Yesterday was, er, interesting.
I got up just slightly earlier than I normally do, since the guy renovating our bathroom and laying down the tiles in the foyer was supposed to be coming. At nine o’clock, the phone rang. It was that guy’s boss, calling to say that the guy was stranded due to the snowstorm we had on Wednesday. He lives in the Annapolis Valley, which is a) pretty far from here, and b) more inland, and therefore probably got more snow than we did (and we got a fair amount!).
Obviously, I was disappointed. I understood, and I wouldn’t have wanted the guy to get into an accident just to get here, but still disappointed. I was hoping that the very last of all that needs to be done would be finished today (Friday). We have an appointment on Saturday morning at Canadian Tire to get our winter tires put on, and the plan was for all of us to go and get some shopping done as Walmart is right next door. Chances are, however, that the grout for the foyer is going to have to be put on tomorrow, so Claire and I will be staying here while Neal goes to get the tires changed over, and then we’ll all go out shopping on Sunday. Not the end of the world, but still a kink in our plans.
It’s still possible it will all be done today because they might use a quick-set for the porcelain tiles which would mean he could do the grout later on today, but we had him lay down Ditra (a waterproof layer), and their website recommends a latex-less thin-set (aka longer setting) cement-type stuff. So when he gets here today, I’m going to have to ask him if the quick-set has latex in it or not, and make sure he’s comfortable using that because you have to be frigging fast to get all the tiles down before it dries.
Claire and I have been going to a free “Baby’s First Books” program at the library over at Cole Harbour Place, which is normally only a 5-minute walk away. I go down to the end of our street, go part-way down the next street to a short, straight path that brings me to the main street that Cole Harbour Place is on. Cole Harbour has a lot of paths, which Claire and I have enjoyed immensely during the Summer and Fall. Sadly, most of those paths have signs stating that they are not maintained in the Winter. This path that we take, however, has no such sign, and it is often plowed because a lot of people take it to get to the high school and to the bus stop.
Feeling hopeful, I packed Claire up yesterday morning and we struck out for the library. We got to the path at the same time as another woman and baby, Kristen and Zander, from the program. The path was not plowed at all, and there was a big snowbank in front of it from when the street plow had gone by. We later admitted that neither of us would have attempted it if the other person had not been there. We were struggling to get her stroller over first when a man in a car stopped and jumped out to help us. He got both of our strollers onto the snow-covered path, and then we had drag the strollers backwards to get down. We got to the end of the path to discover that the sidewalk down there – that leads to the light and the bus stop – was not plowed either. So we dragged our strollers backwards some more.
After the library program, Kristen and I decided we would avoid the path (which is somewhat uphill) and take the loooooonnnnggg way around, as we could be on sidewalks. Admittedly, the sidewalks were better than the path, but not by much. I don’t know who did the plow job on those sidewalks we were on, or what he/she was smoking at the time, but they were awful. At one point, we even walked on the road, watching for cars, because the sidewalk was so ridiculous.
So a normally 5-minute walk to the library took about 20, and the walk home took at least 45 minutes. Suffice it to say, I definitely got a workout yesterday!
I’m hoping that today will be a little better. Hopefully the guy will show up and make some real progress – at the very least, hopefully the bathroom can be completely finished (baseboard, caulking, cleaning up the tiles a little more) and the foyer tiles can be laid. Claire and I probably won’t go for a walk, but I think I’ll bundle her up and take her outside to play in the snow since she enjoyed it so much the other day.
Every picture I took of her out there had this same delighted smile on her face!
