Snow and Tile

I woke up bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 6:00 AM Saturday morning. When I was at GFS the other day, I bought a bag of frozen onion bagels and some cream cheese (impulse-buy). So, I took one of the bagels out to thaw and put some coffee on.

I stripped the bed and put the bedding in the washer. I rinsed last night's dishes and found there was enough in the dishwasher to do a load. So, by 7:00 AM, it sounded very busy around here!

I toasted the bagel, added the cream cheese and ate it in the living room, looking outside and listening to Saturday Morning, Over Easy. When I finished breakfast (and, yes, it was good) I posted last night's Blog and got caught up on emails.

When I next glanced out the window, the snow had already started. This will complicate the stamp run! I hurriedly took my shower. I took out a package of short ribs and one of smoked pork hocks to thaw for tonight's soups.

My plan is that I do the majority of the tile this afternoon, then make two or three soups, stick them in the freezer and run them out to my Mom's on Sunday (I heard she's out of my soups).

So, by 9:00 AM, I am creeping along a very snow-covered Plymouth Road, heading for the Post office. I get there and find my first disappointment of the day. In what I am sure is a sign of the economic times, my famous 24-hour Post Office has new hours: 6:00 AM to 12:00 AM. Okay, so it's still a lot of "open" but, damn!

I bought two books of Christmas stamps and affix them to my Christmas cards, shove them in the mail slot and head out into the snow.

Now, I did buy some barley at Meijer's but I was not happy about it. The only barley they sell is imported from Poland and is the "fine" barley. Not sure what the Poles use it for, but it makes a crappy beef and barley soup. So, since I am on Beech Daly (the road the Post Office is at) I head south for a mile to Joy Road, where I know there is the Town Market (a little non-chain food store). I go inside (after giving a guy a buck for a "Good fellows" newspaper) and buy some American barley, some extra celery and carrots.

Since I am already that far from home (lol, maybe two miles?), I decide to drive over to a Polish butcher shop I know. I'm thinking some Kowalski hunter sausage (a poor substitute for the famous Columbus Smoke House stuff, BTW) and I wouldn't have to stop for lunch while I am tiling.

Now, the butcher shop is just east of Telegraph on Joy Road, smack dab between the Redford Asian market and the Middle Eastern Bakery (I am not making this shit up. Redford is a great place to live if you are a foodie!) So, I go inside and buy a pound of the hunter sausage.

Now, this place has been there forever. It's very small and I am lucky today, as the snow has kept the shoppers home. I have been there when it was wall to wall customers, but today there are only four in front of me. As one of the butchers (there are five or six old men) was wrapping my purchase in white butcher paper (yes, they still do that), I asked him if they ever get any veal bones (I always do that at every butcher counter - I desperately want to make some veal stock). He laughed and said, "You sound like all the old ladies around here, asking for soup bones." He explained that they haven't done any real butchering for years; everything comes cut to order, just like it looks in the case, so they never have any bones.

Slipping and sliding, I headed back home. I got there just before 10:00 AM and just in time to get a call from Jake. He told me a story about a bad dream he had, based on something I told him (BTW, Jake, I talked to B___ right after you, told him the same story and he said it's Andy) and about a scary Steven King movie they watched called "The Mist". After we hung up, I ate a few hunter sausages (and realized at that point I wished I had some cheddar cheese to go along with this) and then changed into my "tiling" clothes.

Then, as I mentioned, B___ called and we caught each other up. So, finally I got to work. I took a break at 4:00 PM and a quick (well, a one hour) nap. At 6:30 I had the entire West wall tiled (without any of the cut tiles I will need).

As I mentioned before, the tile saw throws a LOT of white water and I get covered from my neck to my crotch. So, my plan for this weekend was to get up all the whole tiles I could.

But, I am used up at this point. As we used to say, back in the day, I am down to "stems and seeds, again" (its an old Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen song, off their "Lost in the Ozone, Again" album - how's that for some music history?) So, I decided the soups would be made tomorrow and I'll run them out to Mom's next weekend.

I cleaned up all the tools, put the cling wrap on top of the mortar (this is working fine, BTW) and quit for the night.

I filled in the Blog and then made up my bed (remember the morning wash?) I washed up, careful this time to get all the mortar off me (last time I went to work with some still left on my forearms, where I didn't see it. A lady at work asked me what it was, I looked and saw the white caked-on mortar and said, "Damn, the leprosy is back!" She didn't laugh.)

I decided to watch a movie and eat some dinner, but Fate (in the form of my daughter, Melissa) intervened. She called and we talked almost to 10:00 PM. So, when we hung up, I warmed up some leftovers and ate at the table, reading my book. Then I went to bed.