feeling better (and won't shut up!)

Last December we were all set to put down tile, except for the fact that I wasn't doing too well because my laundry detergent was killing me. We put it off, the tile we selected was discontinued, and nothing happened.

Ten days ago we decided we didn't want to go through the hassle of picking tile again, much less figuring out how to install it, so we went to Lowe's and got snap-together flooring samples. Initally the cheap particle board stuff, which several EIs have in their houses (after much airing), smelled better than the real wood, but after a few days, I definitely reacted to the cheap stuff, and the snap-together bamboo seemed pretty good except for being mounted on and smelling like pine. Here's the thing with pine: I don't react to it yet.

Today we learned that these guys have snap-together bamboo mounted on poplar. I have a whole sauna made of poplar, as do several of my friends, so we are all good to go with the do-it-yourself bamboo. We just have to figure out how to get it down here from Phoenix, and that we can do. We're terribly capable unless you make us pick tile colors.

Ok, or get bitten by mosquitoes. I got three mosquito bites on Saturday, and I'd run out of mosquito antigen, and I didn't feel good again until today. What I learned was never to run out of mosquito antigen during monsoon season.

In other news, we had an emergency tenant last night. A nice local man who got sick many years ago stopped tolerating his house and its environs with all the weeds in bloom. He vacated and lined up a place to stay tonight, but didn't have a place for last night. When this happens, you tweak the local grapevine, and that brought him to our doorstep about 9 last night. We offered him our newly-tolerable, recently scrubbed concrete floor, but as is typical with EIs, he found the guest bathroom most tolerable. So a nice man spent the night in our guest bathroom last night, and we all seem to have done fine.

Here are a couple other things I've learned recently:

• You may have noticed that I went from thinking that mask I love would be tolerable in a couple months to wearing it to the store in about a week. That's because I washed all the dust and pollen off it. Sometimes I can be a bit of a moron.
• I definitely still have a conditioned stress response to stores. Until last week, stores were hard. Leaving a store was the end of an ordeal. But now I expect it to be hard, and it's not, so when I get out of the store and realize I still feel fine, I get this thrill, because I went in a store and I survived. So everybody stand back, there's a goddess on the sidewalk.

It's ok. I'll probably get over it.