Okay, I promised to be open when I started this blog, and I’ve had enough therapy and counseling to last several lifetimes, so I’ve got to work this out myself. I think my former girlfriend my have a crush on the tile man. She spent considerable time yesterday laying out the new tiles – he left them for her to experiment with – and she has already come up with several patterns and plans, alternating dark and light blue in a pattern that she sees in her head but I can only imagine.

Of all the things I worried about, I never thought to worry about her running off with the tile man, but he really understands her disgust with the existing kitchen floor, installed around 1950, and grimy and impossible to clean. Since she is not what you might call domestic – her idea of shopping for the week is a cheese, loaf of bread and some apples – and she does not care to cook, I was taken aback by the ferocity and determination of the kitchen floor tile campaign. Today, her eyes lit up as she realized Joe could probably do the bathroom floor – very small space – for just a few hundred bucks.

Joe worries me. He is funny, creative and very much understands her feelings about floors and tiles and designs. He left Maria several boxes of tiles for her to “play around with” – this is giving crack to an addict and he said he was eager to see her designs.

She says she wants me to have a new stove to cook on, but I think this is just to distract me from the tile man.

Joe was supposed to come Friday, but he got tied up and Maria was like a little kid who just learned that Santa Claus was not real. She spent much of the day looking out the window to see if any car passing was him.  I hope he comes Monday, but I plan to be here all day if he does. I wonder why he didn’t ask me to play around with the tiles.