Collaboration

It may not have taken a village to remodel our home, but it took a bunch of us!

First among the helpers was our Ethan Allen lady who gave me some great ideas to work with. I'm certain without her help, you'd be looking at carpet because it never occurred to me to use the pavers. My golly, they are beautiful! There was nothing fun about the week of mess, but as Lisa kept reminding me, it would all be worth it. I fully intended to purchase something from EA when I went into the store asking for help, however, to date, nothing has come from there. Aside from the two chairs, a little table, and the new media cabinet, we are using what we had, albeit in updated fabrics. Additionally she suggested I put the curtains aside the french doors, another great idea that I'd never thought of. I love how it pulls the whole room together.

The tiling guys were awesome, keeping things as neat as possible with a spectacular finished product. They were proud of themselves as they should be. A little history on the tile boxes describes how sometimes there are animal prints in the tiles because after forming them they bake in the sun. Occasionally animals walk through leaving their mark. We are the proud owners of two such tiles strategically placed for maximum viewing! Very fun.

Timing was on our side as well. Matt changed his arrival time to 6:30 on Wednesday evening. The guys finished grouting around 7:30 and said the grout sets up immediately. You know Matt, he loves a project, and if you need someone to help you with same, you could not do better than Matt. We began moving the furniture to the spaces you'd seen previously, however, Matt was not happy with the sofa in front of the door, suggesting we make a second seating area on the other side of the room. Wow, wow, wow! Perfect! So there was yet another partner. If you can imagine I stayed up until 1:00 that night because I was so excited. Another thing he's amazing at is vignettes. Creating little treats for the eye comes naturally to him as you've probably seen in the past. I've no shame in taking advantage of his skills!

I've got to thank the guy at "Something Different", the store where I purchased the chairs. He mentioned that a fabric store near Florida Mall carried cool fabric and indeed they did. In the past I'd seen the place, but thought it was junky. Not so. One of the rugs came from there, the drapery rods, as well as all of the fabrics. I can't wait to see my orange zebra stripe on that antique chair! As well, he gave me the name of an upholsterer who has yet to work for me, but he comes highly regarded.

Bruce. Where would we be without him? He took the red eye home from California, arriving around 9 on Friday morning. Immediately he went to work cutting off the bottoms of SIX doors! Let me tell you those french doors are heavy, heavy, heavy. Next he put up three rods, only collapsing for a little nap mid-afternoon. I may not have told you about the media cabinet I got for $30 at my local thrift store. I was there donating things when I saw it. Because I donate so much, the man said I could have it for the aforementioned $30, instead of the $75 price tag. I have to thank David for coming over and helping me get it in the house during the rain three weeks ago. I don't know what I was thinking, when I told them I'd take it home in the Element. Although it fit fine, once home, I realized it had to come out. Fortunately Dave is a strong man, carrying most of the weight as we got it just inside the door. After Bruce spray painted it a gorgeous satin brown espresso color, it not only looks fantastic, but it's keeping some of my clutter out of sight. Unintentionally I hurt Bruce's feelings when I asked him why he was cutting a hole in the back. Duh!!! For all the cord clutter Gail...

Marhsalls, Ross, and TJMaxx played their part as well, but you knew that already, didn't you? Great lamp find at Marshalls!

So, if you haven't peeked already, here it is:

Not completely done, but we're getting there. I'm hoping we'll have our first dinner party for Bill and Dave's 31st birthday which is just around the corner.

Just prior to Matt's leave taking on Sunday, the table was in use for a game of Scrabble. I took a thrashing.

Polasek time my friends...no time for editing if you'll forgive me...

Everyone Needs a Bruce

Dear Friends,

I'm not sure if it was my friend Sylvie who said it, after watching Bruce expertly working on both wiring a canvas, and taking my booth down, or someone else, but whomever said it was right.

As you already know, Bruce has about eight jobs going at once, and somehow he hasn't lost his mind, or for that matter, his sweet spirit. Bad timing on the festival, but with his expert planning we got it all done. Mostly, he did, with me pitching in as best as I could.

Instead of my more typical long-winded posts, I'm using my pictures to tell the story of our home at the moment. I did want to point out that I found two of the great chair pictured, as well as the super fun fabric. With any luck, the upholsterer will begin work on them later this week. They will take the place of the piano, which Bruce also handled, selling it to the tile guy, of all things, on Saturday morning. It took all four men to load it in the van! I'm delighted to report that his daughter has been wanting a piano for the longest time, and according to his thank you email, is thrilled.

Two other reasons I'm not writing much: still worn out from all the pre-tiling activity and the festival, and I find it hard to concentrate while they are working.

So for now, I leave you with this pictorial:

 

 

 

 

At 17

As it turns out I wasn't a whole lot different at 17 years old than I am at 56 years old. Because the tiling begins tomorrow morning I've been a busy little beaver moving everything out of the living area and off the closet floors. I need not tell you what a huge task this is, however, it's going pretty well. Once again I'm finding things that have been buried away and long forgotten.

A perfect example is my x-ray school file. According to the three page single spaced application, dated 1/21/71, I weighed the same as I do today. The questions they asked are remarkable by today's standards, as the height and weight question demonstrates. I also had to provide all manner of detail about my parents, siblings, hobbies, health, as well as a head shot. Can you imagine? Additionally, I had to provide five personal references, whom they asked to judge my personality, judgment, leadership, honesty, initiative, and dependability. For references I used my high school principal (I babysat his children), Bruce's dad, my typing teacher, the pastor who eventually married us, who, by the way, rated me as average, and Mr. Aubuchon, Maureen's first father in law.

Continuing through the folder contents I found the acceptance letter dated March 5, 1971 along with the letter from my father with the check in the amount of $100 for tuition. Mind you, that was for two years! That said, we were used pretty much as slave labor, working at least forty hours a week with little or not time off. By the time I graduated I completed over 2572 procedures which is a lot of x-rays. Back in the day, as my son David says, there were only two kinds of imaging procedures, x-rays and nuclear medicine. As such, we were expected to be competent performing any one of over 120 different exams. When I look at the lists, which are included in the folder, it brings back some terrifying memories of myself at 17, and 18, working with all kinds of physicians, some whom were not so nice, particularly neurosurgeons. The mother lode was doing a "carotid arteriogram", whereby, the neurosurgeon waltzed into the room, expecting to find everything to his liking. He slipped on a pair of gloves, swabbed the patient's neck with betadine, and went in for the kill. Actually, he used these two part metal (maybe stainless?) needles and plunged them into the carotid artery. The blood pumped out as he was threading the second part in to stop it. He then attached tubing to the needle end which connected to a syringe full of contrast material. READY, SHOOT, FIRE! The patient's head was lying on a special film changer that once he said shoot, we shot, causing large pieces of film to slide from one side of the box to the other. Imagine the times the film got stuck--it was not easily repeated. Forgive me if I'm not making this very clear, suffice it to say, for a very young girl, this was the worst!

Furthermore, we received letter grades for appearance, cooperation, emotional status, determination, loyalty and hygiene, as well as technical and scholastical(their word)marks. Today's students are trained in community colleges and are lucky to do maybe 200 exams prior to graduation. As well, every film we took used a manual technique, whereas today everything is not only shot on an automatic setting, but digital as well. No more waiting, waiting, waiting, to see if the films were good enough. Going through all this reminds me why I get so frustrated with the sorry state of dress in hospitals these days. Dirty shoes, wrinkled clothing, it all makes me not want the person to touch me. I figure if they can't take care of their own things, they are probably not that great at taking care of me!

Speaking of grades here's an excerpt of a comment on one of my student evaluation forms:

"The only problem facing Gail is emotional insecurity and this problem makes her uneasy in school. She seems to feel insecure about staying in school, and feels very depressed about repeating films or making lower grades than A's.

If people made straight A averages, they would obviously not be needing an instructor nor would they benefit from the course as they would already "know it all."

Sound a little familiar to my Valencia days? The truth is that looking over my high school transcripts, I'm more of a B student, so where I got the idea of making straight A's, I don't know.

In media related items, here's a little story and video from NPR you may find amusing:
OK Go
And then there is a close up of our little gnome with his wagon full of flowers...

Oscar's Corner (sic)

March 10, 1882
I ground the ax this morning then put up some grain to carry to mill after dinner we went out and gathered two barrels and a half of sap then I went over to mill I stopped at home and got some apples for Web

March 11, 1882

We drew out manure on the mud (?) this forenoon Orin Slayier came here I signed two dollars for the minister and fifty cents for the barn in the afternoon I tapped 100 trees in the evening I went down to Patricks

March 12, 1882

I had the sick head ache this morning I did the chores at night alone went out to see how sap run it snowed most all day


It's been raining most all day, both yesterday, and today. If all goes well, it should stop tonight and be a beautiful weekend, which may bode well for your itinerant art exhibitor. Lisa will be on hand to help with sales at Baldwin Park, or at least I hope I'll need her help!

The tiling will take at least four days; chaos will be the norm around here.

Expect blogging delays!
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Listening to: Jack Peñate - Everything Is New
via FoxyTunes