Apropos of nothing

I think Scott Pelley on CBS news is Santa.

Just look at his face when he smiles. He's mirthful, his eyes crinkle . . . he just loses weight in the summer. Read Twas the Night Before Christmas. I'm telling you, he's Santa.

I think the heat is getting to me. Or rather, today, it was the humidity. I went outside the garage around 9:30 this morning to sand the hanging poles for our closet. Within minutes, I was drenched, and it wasn't even raining. And (this may be TMI for some of you) strangely, one of the odd things about my body is that my knees sweat. I mean really sweat. Like rivulets of salt and water streaming down my legs enough to soak my feet and make them prune-y in my flip flops. My thighs are fine, and the rest of me sweats like a normal man (yes, you read that right). But geez, my knees.

By the way--I have a theory about heavy-sweating people. The thicker their eyebrows (the ones that come in naturally, not the ones we women pluck), the more they sweat. I don't know if it's true, but my eyebrows are thick and in constant need of maintenance, and I lather. A friend of mine doesn't sweat at all and she has those perfect, pencil-thin eyebrows that never need maintenance. I submit it to you and ask for feedback to support my hypothesis. Anything disproving my hypothesis will be ignored.

So now I have flip-flop knee sweat and sawdust mixing on my legs and arms and congregating on every fiber of my shirt. And my hair is soaked with sweat, with my bangs getting in my eyes. (Raw wood and water or sweat are not good combinations for receiving stain.) And we're talking about only being outside for approximately 30 minutes or so. I don't understand how the the humidity level was only 89%.

This sweating thing was a major problem for me today, in case you can't tell.

After a delicate dance of sanding, then wiping my arms and forehead before sanding some more, I finally managed to sand the poles and get inside before they got wet again. Then I had go inside and towel off and find some way of taming my hair so it wouldn't drip on everything. Rich thought I'd already been staining by the way I looked. And I wasn't even done sanding.

Then I went back to the garage and did a quick sanding of the fronts of all of the drawers and got them ready for staining as well.

Staining involves making sure you have all your rags, a few paper towels, nitrile gloves (since latex turns my hands orange), the stain, a church key to open it, a stir stick, and everything within reach, since once you start, you can't touch anything. I'm getting better and better at prepping. I had everything ready--I looked like a surgeon. I even had each step planned for when I pulled each drawer, stained it, and placed it back to dry, while simultaneously maneuvering around the sawhorses, miter saw, raw wood, sheetrock, tile, old vanity, trash can, etc that we can't get out of the garage yet. Oh, and ideally, you're supposed to have less than 80% humidity when staining. Pffftt. Staining, for me, waits for no weather. Gotta get this stuff done while I still have time off and just enough floor space to do this.

Got the first coat of stain on everything and then had to stop because my hands were sweating so much that they were dripping out from under the gloves, down my arms, and trying to get into the stain container, or the finish of whatever I was working on. So I went inside and toweled off again and tried to cool down. Invest in Gatorade, people!

After that, I went back into the garage and stained the second coat of everything. Felt pretty good, temperature-wise, until the last few drawer fronts, but thought since I was going inside with the A/C to stain the door to the closet, it wouldn't be that bad. By this time, it's literally storming and pouring rain outside. 95% humidity? Why isn't it 100% when water is falling out of the sky? I don't understand. In any event, thank God for our garage.

So I went inside to our new closet and started staining the door. Ugh. It has more creases than Robert Redford's face. And getting stain into them is about as much fun and challenging. And did I mention there's no A/C in the closet (something I forgot), so it's pouring rain outside, and I'm in a stuffy closet, breathing stain fumes? Sigh. I kept telling myself how awesome it would look when done. The trick to getting stuff in the creases was to soak the rag heavily and then smash it into each crevice like you're stemming the flow of blood from a gushing wound. So I got one side of the door done. And all the fronts of the drawers, and all the poles done with two coats. And lost about a gallon of sweat.

My other ambitions of touch-up painting, sanding and rolling, and maybe even doing some more mudding were dashed. I can only function without so much water in my body. I'm spent.

Tomorrow, the touch-up painting, and all the varnish for the drawers and poles and door. I hope.