Still Rising From The Ashes

Nothing beats coming home after work to a spot of joint taping. Meh. I'd forgotten how much I loathe, detest and dislike this bloody job. Still, no use sitting and complaining about it. That would only attract the coffee-fuled rage of Mrs Stevie, increasingly unstable as the date for a visit from Paul the Globetrotter - a friend who we see far too little of - approaches and the prospect of one more person kicking, biting and punching in order to claim the only functioning bathroom looms.

I went to Home Despot and picked up another small bucket o'spackle and got to it as soon as I got home. The first problem was that though I could find the nice clean 8 inch taping knife (cheap, plastic handle, steel blade) I could not find the nice 5 inch knife (expensive, wooden handle, stainless steel blade) or my cornering knife (expensive, wooden handle, specially shaped blade). I searched high and low but they were nowhere to be found.

Then I looked at the bucket of increasingly dirty water I use to clean off the tools during this pig of a job and an ugly suspicion formed.

Yes, my nice tools had weathered overnight and overthenextday in a bucket of water, waterlogging the wood handles nicely and probably starting the process of any non-stainless parts (handle rivets etc) rusting away. Thank you Mr Brain. Apparently I had put them in the water in order to clean them then become distracted for 22 hours. Wooden handles do not, of course, tollerate being soaked in water as anyone who has put a prized collection of steak knives into the dishwasher can attest. Never mind. What can't be cured must be allowed to fester, as they say.

I did the ceiling to wall corners and called it a filthy, rotten, scumsucking pig of a day.