my latest obsession

River rocks! Having discovered that the countertop of my dreams (seen here) would end up costing me about $8k (okay, so I'd get some shower glass in there, too, but STILL), I started researching what it would take to make it myself. I talked to product vendors about finding an epoxy that won't yellow or cloud up, got advice on how to build a pour mold, and ordered 40 lb. of these shiny river rocks above, which I adore. I need them to be less than 3/4" high to fit in the mold, so about half of them will go in some other bathroom-related project.

So I'm planning on creating a channel along the back of the counter (the part that will be on the wall) that will house LED lights to light the whole thing from within, and it's going to be topped off with a 1/4" of glass to protect it, since one hot coffee cup would be all it takes to blemish it. Our sinks are surface-mount basins, so I only need 4 small drain holes for them and the faucets. I'll find a glazier locally to handle all of that. I just need to concentrate on building a watertight mold and pouring the layers quickly enough, then keeping the dang thing level until it cures. That's a lot of precision for someone who embraces, nay, specializes in imperfections. Well, I'm nothing if not creatively ambitious.

Yuck!

So this is pretty much the overall feeling about today's feline-related events: Yuck. Poor Roscoe, in addition to losing weight and some other symptoms, he's been scratching at his head in random places for a loooong time. Not very hard, just, you know, I-have-an-itch-and-I-can't-get-rid-of-it scratching. Until yesterday, when he scratched so hard his little ear started bleeding. That's when we realized he might have something more than an itchy head. So I called a nearby vet (less than 2 miles from the house!) who let me bring him in at 4 pm on a Friday, saw him immediately, and found a long-standing ear infection. And when I say infection, I mean INFECTION.

If you are easily grossed out, please skip the next paragraph. I am not easily grossed out, and what happened in that vet's office almost made me gag. No, it did make me gag. I just managed not to throw up. Barely. So, seriously. If you get grossed out, don't read it then complain to me that it's gross. I know it's gross. I lived it. And I've thoughtfully annotated the gross parts for you in red, so if you are gross-averse, don't read the parts after the red.

GROSS PART STARTS

The kindly veterinarian who saw us was the owner of the clinic, and he was soooo nice. Just really customer-service oriented, and you can tell he just loves the animals. The whole time he was working with Roscoe, he maintained a running dialogue. With Roscoe. Which I'm sure some people would consider crazy, but I happen to admire it. Hey, cats are people too. If you're going to be poking and prodding them, the least you can do is talk to them about it. So once he found that nasty, deep ear infection, he of course tried to clean it up by getting some of the muck out. (This is the gross part.) He puts the Q-tip in, and ook comes out. I mean, I'm sparing you the worst of it by just calling it "ook". He put some drops to help clean it in there, and again and again, removed more ook, much to Roscoe's displeasure. Then (here's the REALLY gross part) Roscoe decides to help and shakes his head really hard. Ook flew everywhere. I mean, ew. I want to gag again just writing this. And I seriously don't gag over anything. The poor vet tech, who was holding Roscoe down and is barely out of his teen years, got splattered. The vet got splattered. The table got splattered. Oddly, I, wearing a white t-shirt, somehow did not. I have never, ever, been so close to spontaneously throwing up in my life. Probably the combination of knowing that ook came out of my poor old kitty, and the fact of what that ook was made up of. I'll spare you all that description.

GROSS PART ENDS

So, sorry about that. I have a blog so I can express and overshare when I feel like it, and you have a close button (that little x at the top right corner) that you can exercise when you don't feel like reading it. :) And you can't say I didn't warn you.

I'm glad we're hopefully on the road to recovery with Mr. Roscoe now. I'm mostly just angry at myself for not intuitively knowing that my kitty repeatedly scratching at random places on the left side of his head meant there was a deep infection somewhere inside. I feel like a bad kitty mommy. But it's not like he hasn't been to the vet! That dang mobile vet...she claimed to give him a "full work-up" 2 weeks ago, (and I certainly paid for a full work up) so how did she miss a big honkin' ear infection that he's apparently had forever? I'm going to call her, and have her fax all of his test results to his new vet, and tell her she missed the ear infection. Being a non-confrontrational Libra, this will not be easy for me, but I think she needs to know that she missed something pretty obvious, and why I won't be calling her again.

Also, the new vet said that Roscoe's weight loss might be due to hypo- or hyper-thyroidism, can't remember which. He said that they get really really hungry (true), and eat a lot (also true) but continually lose weight (sadly, also true. He's down to 11 lbs from a robust 15 or so). So I'm very hopeful that with this vet, we can patch the ol' kitty back together and keep him well for more years to come.

Sigh. And this is only one of four cats. I have this to look forward to with Romeow, Frijol, and Boo-Boo. Rest assured, if they scratch more than twice in the same spot, they're getting rushed to the vet. The new, good vet.

Decisions have been made

Well, my fears have been confirmed, and we won't be getting our see-thru fireplace. Bummer. The fire box insert is much smaller than the opening we'd have and it would look inadequate. Also, there's ventilation and security concerns. Oh well. I have a new dream now.

Here's where I think the money formerly allocated to fireplace renovations is going to go:Awwwwww, YEAH! Now, we all know I have a water aversion. (Don't know why, I just do.) But this tub might just be enough to get me over my aversion to water. Tub isn't even the right word for it. Aquatic relaxation receptacle? Water-enabled multi-tasking portal? Still not enough of a description. But you can visit Overstock.com here and read the manufacturer's description for yourself. And if you're thinking, "J, you are not really going to spend all that money on a tub?!", you're wrong. I most certainly will. As soon as my plumber okays it. I think that a master bath needs something special, and right now ours has nothing special. We were planning a remodel anyway, to switch the location of the tub and the toilet. The image below is a snapshot from a 3d model I built in Google SketchUp. It represents basically what our new bathroom is going to look like, although some of the finish choices (tiles, colors, etc.) may change.

That empty room is the walk-in closet, and that weird box thingy floating above the tub in the model below is actually the existing skylight. Which right now shines majestically down upon the toilet, as you can see. This model below is pretty close to what we have now, but I left the 80's cedar paneling above the garden tub out. I don't like the view from the tub, nor the enclosed tile shower. It's all too cramped and dated. So I think swapping the tub and toilet, putting a little wall in between them, and changing the shower enclosure to glass and cutting the corner of the closet and eliminating the wall between the vanity and the shower will all add up to a bigger-feeling space with minimal structural changes.

Since The Tub is so mighty and large, it's going to take a little more space than the one in the first model shows, so we're going to build a mock-up out of cardboard later today and put it in there (yes, really), and see if it feels too cramped. Our walkway to the toilet room is going to be more narrow than typical, so if we don't think it will work well that way, we may have to steal a few more inches from the closet and move that wall out. I'm hoping we can avoid it though...I gotta save some $$$$$$ to buy The Tub.

at long last

Methinks we have found the floor of our dreams. It is Cryntel's Kempas exotic engineered hardwood, available at Lowe's. Rather, it was available at Lowe's until we bought it all. We bought out our local Lowe's with the first 38 boxes, then had to go across town for the remaining 22. We needed 1000 sq ft for the three bedrooms and office. Luckily, I had a handy 10% off coupon, which, on a purchase like this, really adds up. We almost saved enough to purchase the glue...but not quite. There's only one place in town that sells Bostik's EFA (Engineered Flooring Adhesive), which is apparently the pro's choice...and they won't have it until Thursday. So if you include the GAS we're burning doing all this running around and picking up in the ol' hooptie truck, there goes those coupon savings after all.

We were worried about matching the floor to the color of the trim in the house for fear it would be too country, especially with some of the more widely available woods, like oak. But since Kempas is an exotic, it lacks the easily recognized grain patterns of oak, and the color varies greatly, which I think adds to the look of a real hardwood floor. It's sandable and re-finishable, and although I hope never to have to do either of those things, I find that knowing I could is comforting.

I was afraid that it would look too much like a laminate floor rather than hardwood because the texture of each board is identical when viewed in cross-light. However, due to the depth and variance of color (it's almost iridescent), it really does read as a solid hardwood floor would. It's also photosensitive, so the color will darken with time, which is fine. We've learned that the doors in our house are a darker, rosier colored wood than the trim is, and with the variance in this product, we've managed to coordinate with both.

So now we have to let it acclimate in the rooms it's going to be installed in for 4 days or so, so it can make adjustments for humidity or whatever. In the meantime, we still have the living room concrete to smooth out and acid stain (AGAIN). Here's a shot of the Other Half applying the skim coat, since I was totally not getting it. The instructions said to mix it with water "to the consistency of a milkshake". Apparently, I like my milkshakes thicker than the average person, so when I put it on it was pretty thick and hardened almost immediately to a play-doh like texture, which apparently was not the goal. So O.H. took charge and thinned it down to a consistency I would call "Tomato Soup", not "Milkshake". Maybe "Melty Milkshake on Hot Floridian Day". They should've been more specific about that whole milkshake thing so I didn't look so damn incompetent.

So we'll see how that turns out. At least we know we have an alternative (although I'd have to purchase yet another 1000 sq ft. or so (YOWZA) of wood if it doesn't work out, since we'd do the whole living room, dining room, and hallway too. Add that to the cost of two tries of acid staining and concrete overlays. Ouch. My wallet hurts. So let's hope it looks darn good this time.

Whoooo?

I think we got an introduction to the neighbors tonight. At about 11 pm, the Other Half was sitting on the back porch watching TV. (I know, perfidy.) Well, apparently Mother Nature doesn't like Telemundo any more than I do, and all of a sudden there was a bunch of hooting going on in our back yard that sounded quite like this, only much louder, closer, and more exitable. I had to wonder for a few minutes if it wasn't possibly monkeys.

So I did a little research, and found out the culprit was most likely a Barred Owl (also called a "Hoot Owl"), which are pretty common in heavily wooded areas near water. Which is exactly where we live. I even saw one in the yard the other day, but it was pretty far away, he perched high in a tree, and it was dusk so I didn't get a great look at him, just enough to know that he was big enough that I wouldn't let Boo-Boo out of the house past 6 pm knowing he's lurking out there looking for small furry treats.

Is it sad that this is so exciting for me? O.H. is creeped out by them, but still fascinated. I won't be creeped out until I find an owl pellet, I'm sure.

We actually looked for night-vision cameras, we were so excited by this. It doesn't take much for us, really. But in our defense, even the (human) neighbors got excited too; somebody had a flashlight shining up into our trees almost immediately after the hoot-fest started. Hopefully they're bird watchers, and not just nosy.

Mr. Roscoe update

Oh, and by the way, the vet says nothing really looked bad on Roscoe's millions of blood tests. A little elevated liver panel here, a little anemia there, but nothing else. So she prescribed some mystery drug that I need to shoot down his throat once a day, that she said might help. And said if he's extra hungry, just feed him some more. I'm sure he likes that.

So the vet called in the prescription to a pharmacy, and said they'd contact me to make arrangements for shipping or pick-up. Here's how the conversation with the pharmacist went when they called me.

"Hi, this is the North Beach Pharmacy calling about Roscoe's prescription?"

"Oh, yes, hello."

"Yeah, we wanted to know if you wanted us to add a flavor to this since it tastes pretty bad."

"Oh, yes, good idea. How about something fishy?"

....prolonged silence....

"Soooo, Roscoe is a cat?"

Heh. Thought they were a veterinary-specific pharmacy. Guess not. Shoulda just told them Roscoe is a 3-year old with very eclectic tastes.

Plan B

Due to the fume-snorting, hair-pulling, baseboard ruining, money-wasting problems we've been having with staining our concrete, we've resorted to Plan B for the rest of the house (the bedrooms and office). Engineered hardwood.

I'd go straight for the hardwood, but we're in the damp state of Florida, and you can't put solid hardwood on slab; if the moisture permeates the concrete, your boards will probably warp and cup and that won't be good. Hence, engineered wood. Not quite the same as laminate, which is a picture of wood laminated onto a plank of something that was derived from wood. Engineered wood is actual thin strips of hardwood laminated onto that same plank-y thing.

Not sure if we can install it floating or if we have to glue it down. I've heard that doing the glue method is a little glimpse into the 7th level of hell. And I am absolutely 100% sure that I'd end up with glue in my hair and have to cut it out. Don't ask me how I know, I just do.

I seem to have turned into Charlie Brown as of late. I don't know what it is. I used to be handy! I used to be able to cook! I could shoot a decent game of pool! Now, I can barely unwrap a frozen pizza without injuring myself, much less spread a skim coat of concrete on a floor. I turned that into such a hot mess that the Other Half had to go back over the mess I had made (which I only did wrong because I actually followed the directions..which were WRONG) and un-do it. I was then not to be trusted with the Magic Squeegee, which we used to smooth out the skim coat - so he had to do the rest of the floor. Hmmph. That's what he gets for being good at everything.

I must have lost my mojo somewhere. Maybe Miami ate it.