After a delay of almost a month in getting started, I now have been without a kitchen for 6 weeks and counting. Nothing will be done this week. The place from which we ordered our stone had trouble with the forklift and couldn’t take delivery. I estimate we’ve had about 6 days work in the past 6 weeks. Am I annoyed? You bet.
There’s no getting around the fact that a renovation is stressful. I am really tired of washing dishes in the slop sink. And it keeps going on.
We got the flooring in. A little grayer than I like but still light. 
The same day the flooring went in the stove broke. No kidding. I was baking chicken in the oven and went to take it off and the entire handle came off in my hand. I can still get the oven door open with a potholder but it isn’t easy.
Fried food anyone?
In other news, with the garage door left open so the workmen can bring in flooring, cabinets (arrived but not installed) we have had an army of mice appear. Most recent count: 10. We’ve found dead ones in our closet (yuck!) and in the bathroom. I don’t blame them for wanting out of the cold but I wish they wouldn’t choose my house.
The contractors spent a few days getting up the sheetrock and painting. I see how The Property Brothers can gut a house in 4 weeks; the crew spends every day on one property. I wouldn’t like having the Property Brothers choose everything, though. I might not like the result. The contractor and I had a disagreement over the paint. He thought it should be lighter. When the flooring is in, we will see.
Meanwhile, I am finding not having running water in the kitchen tiresome. Can barely cook – no counters. 
Well, we couldn’t keep the flooring that was already on the kitchen floor because of the holes under the cabinets. We were given three choices: hardwood, vinyl tiles or the engineered flooring like Pergo. (We could also have ceramic tile but I hate it – too cold and hard to walk on). We threw out the hardwood – we are already having hickory cabinets and I didn’t want a a kitchen that was like a wooden box.) So we looked at the last two. We chose two tiles, a first choice and a second. The first is no longer available and the second won’t be available until March 9. (So, Loews, why do you still have it in the store if it isn’t available?)
Then we looked at the flooring and chose a whitewashed look but the contractor told us it wouldn’t look good with the paint color we’d chosen. So we tried again for different forms of vinyl tile.We spent hours in both Loews and Home Depot putting samples on the floor and trying to imagine them in our kitchen.
After a week, we opted to go with the whitewashed flooring and change the paint. Who would guess that flooring would be such an issue?
I have heard it said that a kitchen is the heart of a house. I believe it. My kitchen is not only the heart metaphorically but also by location. Man, is it hard to live. The pantry where all our canned food is now stuffed and the slop sink (yes, the same slop sink I use for washing out dyes and other crafty things) is on the other side. The first day I did not realize I wouldn’t be able to get there. I had thought ahead somewhat; I had food, milk, juice etc for the babies. But I couldn’t get to my coffee pot Now we are talking a sacrifice. And there was no way to get a can of soup. So, after I fed the babies, I ate two handfuls of cocoa puffs. I hate cocoa puffs. To me they taste like chocolate flavored vitamins. I now have only a stove and a refrigerator.
Plus, we of course hit a surprise. We’d hoped to reuse the floor. Do you see? They went around the cabinets. So now we have to choose and pay for flooring and it sets the project back a week.
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Before we humans made paint with oil (or our modern latex), paint was made with a variety of ingredients. Paint has to have something that provides color like ochre or, during colonial times in the USA, brick dust, and a medium for the color that provides stability and hopefully durability. Egg yolks was at one time used for paint. Anyone who has tried to scrub hardened egg yolks off a plate knows that egg hardens to something like cement. But it does wash off in water.
Another substance used in paint was milk. Since most people lived on farms up until the present, milk was something readily obtainable. We know that milk paint was used. Occasionally antique furniture and old houses in this country are discovered to have been painted with milk paint.
However, the recipe for milk paint is very important. In 1801 a French artist described painting with a milk paint and wrote that it was not durable. Among other things, it came off with the slightest friction (Don’t ever brush against it or it would come off on one’s clothing, and would dissolve in wet weather.) And milk paint must be used right away. It has a short shelf life.
The important ingredient is the protein casein. Sometimes borax is used to the lime to help dissolve the casein. Different recipes have been tried to make milk paint durable. We know that at least some of them were successful; surfaces painted with milk have been discovered in some old houses. It has a hard very smooth finish and was usually in pale pastel colors. It is impervious to paint strippers and is difficult to paint over. It is totally non-toxic, though, and can be used to give furniture an antique look.
Oh, and one final fun fact. House painters in the past did not ‘paint’; they distempered the walls.
When my husband and I were in Greece this past summer and went down to breakfast that first morning, a woman at a nearby table suddenly burst into a James Brown song. No lyrics, just the hook, bookended by a flood of Greek.
Although we haven’t had members of the native populations bursting into song in other countries, we have heard American music everywhere. Perhaps I should say American/British since the Stones and Led Zeppelin are well represented. As tourists, we hear plenty of the native Greek or Peruvian or other local music but the pop music is all the music we grew up with. And even the Stones and other British Bands we hear have been heavily influenced by the Blues, R and B and so on.
American music is one of our greatest exports, along with our movies.
And the interesting thing is that the ‘melting pot’ of the United States is really obvious in the music. From the Chansons Profanes of the French trappers, to the work songs (the sea shanties and field hollers), the drums of the Native Americans and of course the rhythmic music of the black slaves, American music is a combination that has really gone everywhere. (Think the popularity of Metallica in Japan!)
The history of rock from its beginnings in Blues is well documented but of course there have been other important influences, all ending up in James Brown sung by a Greek.
For the latest Will Rees, I researched sea shanties (or chanties) thoroughly. I’d expected to use that information more than I did. I actually only mention the sea shanties in passing. That’s what happens when one researches something for a work of historical fiction. Either some of the information isn’t used at all or you need more and more of it.
Although I knew of the shanty only as a subset of folk music, it was important for the loading and unloading of cargo from merchant ships. It is thought that one leg of the shanty’s back ground comes from British ‘chants’. That makes sense to me. Even the language implies a connection.But although other countries had work songs, sea shanties were primarily an American phenomenon.
Shanties were created here. Well, if one strand is the British ‘chant’, where does the rest of it come from? Where else in our history do rhythmic work songs play such a big role? Answer: the slaves. Contemporary accounts frequently describe the slaves and their songs. The slaves, to the eyes of the white who observed them, were so happy they sang’. The casual condescending racism of the descriptions make a modern sensibility shudder.
However, like the work songs sung by the slaves, the shanties include the same kind of rhythmic repeats necessary to keep everyone on the same beat Keeping everyone together as they pull lines or shift bales is efficient. Since there were so many black sailors at that time (with a name of their own: the Black Tars) it makes sense the rhythmic underpinning of the shanties probably sprang from the same source as the rounds sung by the slaves: i.e. African music.
Every time I log onto my WordPress Account I am greeted with a frantic message that I should update. But when I click on the link, I get to a page with about a million warnings, telling me to back up first or else I will lose all of the customization.
Really?
Then the ‘quick and easy’ directions begin. On your main control panel fo cPanel, look for the MySQL databases. I don’t even know where to go. And I started my library career as a computer tech so I am not without any skills.
Who writes this stuff? Not regular users, that is for sure.
I guess I will not be upgrading any time soon.
Minotaur/ St. Martin’s Press has a wonderful Graphics Arts Department.They have produced another fabulous book cover for the third Will Rees: Cradle to Grave.
