Some days it’s just not your day, and this was one of those days for me. I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’m coming down with a cold. That doesn’t help. I’ve also go tendonitis in my left Achilles tendon, which means it’s inflamed and very sore for substantial portions of the day. That doesn’t help either.

After a chat last night with Joe regarding some of the final touches on the bathroom in preparation for the tile guy, I woke up early this morning and finished up all the sheet rock and plumbing. The tile guy, Darren, was out for the first time today at 8:30 AM. Nice guy. Presumably he’ll do good work. Unfortunately, the first thing he said after looking at the bathroom was, “I need to take down most of the sheet rock.” Hahahaha, I laughed until I cried. Apparently the backer board (aka Wonderboard) that the tile is glued to is so thick that it won’t fit over the sheet rock on the exterior wall or the wet wall and still fit properly over the tub flange. On the back shower wall (where there were two layers of rock to begin with), he can put the Wonderboard over the sheet rock.

As you can imagine I was less than pleased that the Color Tile sales flunky who was out three weeks ago didn’t tell me about this in advance. (Lesson learned: Never rely on the sales person for a punch list; always insist on having the person doing the work viewing the work area.) I’ve not talked yet with the Color Tile saleswoman—I figured I’d give myself a day or two to be less annoyed—and the upside is, of course, that Darren appears to be doing great work, he’s a very nice guy, and at the end of the week we should still have a bathroom that looks great. But good golly Miss Molly I’ve spent a lot of time and effort (and friends’ like Joe and Dave have contributed their time and talent as well) on stuff that now has to be ripped out.

To say I’m miffed at ColorTile is an understatement, and what’s worse for them from a business standpoint is that this project will probably come out looking great. I should be a fervent supporter of Color Tile and instead I’m cheesed. And this is on a project going well. Imagine if it were going poorly. So we’ll see how it gets handled, but right now I’m irritated.

After a brief discussion with Darren, I left for my 9 AM dental appointment. I walk in and the attractive receptionist asks, “Are you Curtis?” Uh, no, not in this lifetime. “Oh.” She shuffles a bunch of papers around and starts looking through various appointment books. Nope, my appointment is nowhere to be found—except my contact card which lists today at 9 AM as the proper date and time. They were apologetic and great about squeezing me in for X-rays and a cleaning, but I think I left the office looking at the sky for falling airplane parts. Who knows what else might go wrong today?

So I went to the library. I tried to think of what I could do to cheer myself up without eating food or spending money. Free books was it. The library is my friend. So I spent an hour, pulled out books on a myriad of subjects and came home a little happier. Darren had the Wonderboard in place and the bathroom honestly looks better than it has since we started demolition on August 22.

Late in the day I had a couple bright spots: One, a call from my friend Sue from Alaska, and another, the opportunity to go over to Ma and Pa’s and help them with some Mac stuff. These sound like small things, but when you’ve had a bad day, they count for a lot.