Well, okay, it’s not the mat; it’s the floor – the one with the new water-based polyurethane. Some strange things are happening around the edges in the appliance part of the kitchen. Things such as turning white and/or being very, very dry. Things such as  . . . GASP . . . peeling. That means I will be down on the floor with the sander again going around those edges. ACK. Yes, I know, that’s a three- letter word in a four-letter situation. I guess this is one of those times when you know you are just going to have to “do it again” and you are beyond four-letter words and up to those with five letters such as “shucks.” Oh, crap, that’s six letters . . . and crap is four, after all.

I suppose it comes down to a long sigh. Listen for it . . . hear it in the wind? That was me. Probably the worse part is the response of those around me when I refer to starting up the ole sander again.

But I didn’t start yesterday. No, yesterday we had one of our impromptu parties – ice in the cooler on the porch, little lantern lights, DVD playing. We watched Talladega Nights and The Pink Panther. Hey, it was raining outside. And we had chips and dip.

Oh, look . . . It’s rainy outside this morning. Maybe I should just keep partying. Or call together a committee to suggest approaches to the floor situation. Yeah, we can meet on the porch with chips and dip and ice and drinks.

Yo, we have a small backyard project here . . . in progress, dontcha know. Could take months, years, whatever. This is the scoop: our small backyard has always looked kind of bad and this spring I decided to move up from kind of bad to sort of bad and spread grass seed and then I actually sprinkled. Summer, of course, had some truly wet moments, but I am not going to rehash that now – other than to say I was often screaming, “Come in through the back vestibule!!!”

The grass actually started to take hold a bit in that shadowy pathway between the clubhouse and the outcropping of the garage and I even planted hostas along the brick wall of said garage – the wall that has northern exposure.  And I seeded elsewhere and picked up debris and planted some apparently mutant tomatoes. We started heading out that way . . . and we started to wear a squashed down, soon to be muddy PATH. ack ack ack

So, time for a modification in the plan – extending stepping stones; I mentioned it to Der Bingle who embraced the idea. Yesterday morning he went looking at stones and he came back beaming at his find – pebbled feet. I was with him right through the pebbled part and then I snorted at “feet”.  However, he was so enthusiastic and I knew the kids would get a kick out of them (feet, get it? hahahahaha).

Cameron and I went this morning and got five feet and three crescents and here they are:

Notice the snow shovel???  And the twigs for the firepit? So AmeliaJake.

And speaking of AJ, that’s my little foot in the very lower right corner.

Here’s little Sydney all nice and handsome and adorable and charming . . .

And here is Sydney all forlorn . . .

And here is Summer heading at me and my camera . . . Uh, is that a fist?

This is not the best picture – I had to use my cell phone because I had forgotten for the zillionth time to bring a “real” one. I took it from the driver’s side and Sydney will tell  you I had to turn the car around and back up to get that side looking out at the bear. Sydney probably thought I was having a stroke. No, no, AmeliaJake, keep heading out, turn on your signal, go left toward home. What is this circling crap? don’t make me have to bark at you.

Yes, Summer and I decided that since I was going to rest my little self in order to do the floor this morning, we would partify ourselves and hand up some lights in the PBC&R. See:

Hanging lights from wall to wall.

Lights as dusk approached.

Lights after dark.

Say, hey, we had stars wrapped around the crystalized rope light. Summer made a special playlist from my itunes and burned a CD. We were cool.

And then we looked at each other and thought, so what’s happening at the party? Well, not much. So we did impromptu dancing, very physical and we made happy shouts. Then I did this little step where I put my head down, pumped my arms at my sides and moved my feet up and down very, very fast. She asked, “What was that?” And I thought quickly and said it was the football training camp step. Amazingly, she accepted it . . . and then we both did it.

Then later we had a fire in our firepit – practicing for fall, dontcha know. We roasted a couple of hot dogs, ate them and then sort of slipped into evening.

I started my mental prep for the morning polyurethaning . . . and at 11 pm, I figured I might as well throw my plans to the wind and do it right then. So I cleaned all the counters, vacuumed and wiped the floor and started in. Ok, the water-based polyurethane really doesn’t have much of an odor at all. It also looks like whitewash. I did not expect this and it was disconcerting putting it on the floor over which I have labored so hard. All the time, I kept thinking of the admonition to work quickly because the water-based stars to set fast and you really can’t smooth things out. That was tough because the stuff went on thicker than I expected and I was trying to put on a thin coat.

Anyway, I finished and went to wait a couple of hours for it to dry. Then I did it again.  Well, I got up at six to take Alison to work and I remember thinking, “Well, at least the floor is protected.” I was going to come home and look at it more closely but I flopped on the sofa and went to sleep.

The water-based dries crystal clear and shows ever flaw – I knew this and was prepared. I just wasn’t fully aware of what a clearly flawed job I had done with the sanding. I had decided to NOT go for the super smooth look we had before in which the floor looked liked a satin tabletop stretching out across the room. Oh, that was so elegant.  I aimed for a quick protective fix of rustic and distressed. I was wildly successful in the latter category.

Part of me wishes I had sanded it as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Part of me is tired. I tell myself  the wood is protected and in reality it would not take long for a big old sander to come in and totally smooth out the floor for the elegant look – the wood is thick enough for more sanding. But for now, I am going with this look . . . accompanied with rustic throw rugs.

I took a couple of pictures because it really doesn’t look that bad . . . but under the gaze of the digital camera, the long room view turned out looking like a basketball court that had been abandoned for years and then flooded and dried out. So I am not posting them . . . and scaring the sawdust out of Der Bingle.

I find that when I am upset or depressed or whatever, a visit one way or another to a place of bitter sadness can bring me to the point of tears – the tightening throat so strong you can barely stand it . . . and then the slipping out of a few tears. And, then, you seem to buck up, feel like trying some more. I can’t go here by choice – Like, hey, I’m going to my sad place now – but then I’ve never been one who could at will go to her happy place.

But it happens. And it doesn’t have to be an event or time in my life.

The Roses of Picardy – the song I mentioned in The Whales of August – can take me there. Some thirty years ago when I watched The American Experience PBS show about Theodore Roosevelt, the score had that song as background for the time in his life when he found out Quentin had been shot down and killed in France. I think the script referred to the long walk up to the house to tell Edith and the scencry was that of Sagamore Hill. And a tinny WWI recorded voice sung of roses.

Sometimes such encounters will open the door to things in my own closet that I try not to think of . . . and I do think of them, and somehow feel better for awhile, at least physically. And in that closet there is a jar with a magical firefly that glows forever and I look at it and know that it is love that will never cease – that it shines for those I have held most dear.

I suppose it is all just a biochemical thing – stress hormones exiting in tears. I’ll take it.

Tomorrow I will get up early and take Alison to work and then I will come home and put the blasted polyurethane on the floor. It is water-based; it can be re-coated in two hours; with luck, it will be dry enough by noon that an errant foot will not stick to it like honey. We are going to keep Colin up and hope he sleeps in most of the morning; pills and chilled drinks and bread and peanut butter will be set out in the dining room tonight.

We have a 50% chance of rain and thunderstorms today and then tomorrow is supposed to be sunny. That will be good for drying. I suppose I will turn on the exhaust fan and have regular fans blowing in the two doorways. It is advertised as low-odor so I will not have to have a magical pole attached to the applicator – you know, the kind that twists around corners, goes upstairs, goes through closed doorways.

THEN, after a break of a few days, I will lightly screen sand the floor and put on two more coats. Or, if this first outing is a disaster, I will not. My sources assure me that once all the coats are cured completely, we can, if we so wish and can find a time when the place is almost empty, apply oil-based polyurethane. But I am getting sooooo far ahead of myself.

Some people put white rugs down in the public areas of the house and then ask guests – you know, people who are invited into the house – to take off their shoes. I have always found that annoying. However, the thought has crossed my mind to charge a toll for walking on it when it is done. Of course, Sydney would be exempted and thank heavens I have one of those doggie nail grinders. It was one of those products I almost ordered from a TV pitch and then walked into CVS drugstore and saw some for sale.

For some reason talking Christmas trees popped into my mind. Were they on TV ads years ago? You know: call now and we will send you TWO – just pay shipping and handling. When the grandkids were quite little, I bought one in some store and listened to it go off all day long . . . and then an eyelid fell off, and eventually, the eyeball itself hung down. Something happened to the mouth – but it still sang. Gosh, I felt so sorry for it, I couldn’t call it pathetic . . . until I bumped into a box in the attic one spring and heard its little tune filtering through the cardboard. I don’t know how I finally put it out of its misery. In a way, I miss it: the clacks and clicks of the mechanism when the electric eye spied someone passing by.

Perhaps it is my spirit of Christmas past. Cripe, Scrooge had a pretty young girlfriend and I have a short, singing tree?

I managed to get the camera cord and the camera and the computer in the same area and am reaching back to show you the lights of the Fourth on the Fence:

And a sepia-ized brother and sister:

Not to mention an antique Summer in a Grandma hat:

Of course, there was the mowing time:

Grandma Sarah on the Toro,

Summer on a Wheel Horse,

And, once more, a classy 82:

NOW – we come to today and Summer and I decide to do tiki torches:

Then one of us got the idea to fool around with a homemade firepit and flipped down a pizza pan and some sticks and logs. We added a little tiki torch fuel and got our little spontaneous, back-to-nature, pioneering spirit fire going. Sort of. Just as we decided to take fun to a new level and roast hot dogs, the fire kind of unfired and went more to smoldering. At this point, Der Bingle came out and said something alone the lines of “Oh my God” or “What are you morons doing?” Then he pitched in to help us get out fire going, although I don’t think he had the same enthusiasm as the two of us.

So we roasted and ate our hot dogs, although at one point it was discovered that I had sat on the buns and they were really flat. We had ketchup; we had drinks; we made wishes on the fire. We thought it was cool. Then after about three hours, we grabbed the sprinkler and made it safe to go back in.

Oh, oh, oh. I forgot to mention that we turned on a CD player and aimed the speakers out on the little deck . . . and listened to a crazy playlist. Let’s see: The Irish Tenors, Randy Travis, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, an American Indian singer. One of the songs was “Buckle Down Winsocki” but I don’t remember who sang that. There were 21 songs – we went through the list twice.

Just now I have eaten four Ghirardelli squares and have the hiccups. Going to go off and hold my breath.