Just looking for the next thing

and staying busy

This was written Wednesday.

Today was a good day. Well, a productive one. Today I closed on several things that I have been avoiding. The floor in the office is done. I put a second coat of paint on the office door, and I started painting the trim around the bathroom door. After about an hour of painting, I found myself torn between whether or not to finish the job in that one sitting. I wanted to stop painting because my attention wanted to move to other projects, but I simultaneously wanted to finish painting at least the trim around the door because I know I will avoid picking up the paintbrush to finish it later.

Ultimately I decided that I will have to paint in multiple stages whether I finished that trim or not. So I went upstairs and rinsed the brush out in the sink, then put away the paint. I gathered a contractor bag full of construction trash, cut the boxes from the flooring into small enough pieces to not take up the entire can, and I carried it out to the curb. Trash doesn’t come for 2 more days, but there’s nothing organic in that bag.

I went back to the store and bought a butane torch and an extension hose. I cut up more construction trash in the garage. The box that the shower door came in plus all its styrofoam and wrapping filled another contractor trash bag.

I laid out a tarp in the floor of the garage and covered it with a trash bag, and then I brought out the form I made from corrugated plastic sheets, kabob skewers, and silicone caulk. I set the form on the floor and verified it was level in two planes. After two hours of prep, I finally opened the epoxy.

I bought a silicone mixing paddle for my drill; that’s one tool that has 100% proven its value. I mixed up just shy of a half-gallon of epoxy with an iridescent white mica powder and just a couple shakes of metallic gold mica. I mixed it all up, poured it in, and it barely crested the top of the plywood insert.

I sat outside for a while just listening to the bugs, hissing at the cat to keep him away from the pour, and researching the next step. This is when a different version of me would have lit a cigarette. That would have been exactly the right cue for me to relax. As it is, this version of me plays a stupid video game on her phone. I spend less on it (though still too much) than I would on cigarettes, so I continue to cut myself slack about it.

I ordered another batch of epoxy off amazon and carefully cleaned my bucket and my little drill powered swirly tool. Batch 2 will be here late morning, and I can’t pour it until the first pour cures anyway. ::imaginary drag on a cigarette:: But I should be able to do the second pour tomorrow evening.

Earlier in the day, I met with the contractor to go over the sink / countertop setup. The sink is a vessel sink - handmade by an artist in CA and finished with a crystalline glaze. I fell madly in love with it and happily handed over the money to the gallery where I found it. Long story short, I had to special order a different faucet and drain. I found one on Amazon for about $60.

And now I’m here. I feel like that very difficult decision to switch gears even though I wasn’t done with the painting opened a world of energy to funnel into all my work. I really did all of this work in tiny spurts of 15-20 minutes throughout the day. The real work of the day happened at work, where I finished a document draft and sent it for review and also continued to move things forward with inquiries and planning for a different project.