This. Do you have any idea how long I have been living with this ugly stain? I think the beach urchins were around six and four or thereabouts when we decided to get rid of the ugly beat-up 70s-style red-yellow-orange baroque patterned vinyl flooring that came with The Landfill. We were young and we were gonna renovate the place piece by piece. Not probably a good idea.

We went out to a Floor Store. I (at that time) (thought that I) wanted ceramic tile. People (The Commander mostly) said stuff like, “That’s a bad idea, you’ll break things and the beach urchins will fall and crack their heads”. I now think I was trying to emulate Radical Betty’s small but gorgeous chalet on the Moominbeach. She had butcher block counters too and I also lusted after them. But we weren’t at counters yet, just floor. I did NOT want a vinyl floor but I capitulated and we chose this white vinyl flooring. The guy at the Floor Store told us that it would not discolor. Did he lie? I dunno whether he lied or whether he was just incompetent. Lots of people are. Somehow they still get jobs and wreak havoc upon the rest of us…

That floor was a DIY prodject. We lived for quite some time with the old floor torn out, walking around on the “sub-floor” or whatever it is. I didn’t like that but we were young and invincible and we knew it would get better when we put in the new floor. And so we did and it was all wonderful until… The loverly new floor started to stain. What the f*ck? I have lived with that ugly stain for more years than I am strong enough to count (over 20). My new floor will be hardwood. Oak to be exact. Not some kind of oak impersonator. Real oak. That vent is going to be moved and CKL says the reno team will try to figure out how to prevent that from happening again. I love CKL and I am hoping for the best but we’ll see.

I’ve grown up from the days when I wanted to emulate Radical Betty. I still want to emulate her in some ways but I am meeee and one of the things I remember about RB is that she loved me for who *I* was, knowing my history in some ways better than I did, since she was one of The Commander’s college friends and then an in-law and she remembered me since before I was born.

My subtitle for this post would have been “Whiteout”! Because that’s what I drove through to get to work this morning. It was sunny when I left The Landfill. I had coffee at Barry’s with MMCB this morning and when we went outside, it was snowing. And blowing. That leads to whiteout conditions. My drive was really pretty okay. I don’t think it was really all that slippery on my route and people were driving slowly and carefully in any case. Alas, reports came in from all over Michigan. Accidents everywhere, fatality on M52 (43-year-old man who slowed down for conditions was slammed from behind by a semi… sigh…). Lots of roads closed everywhere in the Great Lake State. Whiteouts. Accidents.

When will it end.

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