Home Improvement

Monte is a mad genius. Just don't tell him I said so. In the 18 years we've been married, he's gone from this adorably geeky kid to a Renaissance man. In the home improvement category, he spent one weekend watching our uberbuilder friend Rickey tile the downstairs bathroom, and suddenly he not only had the urge to tile other bathrooms but he how has the wherewithal to do it all by himself. It's like watching the brain plug in scenes from the Matrix films. Can't tile? Wait a second, I watched somebody or asked a couple of questions or watched a video, plugged in my brain, had a little rapid eye movement and bippety-boppety-boo, I CAN tile. And fly helicopters. Ridiculous.

Here is evidence of some of his recent work. The tile you see here took him three days. (If I had done it, after the three days I would have had two pieces of tile glued to each other and the rest broken into little jagged pieces. You would then find me downstairs eating an entire chocolate cake and crying.)


The kitchen is still in progress. He's doing it at night after work. Well, ONE night after work. Night two is for grout, and presumably, for him to rest and survey his handiwork and call it "good."


Since none of the appliances have a home while the tiles goes up, Peyton got to examine my green mixer, that would have been red if I hadn't listened to my sister when I was ordering it from QVC in 2001. I doubt the red would have made the food taste like fine cuisine, but I would have liked looking at it better for the 100s of years I'll own the dumb thing. Stupid Kitchenaid and their Toyota like durability.


In the space of three seconds, he got the front circle part off (the part that, if I really could cook, would accommodate lovely life simplifying attachments) and was running down the hall with it. I finally pried it from his clenched fist, and then got front row seats to the most amazing tantrum you've ever seen.


Terrible twos, six months early. Ah well, at least I'll have several lovely tiled living spaces from which to watch the meltdowns. It's all about perspective.