When Kylee’s gone for any length of significant time I try and get something done around the house. I find it easy to work when she’s not around. She’s too distracting to be around. I find myself just sitting around gazing at her beauty and wondering how I got so lucky to marry someone as wonderful as her, if she’s there.
This year, Kylee left Thursday afternoon and returned Sunday afternoon. This gave me two full days to get stuff done. So, early Friday morning, after the oldest three children left for school, I plugged Kinzley into the computer and I started tearing out the tile on the bathroom floor. The process was fairly easy but I had to stop every 15 minutes or so to change the game that Kinzley was playing because nothing kept her interest for very long. By the time Audrey made it home from morning Kindergarten I had most of the tile removed. I had both girls go potty while I made them lunch and then I removed the toilet and the last of the tile. Then we went grocery shopping.
On our return home from shopping it started snowing at the house so by the time we made it home, the roads were covered. It wasn’t much and it was very slushy but we don’t normally get any of that this time of year. Thank goodness for global warming or we would have a couple of feet by now. Course, we don’t normally get anything until January or February but who’s keeping track. And we don’t normally get more than an inch or so, every other year.I’m sure last year was a fluke with the 18 inches of snow that covered all of Portland, not just the higher elevations. Or the year before when we only had 12 inches of snow. Maybe the global warming thing is just a hoax and we’re actually cooling off instead of warming up. Maybe CO2 levels have nothing to do with trapping heat since there’s been CO2 in the air since this planet first existed and temperatures have risen and fallen since before man. Never mind, that’s just crazy talk. After all I’ve lived here in the great northwest or twenty years now and we’ve only had two white Christmas’s. And they were both in the previous two years. Maybe it will happen again this year because of all the good boys and girls here in the Portland area. Not because global temperatures are cooling off instead of warming up. Wait, there’s that confusion again. I guess the earth just runs in cycles and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Now, back to my weekend. I started to put the new flooring down in the bathroom while we waited for Alyson to get home, Laila was already home. As soon as she arrived I packed up all the girls in the van and we headed to grandma and grandpa’s house to spend the night. With only one toilet in the house and it was currently in pieces in the tub I knew the girls wouldn’t make it through the night. They do use the great outdoors during the summer when they’re out playing but it was windy and there was snow on the ground so they weren’t inclined to expose their little bottoms if they didn’t have to.
When I made it back home I continued my work in the bathroom. The time consuming part was taking measurements in the bathroom and then going down stairs to the garage to cut the flooring and then back up to fit the piece in. More than once I had to take something I already cut back down stairs and modify it. I tried to cut as many pieces at once as I could but some of it has to be measured from the pieces I had to cut and install.
On top of that, the last full piece of flooring in the box was damaged and I needed it. I had just enough pieces to do the bathroom so I had to drive twenty minutes into Oregon City to Home Depot and get a new piece. They were very helpful about it but it still took an hour of my evening to go do.
Once the floor was in I installed the baseboard behind the toilet which I have not been able to do before because the toilet was in the way. I caulked and painted behind the toilet and then put the toilet back in and hooked it all up. By 11:30 I had a working toilet again and a very nice, smooth, level floor. Then I sat down and watched the movie I rented to watch while Kylee was gone because I knew she wouldn’t want to watch it. At 3:30 I finally went to bed. I did a few more things in the bathroom before I went to bed, like putting the door back on. Then Kylee called me at 8:45 in the morning to see how everything went. On Saturday at 10:00 I went in to pick up the girls because we had work outside to do. Mom said she was working with Laila on something and to drive in slowly so I stopped at a couple of place to get some things before I picked up the girls, instead of after. By the time I got to mom and dads the girls still weren’t ready so we hung out for a while. It was nice to relax a little since my Friday was so busy.
When we finally made it home we all went out to the chicken coop to clean it out. It had been awhile since we had replaced the pine shavings and it really needed to be done. After some whining and complaining from the girls we finally finished. Now the chicken coop has that nice fresh cut wood smell. For a little while longer anyway.It was getting dark so we went inside and showered and had dinner. The girls watched Tinkerbell and then went to bed. Kylee and I talked on the phone for an hour or so while she was trying to get Griffyn to go to sleep at the beach and then I went to bed for some much needed sleep.
One of these trips that Kylee goes on I want to stay home and do nothing. I had hours of Amazing Race to catch up on and plenty of movies to watch and games to play. Maybe next time. At least the bathroom looks good.
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