It’s good to have a helper, particularly a helper who’s working for free, has skills and arrives in a vehicle that can carry materials that won’t fit in my old Chrysler.

It does take an attitude adjustment to work with someone who’s more methodical than me and has to figure things out for himself rather than assuming I know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I know from experience; often in this new line of work I’m inexperienced but have done a fair amount of research; and yeah, sometimes I am clueless. But I’m not always clueless, and it takes an attitude adjustment on my part to accept help from someone who seems to assume I’m clueless in every case.

It didn’t take an attitude adjustment, however, to accept four days of free help when it was generously offered, because I just had a birthday and the assistance was a gift. I felt justified in accepting. In anticipation I made a list of five tasks I cannot not do alone. Two and a half of them got done, plus some landscaping tasks that weren’t on the list but were important with the rainy spring we’re having.

I’m grateful.

People more methodical than me must be more accustomed to delayed gratification than I am — for them it must be OK to put up with a longer period of getting ready to get a bunch of rewards all at once, at the end. Personally I prefer to enjoy the rewards of completed tasks more frequently. It keeps me motivated.

So when I had my helper we got ready to do a number of jobs — brainstormed, decided what we needed, went shopping for hours, spent a bunch of money and then delivered the stuff to the jobsite in the student-ghetto vacancy. All important. We never got around to completing any tasks, but the stuff is all there, ready to go, and plans are laid for how to proceed. If there are no snags in the execution it should be easy to wrap up a couple of things.

From my experience, however, no matter how much I plan and shop there is always something I didn’t plan for when the job is underway.
I’ll keep you posted about that.

Meanwhile, my delayed gratification cup was running over as my helper and I parted company at the stone house. I was itching for a job I could finish and look at.
I had purchased ceramic tile for a backsplash over the little sink in the second floor shared bathroom at the stone house and I was planning to move my tiling tools to the student ghetto job so I could tile the wall above the kitchen sink.

I’ve only done one prior tile job — also a backsplash — and it still seems like a major task even though it’s really pretty easy.

So before I left the stone house with the tools I wrapped up that little tiling job. The worst part was deciding how un-level I wanted to go — lined up with the sink, lined up with the medicine cabinet above, or actually level. Fairly important since it’s what you’re facing when you sit on the toilet so a problem would be seen daily. I split the difference between the sink and the cabinet and it looks OK. With just one row of tile and one row of bullnose it didn’t get terribly off level.

I bought a premixed grout since I needed so little and it did shrink a bit so I’ll have to top it off next week. Still have to caulk up to the sink.

The best part was completing something that looks so substantial. I love tile. Learning how to install it is one of the most satisfying new skills I have acquired lately.

I get to look at it every time I use the bathroom.