This Dude Abides

My house has been torn up for a few weeks, No Big Deal (we did it on purpose). It’s gonna be great, but at the moment it’s disorienting as hell.

And it has the effect of making my limitations more limited, depending on the day. They were downstairs doing a lot, putting in a new bathroom and some painting, carpeting, etc., and that was noisy but not too different; I had to go to the garage if I needed our big freezer, and the trash cans and both cars were(are) outside, but that was minor.

Although, to be fair to myself, anything can throw me off these days. And once they moved the renovating upstairs, it got interesting. I was stuck in this little area of the house for a day, the floors off -limits (and sort of nonexistent), the hottest day of the year, when it’s usually cooler outside or at least downstairs.

But everyone survived, we’ve got a lot of new house to get used to, and patience is now in my skill set, go figure. I think at some point it just made sense, and was by far the easiest course. Take your time. You’ve got plenty.

I got strangely compulsive during this slow time with changing reality, as one does. When I get bored, sometimes I play with Photoshop, altering photos and compositing, just to practice these skills that I learned apparently without realizing it.

And even though I can’t remember how it started, I thought it would look funny to take a familiar movie scene and put all the characters in bathing suits. I know, right? It tickled me, though, and gave me something.

I took my time with this, too. I tried to fix imperfections to complete the illusion. I thought carefully about colors and styles. I laughed at how it completely changed the scene, and had fun making up scenarios to explain Ingrid Bergman and Bogie in bathing suits.

But honestly, I got real tired of adjusting moobs, boobs and bulges, ya know? Human bodies are super annoying that way if you’re trying to keep an image distraction free (I had to practically geld Kevin Costner — no reflection on his body, just the way the trunks were so…clingy).

But I think I’m done, fun for a couple of days. We’ll miss our Ukrainian contractors, who’ve become familly and have taken home many of my cookies. We got really lucky with these guys, although they always talk to Julie and treat me gingerly (the invalid in the spare room who always seems to be on his iPad, fixing crotches, weird).

We’re all good. The house will be so new feeling, and if we run out of money in our 90s, I mean, the floors will still be nice.

I had some issues with this blogging platform earlier in the week, easy to solve but it took me a few days. I just abide, as I said. Patience is my middle name now. I can’t remember the real one anyway.

And today‘s going to be a good one, not hot and we get a door for the bathroom! That’s been fun.