Willie and Tiling

See these little tiny spacers, I HATE THEM! They are evil and they must be destroyed. When I am finished with them I am going to tear their little arms off. I would feed them to the dog but then they would just come back to haunt me later. I will get my revenge! Perhaps, I will melt them with a blow torch, or run them through a shredder. Maybe I will hit them on the head with a hammer, put them in a box and mail them to myself. Then I will open the box, and hit them on the head with a hammer again! (Yes, I watch too much Disney. You may remember that from the Emperors New Groove.) Since they like falling so much, maybe I will drive to Chicago and drop them off of the Sears tower! Ok, rant over, on to other things.

Willie is a man who loves to garden, he will stand knee deep in a pond full of fish poop water, and will happily play with cement to put in a fence post. Bring him inside though, and he is a different man. Suddenly, he doesn't like to get dirty. If painting needs to be done, I don't let him near the paint. When he comes even close, the paint jumps out of the can and attacks him. He gets even one little spot of paint on him and he screams like a little girl. Ok, well, not like a little girl. If the words that come out of his mouth came out of a little girls, that little girl would, at the very least, be in a time out.

Willie and I take a very different approach to tiling. If I can't get the trowel into a spot, I use the tools that God gave me. God gave us hands and fingers for a reason. They are very useful and a lot more flexible than a trowel. Yes, when I tile I get as much thinset on me as I do on the wall. Willie, doesn't like to get dirty, at least inside. I had about 12-13 tiles left to put up. Willie had the day off yesterday and wanted to help. He wanted to try his hand at tiling, but didn't want to get the thinset on him. Not possible! He was delicately using a scraper to put the thinset onto the trowel. Then carefully spreading the thinset onto the walls. He was trying to be very delicate and precise. Did I mention that thinset has to be used quickly. It was all I could do not to snatch the trowel from his hands. You gotta love him wanting to help, but there was something very backward about that picture.

I asked him, "you willingly stick your entire arm in fish poop water, but don't want to get this on you?"

His answer, "fish poop water is organic, this is not."

"But it has fish poop in it," I reply.

"But it's organic."

I'd rather have a mortar substance on me than fish poop any day. I don't understand. Poison ivy is organic, but I'm not sticking my arm in that either.

I did end up getting the trowel from him. Which I think made us both happier. I buttered the tiles and he put them on the wall and put the evil spacers in. He now understands why I hate the spacers so much. We got the tiling all done! He cleaned the extra mortar out of the spaces between the tile to get them ready for grout. Today when he gets home from work, we grout! Tomorrow, we will get to use our brand new SHOWER!!!! I'm so excited!

I'll leave today on a completely different note. This is Bazinga. Isn't he cute. He likes pickled beats. I think this is very clever of him as I too like pickled beats. He also enjoys a snack of rabbit poop. I do NOT find this very clever of him. We often have arguments when we go outside. I want him to make puppy poop, he wants to eat rabbit poop. We seem to be at cross purposes.