It started out a bit on the weird side; Jay was nowhere to be found when I got up at 7:30. The last I'd seen of him was as I got into bed just before midnight. He was searching plane tickets for a trip he's taking in a couple of months and had just found a fare that was ridiculously low. So as I was tucking myself in, he was out to the dining room to book a flight.
I have no idea if he ever came back to bed.
But it's basketball season and his team has a game tonight so I expected him to be gone all day...
I hope he wasn't abducted by aliens.
If it turns out he's gone, I'm going to look like the worst wife in the world by not even noticing that he's gone until tomorrow.
I figure if he didn't make the bus, JT will call, wondering where the heck Jay is.
I got to work at a reasonable hour and painted a special order.
I'm only doing custom work this week; no shop orders.
The shop has had a catastrophic water event. That's what we're calling it.
There's an apartment above the needlepoint shop. It's a nifty, bright little one or two bedroom (I can't remember. I was only up there once.) place with nice sized rooms and lots of windows. it's currently vacant, which is too bad because if someone had been living there, they would have noticed the laundry room sink had broken a pipe and turned off the water. As it was, the gals only found out when they opened the shop on Thursday morning to find a water curtain in the hall between the front showroom and the back workroom. Off that hall are a tiny kitchen, powder room and office. These rooms were all raining.
After much panic and phone calls and the water being shut off, it was discovered that things could have been much worse. Since the damage happened where it did, none of the customer's finished pieces were involved. The back room, where all the finishing is, was far from the deluge. Equally fortunate is that the vast majority of canvases are out in the front showroom, which was mostly untouched. The carpet was soaked but the canvases and all but a very few skeins of yarn were safe. When I visited the place five days after the initial damage, the water had been drained, carpet removed and all the furniture taken out of the middle rooms. Everything had been rearranged to accommodate the problems and contractors have already been contacted to come in and assess the damage to the ceiling, walls and a few pieces of furniture that had water damage. It could have been so much worse.
Anyway, that's why I'm only doing custom things this week; its a way to keep the cash flowing while the building gets fixed.
So I did my research, worked out my lettering and logo, painted things up and got a good jump on the week. Then my Mom called to say she was heading over to her brother's apartment. His landlord is selling the duplex he lives in, so he was asked to clean his place up. We've been helping him.
My Mom had two bachelor brothers who lived together. One was a collector who loved hand painted porcelain, antique furniture, Peter Ompir and glassware. When he died, he left his entire collection to the other brother, who is a hoarder.
Ten years later, that place is like a mess you can't imagine, hiding treasures beneath the piles of unopened mail and expired medical supplies and forty years of dust.
It's awesome.
We spent an afternoon last week just tossing stuff out. My Mom wants to dust and vacuum but her brother thinks that's a waste of time. Hey, he lives there. who are we to argue? He did let us take an awful lot of the goodies under the trash. There were many things he'd prefer to sell, or keep but tons of stuff that he just said "Take whatever is on the table. Enjoy." Since the tiny apartment also holds most of the furniture that had been in their three bedroom house while their Mom was still alive (she died in '85 but the green couch she had upholstered five years earlier still looks pretty good!), there's waaaay tooo much furniture in the place. So he let us take some. MJ took a really cool chair, which now sits in her living room near the window. I don't have room for any more chairs at my house but my daughter Katie has been looking for a small writing table for years. My Grandma had a beautiful little Italian escritoire, which was hidden behind a book case, beneath a pile of tires. Now it's on my porch, waiting for Katie to collect it. I love the idea of my daughter, writing notes on the same little desk her Great Grandma loved so much. Uncle M. also let me take an antique brass lamp with two handpainted glass globes, a beautiful oval mirror with a gold scroll frame, two of Uncle P.'s favorite gilt edged, hand painted plates, which he'd had mounted in collectors boxes and an entire book case stuffed with books on collectibles. I also took a complete set of the Harvard Classics in hardcover but I may have to give those to my brother, Joe.
Joe may have to fight me for them. I love books.
Zack helped me load my car and I spent what was left of the afternoon scrubbing the stuff up. The lamp, which works perfectly, is now in my living room, looking like it was born there. One of the plates is on the wall but I'm going to have to have the second one remounted. Then I'll rearrange my art so both plates are by the dining room table where they belong.
And best of all, Uncle M.'s house isn't a health or safety hazard anymore.
Although I do think he should let us dust it.