?
The pedicure was a weird experience, sitting in a wonderful massage chair with lovely jacuzzi for my feet, having a woman who seemed barely old enough to drive sitting on a tiny stool hunched over my toes. Many of the workers in this place seemed to not speak English, and I felt as if I was exploiting them all in some ill-defined way, as if I had stumbled into a nail sweatshop. Plus, she used some evil stuff to get rid of my calluses, and my feet are still tender. Cute but tender.
I don’t think I’ll be doing this again; it made me feel like an Evil Oppressor of the Downtrodden Working Class. I almost jumped on a table to shout “Union!” but the Norma Rae moment passed. And the polish is already less than perfect on the edges, and it’s too weird to keep seeing color on my fingers - although my toes are cute this way.
* On Saturday, after Exploiting the Nail Workers, I accomplished a Big Project.
I went to Big Lots (which I don’t like as much as I did when it was PicNSav; it’s cleaner and more organized now, but it lost that “if I poke around, I’ll find treasure” atmosphere. Oh, digression again…) and got a package of bamboo rugs - three different-sized rugs all bundled together. I had seen them a couple of weeks ago, but had hesitated over the price, so I was very pleased to see the last package on sale, half-price. Score!
I used the biggest rug for my latest “ReOrganize and Insanely Clean my Home” project - or, RICH (yes, I played with the phrase until the initials spelled something; this is me, ya’ll).
Of course, RICH was originally the August of Deep Cleaning Zen-osity inspired by Laurie’s / Crazy Aunt Purl’s “Month of Making a House a Home” and her post on deep cleaning and also my own sick cleaning addiction. And it, ugh, was supposed to be completed in August. But I got the flu. The sun was in my eyes. There was a hole in my tennis racket.
Wait, digressing again…
Ya’ll, the bathroom floor in my little rented house is disgusting. The tile started out three kinds of ugly and badly installed, and now it is old, stained, and scratched. Seven kinds of ugly! Plus, the grout around the edges has cracked and is permanently stained mildew-colored. Plus, no matter how I clean the floor, it always looks nasty.
Which makes it ten kinds of ugly, and no one should have to face ten kinds of ugly at six a.m. on a Monday morning. Not even an evil Exploiter of Nail Workers like me.
Yes, I could have bought a sheet of linoleum and put it in and re-grouted, but I rent, and anyway, cheap linoleum pretty much equals ugly. Have you priced attractive linoleum or tile lately? Not a fun way to spend money that could go for yarn and books. Or rent.
So, I decided to cover it up.
First, I cleaned the bathroom, moving the litter box and everything else so I could see what I was up against.
Then I took some big pieces of paper (which came wrapped around the rugs in the package) and made a pattern of the floor. Just put the paper down, taped it together, and cut around the fixtures. I learned how to do this watching Tommy Silva on “Ask This Old House.” Hurray, PBS!
I went back into the living room and taped my paper pattern on the bamboo rug, which was a bit bigger than the bathroom floor.
Ya’ll, I didn’t even have to use my razor-blade cutting tool. I just used regular scissors, and cut through the thin strips of bamboo as needed, to make the rug fit the pattern.
Then I put the bamboo rug on the bathroom floor. It fit well, and I used a few scraps to cover behind the toilet. I had left the extra length of the rug, and just rolled up the excess against the tub - thus covering the grout problem completely.
Now my bathroom has this nice bamboo floor, which I can sweep and also wipe clean as needed. Plus, I have two extra rugs, which I will use on the patio once I’m sure the Deadly Rains have gone. As a bonus, the bamboo matches the color of my brown towels, and the blue thread and blue edge go nicely with my blue towels, and even with the blue litter box. My bathroom is all coordinated and spiffy.
Unlike me, on this slow-crawling Monday. Thank gods for the lunch hour!
