list revision

Pick up bits on floor(done)
vacuum floor (done)
haul out the floor machine(done)
run floor machine with red scrubber(done)
vacuum again(done)
roll out first layer of foam underlayment (done)
begin the laying process:
Charge battery for small saw(done)
turn truck to use tailgate(done) 
trim tongue off first row of laminate boards(done)
mess one up by trimming the wrong edge(done)
mark and cut the furnace hole (done)
start the second row (done)
mark the rest of the furnace hole (done)
stop and rest and eat (done)sort of, I'm still resting
cut the furnace hole
keep on laying this stuff down

painting in the zip lock age

The paint in the room is drying, a sort of leftover mint green on the south and vanilla ice cream on the east, north, and west.
My understanding of the art/slog of painting a room has added a few things to my cleanup technique and therefore my willingness to do the actual job itself.  My biggest piece of reluctance to do it has been the problem of needing to do things in bits and the nastiness of uncleaned up paint when you only have half an hour to devote to it.  Meet my new painting friend, the gigungus zip lock bag.  Ziplock now makes three gallon bags, almost big enough to put a body in prior to hiding it in the freezer for resurrection later.  They are actually big enough to put an entire roller pan of paint in.  You put the brush all wet with paint into the gallon one and the roller pan plus roller in the three gallon one and seal it all up.  Then when you have another half hour to spend, out it comes for the time you need and then back it goes.  The final cleanup is the only cleanup and you take the gallon zips and seal the rollers in them and throw the works away.  My next thought is using a bag in the roller pan itself....  I think I am on to something.
the to do list:
clean up floor
 put ladders away
vacuum floor
put down padding
find u tube on laying laminate flooring
study u tube
get batteries charged in small saw
set up sawing station
lay floor

The holiday that we all need

I have been in the middle of my compost time, grumpy and stressed due to the monster fire to the north and west of us.  I am thinking of declaring a holiday.
Today  I say is Panties in a Bunch day.  have an emotional touchy point?  Things not going well? annoyed due to stupid stuff?  let loose the tantrum of a life time!  scream, stomp and be unreasonable.
I'm in.

Standing at the wall of indecision

I spent a lot of time this past week standing in Home despot in front of the Wall of Indecision otherwise known as the paint section.  There are a thousand colors and a thousand shades of color and forty eleven billion hues of white.
You see people standing there in tears trying to match a white to a white and going into total meltdown.
Home Despot has a computerized helper that lets you choose a color and then will offer other colors that harmonize with it.  Then you can try the effect in rooms with various kinds of lighting to see what it might look like.  This makes things a little easier. or maybe not.
The reason for my meditations there is that I am beginning to renovate the smallest bedroom and make it into a guest/separate bedroom for others.
The boys chose a light blue when we painted.  I am repainting with mostly a cream color and an accent wall in the green that I used in my  present bedroom.  This is what I came to after many thoughtful hours.  The daisy chain of what comes before what looks like this.
remove stuff (Done)
Remove Carpet (done)
remove padding (done)
remove tack stripping (done)
remove base molding (done)
Paint cat pee with Kilz ( done)
Paint door frames with Kilz (done)
Paint new molding (done)
cut in walls and ceiling. with the cream paint (done)
spackle the walls and fill in the holes (done)
paint door frames with cream paint ( done)
remove wall lamp and plate covers (done)
paint three walls cream(done)
cut in the south wall with green(done)
paint the south wall green(done)
paint the switch plates to match.(done)
vacuum the floor
lay out the under padding
lay the laminate floor
trim the padding
cut the base molding to size
nail it in
 retouch the paint
sit and admire
it's going to take some slogging.

Maybe not so bad

Three weeks or so ago Mr Footless went through a three day marathon glucose monitoring session that involved among other things two trips into Greeley.
Then we had a meeting with MS diabetic specialist.  For the first time we felt like someone actually understood the weirdness that has been Mr. Footless's daily struggle with control.  Ms Specialist has named Mr. Footless the hardest to control diabetic she has ever encountered.  Suddenly they are politely asking Mr. Footless what he thinks.
 Does he need more or less at this particular time of day?  As we go along the incredible highs and the crashing lows are beginning to smooth out.  We are sneaking up on the thing and it has been eight weeks since we called 911 for blood sugar.  Mr Footless is less likely to be upset with his sugars and we are getting the afternoon highs down.
Now that we are getting that stable there are other things that need attention, because be he never so stable blood sugar wise, Mr. Footless is still going to be 73.
He is still the Mr. Footless we know so well with all the don't touch my stuff and it's all worth mucho money attitude.  He took a bunch of his good stuff up to the auction and got the itemized list of what sold for what....Oh dear look at that.  Cassette tapes sell for five cents each no matter the artist on the cover.  Who would have thought? 
Well, Me for one. 
I think that I might be able to point out to him that it costs more between gas and my missing work to truck the stuff up than he gets in money for the stuff.
Meanwhile he's having memory problems periodically and life is moving on for both of us.  Another day, another problem.

the view from the boat

You don’t know us.  You see us in your offices when we come in together for an update or a check up.  What you see may be the facts but it isn’t us.

Here is a picture of where we are

This is us.  We have been in the boat for a long time and we have kept it afloat for many years longer than anyone could imagine.   We have worked out some ways to keep it afloat that look pretty weird to you.  

The other passenger has some beliefs that may be pretty dysfunctional, at the same time he knows the boat better than anyone else and I trust him to say what will work and what won’t.  He has been right more than he has been wrong.  He is still here in his boat.  He has been riding it for years and been told since he was three that it couldn’t last much longer. So seventy years later the boat has more leaks and the way he has been dealing works less and less well.  It is still his boat and he has managed to keep it afloat.  You have only seen a very small part of the voyage

You have seen more boats than we have, you even have some operating instructions that might help us.  You might even be able to shout some of the instructions to us and we might be able to make use of them.

You, none of you, are in here with us.  The problem as I see it is that no one can tell from outside the boat what conditions are in the boat, and it isn’t a standard boat and never has been.  What works for the standard boat will swamp and sink this one.  I have seen it time and again.

When you inform us that the conditions in the boat can’t be there and that they must be other than we report or have experienced, we think that you have ignored the only source of information about conditions inside the boat that you have.  How much trust do you think that we will give to your instructions when we know from experience that what you ask or tell  or order us to do will swamp the boat?  When the storm is up you are not there.

We in the boat are well aware that the water is rising, more than you in fact because we are sitting in it.  I have the ability to leave it in theory, and like any relationship it’s more complex than that.  I got in this boat for a lot of reasons including a lot of love for the other passenger and I agreed to stay until the boat sank and he went with it.

I have had many opportunities to leave.  I have considered a lot of them.  None of them fit with my sense of honor and my sense of commitment.

 You all may have your ideas about what should be done to keep this boat afloat.  You can tell me things like I am being too controlling and to back off and let him steer.  However, at three AM in the midst of yet another storm, with yet another wave swamping us both, with my partner incapacitated, You are not there and will not be there and have no interest in ever being there.

 I am there and in the night watches I am the one who makes the decisions.  That includes whether to stave in the bottom of the boat and swim away.  You can’t imagine how often I have considered that option.  If I did who would know after all?

At present I am working hard to construct a viable life vest to keep me afloat when the boat sinks.  It will sink. We both know this.  I understood that from the time I got in the boat.  I have chosen to stay with it until the natural end, whatever that is, because I have to look at myself in the morning and I want to like what I see. 
 I wouldn’t like me if I bailed at this point.

 It would be really helpful to have some of you watching from shore.   I would like to know that there was another boat nearby.   It would be useful to know if here is some help that I can trust, to be there as I strike out for shore.  Will I have shelter?  What will conditions on shore be for me?  Will there be someone there to help when I pull up on the sand?
My core beliefs tell me that there will be nothing there for me.  
I know that if I am acting from that place that's exactly what I will get.  So Here the two of us are.  
I don't need judgement about my trip in the boat, it has been a lot better than not mostly.  I just need to know that when my boat sinks with my partner there is a shore to head for and someone with a towel waiting when I hit the sand. 

 

Things That I had forgotten

Weekends are busy for me now.  Weekdays are taken up with clients, and making it from one end to the other without dropping too many balls.  So if I am going to socialize, do personal errands, attend to my own things like arranging my yarn supply and get some easy to manage meals planned and partly cooked it happens on the weekends.
This is a part of normal that I haven't participated in for a long time because of the workpainsleep cycle that is moving into the background instead of taking up the front screen most of the time.
I had forgotten

• that you can do more than one thing in a day
• that some of the looming tasks actually take up very little time preparation wise and can be operating in the background while other things happen.

• that having the stuff set up ahead really can be done as background to the main chore of the day.

I made bread yesterday.  Today I will make a pot roast and spaghetti sauce. Between the two I have enough meals available that I only have to set up some sort of vegetable to eat well.  I had forgotten that the real time amount of time that bread takes is about fifteen minutes spread out over the day.  Mixing the dry rice bread ingredients and setting them in a bag  takes five minutes.  Two hours of preparing ahead makes for fifteen minutes to food all week.
How did I forget this?  I didn't have that much energy or the attention available over the weekend to do it.  If you had seen me sitting reading or staring into space or knitting you would have thought that I was just lazing. What I was doing was sitting in such a haze of exhaustion that I could not think of what I should do to keep things together and make life easier for myself.  Ok. food is in the fridge, dinner and others is available for the week.
I have been away in a far country.  I am back here a bit, and I hope that more of me can show up.

The lovely socks mentioned a few posts back were fussy about what they wanted to be.  After two aborted tries they and I agreed on a relatively simple pattern and we have made it past both the heels.  It can be hard when the yarn has a mind of it's own about what it wants to be.  It's really hard when they let you get a long ways before they let you know it isn't going work.