My muse is gone.
She hooked up with a passing daimon, Momos I think. After a week of nonstop fornication and alcohol-fueled debauchery, she's sprawled in the rear footwell of a 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88 convertible, nude, unconscious, and leaking godly, pearlescent love fluids from various orifices.
I had planned to sew up my "baby" story nice and tight, but plans are like mice: small and easily poisoned.
Speaking of plans and poison, what promised to be a week of joy with my parents in town turned into a disaster. No, we didn't accidentally switch the Pam cooking spray with Raid. Suffice it to say that my daughter overtaxed her diapers, my son puked for three days, my wife sliced a healthy slab of flesh from the side of her finger that didn't stop bleeding for about 28 hours, and I lost about 12 pounds. I suppose it was a blessing that my parents spent most of their time on the road for my dad's business.
In further planning travesties, my über-workbench has been put on hold. The roots of the current impasse lead back to December of last year. As my wife busily distributed candles, lamps, garland, and lights that transformed our ho-hum house into a holiday wonderland, she mentioned something about wanting a mantlepiece by next Christmas on which to place knickknacks and from which to hang stockings. I probably mumbled something that could be taken for assent and promptly forgot about it.
I wasn't reminded of this great mantlepiece idea until a month or so ago… after I'd filled the garage with machinery and 180 board feet of project lumber. When I was hauling in the 12-foot slabs of maple, I thought to myself "Gosh, these sure get in the way. I'm glad this pile will disappear as I make my workbench top." Silly me.
Why not just buy a mantlepiece from the bajillions of fireplace surround kits out there? Well, because our house is special, of course. The fireplace is set off-center in a brick face that runs 74" along a wall from a window into a corner. I could slap on a generic kit, but I'd pay too much, spend too much time customizing it, and it would still end up looking like complete ass. I don't feel up to pulling off the brick face and redoing the wall just yet.
Instead, I've spent the last few weeks (not counting the week with my ass glued to the toilet seat) ripping, shaping, and gluing strips of MDF into a mantlepiece as I dance and hurdle over a two-foot stack of wood bisecting our garage.
Despite the gymnastics, the process has been as rewarding as I'd hoped it would be. The router table extension on my table saw has worked out absolutely perfectly. My dust collector has been greedily sucking up every speck of sawdust. Machining MDF creates plumes of superfine powder that settles as a hoary frost on absolutely everything. About my only regret is not purchasing the dust collector first. Engineered woods also dull steel tools very quickly, so I thanked myself for paying extra for the carbide blades on my jointer when I machined a glued-up slab of MDF. My stacked dado set chewed remarkably straight, flat-bottomed notches. Here I was thankful that I didn't shell out the extra $50 for the Dial-a-Width dado blade. Sure I have to fiddle with separate chippers and shims, but I don't cut that many dadoes and now I don't have to worry about the arbor issues I've read about. I guess my woodworking geek cred takes a hit here, but I'm more interested in making things than collecting tools, despite anything my wife might have to say on the matter.
Pakeha