The spare room just grew up. Got rid of the twin beds in favor of a “matrimonial” bed (Mexican for double bed.) Haven’t done a spread yet.. this is makeshift, but looks more grown up, I think.
Before
After
After
Christmastime Construction Blues
Two weeks of this insanity,
computer balanced on my knee,
desk packed under a canopy
with all I own? A tragedy!
Two weeks of the cacophony
of saw and chisel harmony.
Two weeks since I’ve been tile-dust-free,
yet still the end I do not see.
I lay here in a reverie,
dreaming of my Christmas tree,
but I fear it will never be
with all this mess surrounding me.
Chafing with the indignity,
I call my contractor, but he
merely tells me “I fear we
must order more tile,”—a travesty!
In boxes are a panoply
of ornaments from A to Z,
yet this year I fear they’ll not be
hung on any Christmas tree!
The prompt word today was “panoply.”
(Click on first photo to enlarge all and see captions.)
Out on a Liminal
The jolly crew over lunch yesterday. Happiest when the jefe is not in sight. He probably knows this and this is why the two older men eat in front of the house, the younger men on my patio in the back.
Liminal—I admit that I looked the word up, and I’m glad I did. I have always thought that since subliminal meant below the threshold of conscious thought, that liminal must refer to conscious thought. Wrong.
Liminal: of or relating to a sensory threshold. 2 : barely perceptible. 3 : of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional
So, is my house in a liminal state between completion and constant repair and construction? If so, what is the state after liminal? Perhaps subliminal is the ultimate state rather than the one under liminal. Perhaps it is that state in which everything just goes along smoothly without having to think about it. Water flows, floors stay crack and salitre-free, lightbulbs stay perpetually lit.
Perhaps I’d better look up subliminal as well:
Subliminal: (of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone’s mind without their being aware of it.
One out of two. It means exactly what I thought it did.
Today is the fourth day of construction at my house and the last day of the work week. Thankfully, only six men showed up instead of the usual nine, because that is how many beers I have in the fridge and I didn’t want to have to leave to buy more to treat them at the end of this short work day. The jefe and his assistant seem to have stayed home to leave the other younger men to complete tiling the kitchen and hammer-and-chiseling out the built-in large bathtub to transform it into a shower and construct a small wall to serve in lieu of shower curtain.
At first I was worried that the jefe hadn’t shown up because last night as I surveyed the day’s work, I noticed two problems. One was that the tiles on the front porch were not centered. I can understand that he was lining up the main tile with the tile in the inside of the house, but in fact the porch is more often viewed with the door shut, so as nice a it would have been if they’d taken this into account at the beginning, they didn’t, and so having the line under the door misaligned seems a smaller problem than having the entire porch off-center.
The second problem was that the bottom step in the hall leading down to my bedroom was 1/2 inch deeper on one side than the other. Now, these are the steps that have tripped me up three times in the past year, twice sending me careening headfirst into an edge where two walls meet and rendering me unconscious for a few seconds. So, I don’t need a further contributing factor to my own clumsiness. I do not need one slightly diagonal stair leading up to a square one!
At any rate, I was dreading pointing this out to the grumpy foreman, but the young man I reported it to was very pleasant and equally helpful when I tripped over one of their damn line up wires for positioning the tiles (heavy fishing line strung between two nails pounded into the cracks between the tiles.) This is about the fifth time I’ve tripped over the dangerous things, but this one was tangled but still connected to the two nails even though the tile had long been set, so it would not release, and sent me careening down the front stairs, head-first down onto the terrace.
In all, I probably traveled seven feet horizontally and about a foot from house floor level down to terrace level. If it had been an Olympic event, I might have placed, but as is I just said a few very vile swear words–in English, not Spanish, so perhaps they didn’t have the same effect on listening ears. At any rate, the nice young man who had heard earlier complaints came running to take my camera out of my hands, (Yes, I was going to photograph the misaligned porch tiles.) to help me up and then to remove that damn fishing line that should have been removed two days ago.
So, all in all, I’d say my day so far has been anything but subliminal. But although my entire state for the past week as we moved everything out of the house and then dealt with four days of noise, dust and constant activity has certainly been transitional, it is certainly not been barely perceptible. And in spite of the fact that my stumble and fall over my literal threshold was totally sensory, still, taking the full definition of both terms into account, I seem to be in a state neither liminal nor subliminal.
I’m just lucky that after that nasty spill that my state isn’t terminal!!!! And I can safely say, I think, that my bone density is excellent.
Lately I’ve had the feeling that my entire life is chaotic, but nothing this year has been the equal of having my whole life uprooted and moved to obscure corners and cupboards while they tile all of the floors in my house in one fell swoop. Nine men descended en masse a few days ago, took off all my doors (13 in all) and started turning my entire property into a workshop. Bags of adhesive form a wall between my street gate and front door. The pathways are paved my empty cardboard tile boxes. Men cut tile in my back yard, creating clouds of porcelain dust. Young men carry metal containers full of mixed adhesive and stacks of heavy porcelain tiles. Old men measure, spread adhesive and lay the tiles. Other men arrive to cut off the doors. Meanwhile, I am living in one small room and attached bathroom piled with assorted art objects, clothes and bathroom supplies, trying to find my way to the kitchen through the construction process. Not to mention keeping the dogs contained with every part of the house and yard being used. Here are some of the posts I’ve done over the past few days:
It couldn’t be more appropriate to my life that the daily prompt word is “Chaotic“
A phone call to me today might elicit no response, but you will increase your chances if you stay on the phone long after the message machine has cut in. The reasons for this are as follows:
At 9:05 a.m., nine men arrived at my front gate with a truck load of large porcelain tiles that look like paving stones with the intention of tiling my entire house with them–a process that will take between one and two weeks.
To facilitate said process, I’ve removed everything in my house except heavy furniture and put it either in the upstairs casita, the spare bedroom and bathroom, the dining room or kitchen. When the rest of the house is tiled, we’ll move the heavy sculpture and furniture and doo-dads still in the guest bedroom (including me) and bath and kitchen and dining room into the tiled rooms and complete the tile process. Anyone who has ever been in my house will know this is tantamount to packing up a small museum and putting it into storage.
As a result of said shufflings, I can no longer locate my bathroom scale, 1/2 of every pair of shoes, my blood pressure records, 2 smoothies (prepared this morning and lost in turn) and the one phone that is still connected but divorced from its cradle.
In spite of the fact that I’ve just located my now-melted smoothie as well as my phone in the guest bathroom, which is now my only usable bathroom, the fact that five of the nine men are now using hammers and chisels to remove the tile trim on the walls above every floor in the house means it is impossible to hear the phone ring. Just now, one of the men came to tell me I had a phone call (I call him my secretary now) but alas, whoever it was had hung up by the time I remembered where I’d stashed the phone.
If you’d like some idea of what we’ve been going through for the past two days, you might want to check out the below photos.
Except for the fact that I dropped my Mac on the floor and everything seems to be operating except for the trackpad, which means I can’t maneuver the photos to edit them or place them anywhere, including the desktop or my blog!
This is absolutely not my day. But has it elicited a scream or even an oath? It has not. Has my blood pressure risen? If I could find my cuff, I could tell you.
Okay, after hours of work and forgottenman’s help, I have edited the photos and he’s now putting them into this blog. This is REALLY a dual effort today.
Click on first photo to enlarge and read the captions, which I am sure you will want to do as you are totally into this renovation. Right? Am I turning into one of those people who take a photo of every meal and post it on Facebook?
The prompt word today was “elicit.”
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 