Monday, November 30, 2009

Tetsu's handiwork

Saturday Tetsu devoted his day to working around the house and we got quite a lot done. He will often say

"Okay. What do you want me to help you with today?"

and I'll think up a job for us to do that I normally wouldn't attempt by myself. This time it was

"How about waxing the floors?"

There are two ways to wax the floors. Push everything to the side and spray wax around and under as far as the arm can reach.

The other way is to take every last bit of furniture outside and then get down on your hands and knees with a rag and wax the empty rooms. If I'm doing this alone you know which way I chose. Hey, that way is fine with me anytime! But Tetsu likes to be thorough and since it was a nice day, EVERYTHING went outside (well, we left the piano but did move it a bit) and we waxed the proper way...double waxing with a 30 minute snack break sitting outside amidst the furniture.

As always when the rooms were empty we say to each other

"The place looks so big. How come we always feel like we live in a rabbit hutch?"

and tried to figure out what furniture we could do without or if there was any other layout that would give us more room, but no, we put everything back in the original places.

Shiny windows and floors always makes me feel happy. You will notice the strange corners on all our walls. Now why do you think we have those? Of course Tetsu's handiwork again hiding all the scratch marks that the cats do. I think the patchwork walls give the room more character and when the cats scratch them down Tetsu just replaces a board.

Here is the same room with the furniture and 5 cats back inside it. Maybe it is all the cats that make it seem small?

And speaking of Tetsu's handiwork, you saw a glimpse of his latest fence the other day when I was photographing Choco. Tetsu ran out of lumber for this project so there was a hole for a week before he finished the fence on Saturday. HOPEFULLY, the fence makes it more difficult for Choco to notice passersby and she won't bark as much as usual. We'll see how successful the fence is... (Tetsu didn't make it solid wood because he thought the typhoons would blow it down.) He looks pretty pleased with himself doesn't he?

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