“I’m tired of living in exile!” my husband, Peter, exclaimed as, for the second day in a row, we packed up everything we would need to be out of our home long enough for the floor to dry.

Michael, the floor sander, is in our apartment now, buffing the penultimate coat of polyurethane while Peter is moaning about his exile status. We have evacuated to the party room in the condominium while we wait to have a floor we can walk on again. There is internet and a refrigerator in the party room, so we are rather pampered evacuees.

“The floors are almost finished,” I reassured him.

“But the remodeling isn’t!” he complained.

“The rest won’t be so disruptive.” Peter is not convinced.

The most urgent remaining issue is the bathroom, as the shower stall is warped and spills water onto the floor. Peter has fashioned a complicated solution involving a plastic shower curtain, a squeegee, and Gorilla Tape. It is not elegant.

But contractors are insanely busy these days, and no one is in more demand than plumbers. If you know a plumber, I suggest you cement your relationship with them immediately, as plumbers are the hottest new celebrities.

After a considerable hunt, we finally found a plumber named Matt. Like Cher or Adele, Matt uses only his first name, but on his business cards he adds a single initial for his last name -- like Kenny G.

When Matt arrived to survey our bathroom, he did not remind me of either Cher or Kenny G, but had a similar charisma. He was very tall and bald and fit and had the calming presence of someone who might start a New-Age movement. I think he easily could garner followers, although I suspect plumbing is more lucrative.

Matt arrived at our home and listened as we explained our mundane problem of having a 40-plus-year-old bathroom made of aging acrylic. He nodded compassionately as we told him more than he really needed to know about our hopes and dreams in the bathroom department.

“I have a philosophy,” Matt finally said, after we had told him all there was to tell. Right away, I knew we’d be paying a lot if we were getting both a plumber and a philosophy.

“I believe in keeping things simple,” Matt said, simply.

“Well, we understand you may run into problems you can’t anticipate ...” Peter began.

“No,” Matt said, holding up a hand and looking like the spiritual teacher I was beginning to suspect he was. “I will give you a price, and it will be the price. There will be no changes. There will be nothing added. I will do what needs to be done.”

If Peter had been wearing a blood pressure monitor, I know I would have seen the needle drop.

“He’s going to be expensive,” I warned Peter, after our plumbing guru left. Peter seemed unconcerned. When Matt’s bid came in, it was even higher than I had feared.

“I just don’t see that we have a choice,” Peter told me. “I believe Matt is the man for the job. We got a good price for our old house. I think it’s karma that we spend a little more with Matt now.”

My husband is not typically a person who is price insensitive, and he is certainly not someone who talks about karma, so now I don’t know what to think.

Matt will start work next week. I am expecting all sorts of changes to ensue. Some of them might even have to do with the plumbing.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

The renovations to our new home continue.

We didn’t expect to be refinishing the floor. But when we tore up the flooring that was buckling and warping in the summer humidity, we discovered the original parquet, spattered with paint, underneath.

A man named Michael showed up with the biggest floor sander I have ever seen, looked disapprovingly at the paint sprayed all over the parquet, and declared that it should sand clean without a problem. My husband, Peter, told Michael he was retired, and Michael told us he was retired as well.

“What did you used to do?” I asked.

“Sand floors!” he said, as if that was obvious.

“And now you sand floors in your retirement?”

“But only when I want to!” he clarified.

Michael was right, and the paint cleaned right up, revealing not oak floors, as we had thought, but an intricate pattern in teak. Michael didn’t finish sanding on Friday, but said he’d be back Monday morning.

“Don’t walk on it in bare feet!” Michael cautioned. “Your feet might have oil on them!”

I didn’t think I had particularly oily feet, but I was taking no chances and made sure I had slippers on every time I touched the beautiful raw wood floor. “Peter! You dropped a piece of popcorn!” I scolded, scurrying to retrieve the errant kernel.

(I tell you all this so that you will understand how dreadful I felt about what happened next.)

We like peanut butter that is made with peanuts and nothing else, but it separates, with the peanuts at the bottom and the oil at the top.

(You may think you can imagine what happens next, but it is even worse.)

I use one beater on my hand mixer to stir a new jar of peanut butter. But, when I did this on Saturday, the GFCI on the electrical outlet popped.

“Darn!” I said.

“Try another socket,” Peter said.

And so I did. What I did not do was turn off the mixer before plugging it in.

The jar spun madly out of control and, in a moment, there was peanut oil everywhere -- all over me, all over the countertop, all over the cupboards. But the only really important thing was that there was peanut oil and sloppy peanut butter all over the raw teak floor.

I didn’t move for a long moment, hoping what had just happened would somehow rewind and be undone.

“Quick! Get a towel!” Peter said, snapping me out of it.

I wiped it up, and I scrubbed it with detergent and hot water. Then I did it again. Then I did it one more time. I turned a fan on and let it dry all night. And in the morning ... it was every bit as bad as I feared it would be.

I tried to imagine what I could have done that could be worse. “Maybe India ink,” I thought. “India ink might be worse.” I was sick at heart.

“Have you ever hated any of your clients?” I asked Michael the next morning.

“What did you do?” he asked. I showed him.

“It won’t show, will it?” Peter asked. “The polyurethane will cover it, won’t it?” I waited for Michael to reassure us.

“I don’t know,” Michael said. “Guess we’ll find out.” And he fired up his sander.

A few minutes later he called out, “Come here!”

I ran to the kitchen. The oil was gone.

“I knew you could do it!” I said, although I had been anything but sure.

“Stay off the floor!” Michael yelled.

And I did.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

I have never been a gardener.

This makes me feel like a misfit in my family. My mother is a wonderful gardener. She had an enormous vegetable garden in the suburbs before it became fashionable to do so. Her mother was also an avid gardener. She escaped the demands of 11 children by spending time with her flowers. There are photos of my grandma in her garden and she looks as if she is having a wonderful time, but I figure any activity that would allow you to escape the demands of cooking for 13 people three times a day would be a welcome relief.

My sister is also an amazing gardener. She has flowerbeds everywhere and a raspberry patch that produces 3 gallons of berries a day. She is always expanding gardens and digging things up and putting new things in. Her entire yard is beautifully landscaped and all I can think is that it looks like an awful lot of work.

I am a bad gardener.

My attempts are gardening have never been successful. One year, I planted flowers I thought would do well, and they did so well I created an impenetrable jungle. I had flowers as tall as me. I couldn’t get in to weed, and after a while, I stopped trying. The next year I tore it all up and mulched it. Mulching is not gardening.

The next year, I planted rose bushes. The deer ate every rosebud as soon as it appeared. Then I planted peonies. They wilted in the sun. I planted lupines in a place I thought would be perfect for them. They never bloomed. Whatever sort of green thumb my mother and grandmother and sister have seems to have missed me entirely.

Only recently have I had the courage to admit the truth: I don’t like gardening.

I was sure that if I just worked a bit harder, all the pleasant feelings everyone seems to have about gardening would magically land on me. But I’ve realized that I just don’t enjoy gardening. It feels like work to me, and not work I enjoy. So when my husband, Peter, and I bought the new condominium, one of my first thoughts was, “Now I don’t have to feel guilty about not gardening!”

I left my rakes and shovels and gardening gloves behind, and I was delighted to be moving to a place where the only outdoor space I had was a balcony. Gardening was the furthest thing from my mind when a funny thing happened.

I wanted to plant something.

Arriving in the midsummer, there wasn’t a lot of selection. But I found some plant hangers and pots and six different kinds of plants and I repotted them and made attractive groupings until I had eight pots hanging in a row on the balcony, filled with brightly colored foliage. They are out there now, waving in the breeze. They have already grown since I put them out last weekend. I call them my “balcony babies,” and those eight pots are giving me more satisfaction than anything I’ve ever planted.

“The balcony is beautiful!” Peter said last night. I believe it’s the first compliment I’ve ever gotten on my gardening efforts. And finally, I feel at peace.

I do have an inner gardener after all.

She just works in a smaller medium than the giant gardens my mother and grandmother had or the sprawling flowerbeds my sister creates. My gardens are tiny. They are in little red pots hanging from the railing and, quite honestly, I think they are perfect.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS