Dear Reader,
Word Raccoon has been frantically busy. Writing? No, no. She is insisting that the household projects quit taunting her, so she’s trying to do everything just to get through them.
However, she has a secret list behind the list that she doesn’t talk about. (A piece of that came today, and she found herself defending it: “that’s for the future, not now; later.” Except if “later” were tomorrow, she’d be dancing.)
Today, she spent her morning updating the kitchen backsplash, and she is OBSESSED! It’s a Talavera Mexican tile, and it’s so pretty! Blues, oranges, reds…
Now she doesn’t think the cabinets need anything except cleaning and updated hardware. That’s a huge relief! And her eyes can’t get enough of the tile!
Let’s see…yesterday she put up the mirror trim before daybreak. She was like, “Ma’am, who told you that you could survive with a builder grade, naked-assed mirror on the bathroom wall?”
I asked Stanley approximately 200 questions about installing it (but mainly I was complaining because you have to first clean the mirror and wall, then clean them again with alcohol and I just rebelled against that.)
“Let’s start with the materials,” Stanley said. I thought his little bowtie might explode when I said I hadn’t measured, just estimated, when I ordered them.
Thankfully, when I did measure, I had bought exactly the right amount. Stanley chalked it up to its being a standard mirror size, but Word Raccoon thought it much more likely that she has an eye for things.
The trim on the mirror makes us almost as happy as the finished upstairs hallway, down to the rug. (Er…almost finished. Stanley and I keep going back and forth about the light sconce needing a shade. He said it ought to have come with one, and two days later, I remembered it used to have one. It has been placed elsewhere, apparently, due to it being “too heavy for the lightbulb?” Maybe you understand that better than I do.)
We both agree, however, that the hall mirror is the star. That hall is tricked out!
I also figured out the cleaning tool storage, and it wasn’t difficult. I just stuff shuffled and voila, a cleaning closet! No cutting, no new storage cabinet needed.
Now, do I want to go back and wallpaper it and add another light, maybe some shelves? For sure, but I’m happy to have cleared the back entry of brooms, vacuums, and their kin.
And I intend to spend a weekend putting fresh wallpaper in every closet and drawer. WR demands it!
The biggest lift (I forgot to add painting the house trim and garage door to my former list, but WR made a face at me when she saw the peeling paint and threatened to gnaw on it if I didn’t take care of it, so fine, fine, I will do that later this week if the weather and the body cooperate) left is the dining room ceiling.
Hear me out.
I received in the mail a gorgeous, rich tablecloth yesterday. It’s huge. It’s supposedly gold colored, but it’s more egg yolk. I ordered it because I intended to curtain off the area where the kitchen leads into the garage because someone (cough, cough) keeps leaving yard tools right there and hey, thank you for leaf blowing and the like but WR cannot cook like that. 😂
Anyway, when I opened it up yesterday, instead of installing the track and curtain, I thought: what if I use that on the dining room ceiling (I’d have to order multiple)?
That ceiling is the bane of my existence. (WR and I have multiple banes, thank you very much.) It’s ugly and I assume someone added it to hide ductwork but WR shudders every time she sees it. It’s time, more than time, to do something with it.
Enter “egg yolk.” It glows. Like all that inspires, it makes me happy just to see it. In my book, that’s a yes. In WR’s book, ditto.
Does it matter that we have no clue how to do this?
It does not.
Will we do it by summer’s end?
That I can’t promise. There are three ugly household fixes that are needed first that I will not bore WR’s adoring public with. (We jest.) Although this one qualifies, in my book. Just because something’s functioning does not mean it’s optimized.
In the meantime, I’ve put my A-team of poems together and am taking one last pass tonight before sending them on a journey.
Sun and All the Words,
Drema
dremadrudge.com 