The Problem With A Floating Floor

There are several challenges with floating flooring. It takes a whole lot of work, time and energy to get it looking like a real wood floor. The surface it lies on has to be perfectly flat, to start.  No problem, right? But you check, and …uh-oh. You’ve just discovered your flat sub floor isn’t flat after all. This means stirring up and applying a filler which with more work dries level to support the pieces. That’s only if you’ve done it absolutely right. It’s not wet enough to find its own perfect level. Why would it? After all, you’v already chosen to go the cheaper route rather than use real wood planks, haven’t you? That already says a cheap imitation is good enough… for you.

Somewhere, some time, some wise person admonished the world to be careful what you asked for.

The “floating wood floor” sales staff tell you how to get your pieces almost to the edge of the floor but not too tight. They’ll tell you that your floor will  expand and contract with temperature and humidity, and you need to give it room. They never tell you that with your thermostat set at a fairly constant comfortable temperature, it’s not that big an issue. Listening to the salesmen will create one however. Maybe one strip in 20 strips of pieces cut to go across the full width of your floor wind up being the correct length, not too short so they slide all over the place, not so long something buckles. Whatever space you’re told to put between the end of the planks and the vertical walls on each end, use only half that much. They really don’t shrink and stretch like the sales people say. If you follow their directions you’ll be back in six months willing to lay down more big bucks for a better floor. Why not sell you two floors when you only need one? Not to mention the second one will often be the expensive one you tried to avoid getting in the first place.

How does that happen? Well, if you put 1/8” space between one end of your planks row and the wall on that end, and the same thing on the other, suddenly you have a quarter inch of moving shifting space. Murphy’s law demands that it always manages, with people walking on the floor, to accumulate somewhere in the middle of the floor, where it’s most conspicuous. Further, every speck of dirt, dust, animal fur, or food will collect in the spot, be impossible to remove because of how the planks interlock, and manage to somehow drive the gap wider as the ends worm their way apart even more than you would believe the rules of physics allow.

It can be so tempting to peel back the original linoleum, or carpeting, thanks to how ugly they look after all those years and how badly they turn you off of ever using such again, and vow to get something different. Beautiful. Just like they look in the store displays. Who knew fake woodgrain came in so many wonderful patterns and colors? If you really are in love with wooden floors, for Pete’s sake GET SOME DANG REAL WOODEN FLOORS! Lay it out, tamp it down, NAIL IT to the cotton-picking subfloor! Throw in some bottles of glue for good measure, but whatever you do, don’t let the thing float!!!

Your floating floor will move. Separate. Creep and crawl. As the fill makes it more uneven, corners stick up, corners dive down, crawl over other pieces’s edges, teetering till one more foot print splinters the corner and two of the three new pieces spread out to make more mischief. It’s become a competition to find out just which tiny bit sticking up now can be the first to poke through your unlucky bare foot, just because you have to, really really have to get up in the dark of night and go to the bathroom or get a snack or drink from the refrigerator, or rock the baby back to sleep …if you’re lucky and baby isn’t teething or something. In the daytime, when presumably you are alert, possibly well shod, and can avoid the troublesome spots in the floor, then you don’t have to worry so much. But night… oh my! When baby starts crawling… Yikes! Danger Will Robinson!

For a while they used a kind of particle board when all-wood got horribly expensive. After that they inserted a strip of metal through the middle to help keep things flat. Except it didn’t. The sales people somehow never managed to inform you of that fact, instead claiming it was so-o-o-o much better than the last incarnation of a floating floor. Any small heavy thing, like a portable dishwasher’s wheels for example, or a rolling chair inhabited by a human going across the floor, wreaked havoc on the surface. Corners chipped off. Metal strips curled up, sharp now, strewn in curls over the floor and into the floor and… into your bare feet. If you were lucky, perhaps they only tripped you as you allowed your feet to shuffle a bit. Of course, “lucky” depends on just how you landed.

At first, as things start breaking down, duct tape is very handy, helping coat the edges, slow movement, save skin on feet. But now you only think it’s safe to walk on because the duct tape camouflages the sharp edges. You go back to rolling wheels over the floor.  But the tape wears away even faster than the top of the planks, so now you have something extremely ugly, and sticky to boot. You pick up the tough loose pieces which were actually filling in sharp missing corners, making the next level of destruction even faster and deeper. As a bonus it’s become even more impossible to keep clean.

Months pass. Possibly you let years pass. Holes fill in and spread wider. More sharp curls peel off. One day it finally happens. You look at the floor in its actual state, and realize, “Hey, that ugly old fashioned linoleum floor was never this ugly or dangerous. Let’s go shopping for some, see what’s the latest thing now. Hey, maybe they even have some of that in a nice pretty woodgrain design!"

Congratulations! You’ve realized that the truly worst thing about this floating floor you’ve surrounded yourself with is its biggest flaw: it floats!

Did I Mention Mail Problems?

Oh yeah, I'm sure I have. They've been an issue for weeks... uh, months, now. We've tried a multiple of things, and still....

The latest one was absurd. I'd been shopping for Tide laundry detergent. I prefer the powder, always have. Liquids spill and make messes that can't be just brushed up. Pods just invite trouble, even without toddlers around, and I prefer to use less than the official recommended amount because it actually does just as good a job. Consumer Reports showed that years ago along with cold water being just as effective as hot, while better for your clothes. So I stick with what I like. It's one of the ways I earn my geezer-hood.

Unfortunately, the boxes have been harder to find recently. I did get one just after we relocated, and decided to look for another one, not because we needed it yet, but just as an "in case" purchase. The store no longer carried it!

WTF? (For friends and fans of Farscape, that "F" stands for "frell". Because of course it does... there. Great TV series.)

I decided to check their online ordering. Often those have what isn't on the store shelves, but can be either picked up outside later or even delivered to the door. It took a while, but I located some. Since it looked like they were phasing it out for whatever reason, I went ahead and ordered 3 boxes. To be delivered.

They didn't arrive. Now this store has been very reliable, over the last few years of our ordering that way, i.e., since covid. The house has a deeply recessed entryway, and with cars parked in the driveway obscuring the view of whatever may happen to sit in that space, things have always been safe there. No temptation, no porch pirates.

Right now I've been ordering lots of needed supplies for the new house, still to be delivered here since we haven't actually moved into the new-to-us one yet. They have lots more variety online, so I don't have to settle for most popular, everybody-buys-these, items. I had recently managed to find window blinds there to replace broken ones in a bedroom, which come in a kind of weird size, for example, and which arrived today. They'd been delayed a couple extra days, likely for being pretty rare. No biggie. But it got me thinking, I hadn't seen my Tide yet. Time to check my order.

Browsing through my order history, it claimed to have been delivered June 7. Really? Three boxes of powdered Tide, requested per our orders' standing delivery request to go in the deep entryway, got delivered and we hadn't noticed? It was time to call the company's customer service number.

Once I had a human, the order number was asked for and given. Yep, they showed it delivered, June 7. Had I checked with my neighbors? What did the photo showing where it was put say? Photo? What photo? He checked further, and it said... they were put in my mailbox.

Say what? I haven't actually tried it but I doubt one box would go in my mailbox. Since they're kinda heavy, I'm not about to try it either. He suggested maybe they were put on the ground next to it? Not a chance! We hear the mail truck. It has a noisy engine. Rrrrr, pause, rrrrr, pause, rrrrrr, pause, and after a while it's on the street behind us. Yes, it's that noisy. I've had so many problems getting mail delivered up here that I pay attention and head out as soon as my shoes go on. So no, I knew it hadn't gone into my mailbox or under it.

I didn't bother mentioning that a couple weeks ago we had gotten one delivery here for the house a street over with an identical number. I just took it over there and dropped it off myself. If somebody around town had something like that happen but with my box - and their own really huge mailbox! - they hadn't seen fit to do something similar. After all who can't use more laundry detergent? And a package of 3 boxes would have been quite hefty.

For my problem, I was given a code number for a $15 coupon off my next purchase. After being kicked "upstairs" to somebody with more responsibility and less accent, and giving my bona fides again, I was promised to have the cost of the order refunded back onto my credit card. It would take maybe 5 days. 

But these days it sure beats a check in the mail, right? 

And yes, I will order something again from the company and use the coupon. Just not sure for what yet. Right now plans are for emptying the PODS so we can move. We'll have to wait to see what there is both need and room for once that's done next week. Meanwhile I'll keep hunting for powdered Tide in whatever stores I'm in which might carry it.

BackTo Crex Meadows

 I haven't managed to make it a priority since we arrived up north. The stress was enough to spoil any enjoyment until I could finally relax and put it on my list. Of course, the real impetus was their newest photo contest starting yesterday. For those interested, you can find them online, including rules and last year's submissions. 

I didn't enter last year. But I decided to give it a go again this year. The photo I'm most emotionally invested in wasn't even shot until fall, long after the contest ended. And my most recent submission for this year was shot this morning.

   Canadian Honker family out for a swim, young already half grown
 

They give you 6 categories, limit of one per each, or a total of 6.  I wrangled up 4, and that was a process. Before the move north I got into my head that I needed to clear a whole sh**load of photos from my laptop. Mostly it was because I needed to update my software - virus protection and stuff - and I had no room to do so. Thus, off to the store for thumbdrives, and more thumbdrives. Tape on labels for the category of photos on each, so I know where to find stuff. One such category was Crex. Its photos went on two thumbdrives. (I bought bigger ones later.) Another was videos, another people, another miscellaneous travels. There are more, and I never did finish loading them up. But it was enough space to update my software, with the newly (yesterday) discovered bonus that it's suddenly very easy to format a photo file during cropping into a variety of shapes, like 8x10, what the contest requires. I'd tried it before and there was a series of steps with symbols I didn't understand and can't remember. No problem anymore.

                                     heron along the shore

 What was a very big problem is that the second Crex thumbdrive isn't in my zipper bag of them. I went through them yesterday and looked. And looked again. I had specific photos in mind to submit this year. Exactly one of them was in my laptop. I took extra special care to keep it and another copy formatted for size, partly because I had in mind a second project for it as well. Some time after I'm all unpacked and with more time on my hands......

After about two hours of searching, I had another idea. I dug through old SD cards. There might be at least one other special photo I'd had in mind to submit with a very special caption, still sitting on one of those. I keep SD cards in my camera case along with spare charged batteries. Sometimes I write over them, as in taking the "erase after download" option. Sometimes I keep them as is, once full. (What? You wanted logic and consistency?)

                                        heron in a stream

 I managed to find two more shots, the one I had the caption for, and one "good enough" in another category I seldom find things to shoot. So, three to submit then. 

This year it's all online. I started mid afternoon, making sure the files were in 8x10 format, and had names other than a big number-dot-jpg. That turned into a good choice.  I could find them later. The first part went quickly with autofill. Hmmm, they keep a file on me, do they? OK, good to know. I couldn't figure how exactly to add the photo file to their form. Good thing their office wasn't closed yet. After three phone calls and my trying to remember all the steps I'd been talked through, this second time around without their guidance (fail!), I finally got that figured out. 

                            trumpeter swan with 3 very new cygnets

Now to pay. I entered a card number. Their form informed me it wasn't a valid card number. Say what? I've been using it like gangbusters for the last three months, as well as paying it back down to keep it in good standing. A peek at the end of their scold was a four digit number which, as soon as I dug out the other card to try to use that one, looked very familiar.  Hmmmm, very interesting! It was that card's last 4 digits. OK, I entered that car info, and got the same scold to enter a valid card number. WTF? Steve offered my use of his card, so I started over, with his name and all new other information. 

SAME DANG SCOLD! 

Of course it was five minutes past their office hours, so I had to wait for morning to try again. And then, still no go. I'd left an early morning message about the issue, and offered to come up in person to pay if I had to. They'd gotten my message, put their IT person to work, and when I finally arrived in person, still didn't know if the system was working yet for online payments, but my card worked just fine at their register.

Now if you had to lay odds on whether, given an excuse to go to my favorite place to shoot pictures, I'd have thought to pop my camera in the car, how would you bet? Yep, Steve thought so too. And besides, there were categories I had no photo entries for.

Then.

One more has now been submitted. And I can assure you that their online submission process is currently flawless. They added a line for the zip code... so I just had to recall which one I'd changed the card over to, current or future.

                       teal giving himself a thorough morning bath

 While I won't show you any current submissions, I did dig into the newest selection of photos not going into the contest. These are Crex this morning, post rain, still cloudy so light conditions are pretty good, and mostly cropped smaller to give this blog smaller files to fight with. Hope you enjoyed.

Pulling The Ground From Under Your Feet

That's supposed to be a figure of speech... at least when you're lucky. When ground you have trod, or driven over recently, collapses, it's a whole different thing. Twice now I've had occasion to hear a news report and reflect I've been there. 

I just have good timing.

The first time was the collapse of the 35W bridge in Minneapolis. I've mentioned it here a couple times. No repeat is necessary.

The second event I heard about on the morning national news today. I had to look it up on a map to be sure we're talking about the same piece of mountain road. We are.

It was in May of 2021, during a fairly extravagant trip - for us - that Steve and I had planned to celebrate our being released from over a year of covid lockdown, thanks to vaccinations being finally available, and making up for it with our annual snowbird trip north being longer, hitting more places, and spending more money. Most of the highlights of that trip happened in the Rockies, visiting parks in late spring, a time we hadn't experienced there before when they were still fairly deserted. We can drive from AZ to MN in three days. We took two weeks. New routes, new sights, let's make it an adventure! We're free!

We came down the west side of the Tetons, a view of them we'd never seen. The big park is on the east, a much lower altitude, and quite familiar to both of us. We still went through Jackson Hole, but took a new-to-us pass to get there. It was beautiful, spots of remaining snow scattered at the bases of pines, bends and turns revealing new versions demanding new photos (where possible - not safe to pull over mostly) and a bit of an exercise on the brakes. The road is known as Teton Pass.

Yes, that Teton Pass, the one in the news this morning, where part of the highway, just after repairs, slid down a deep slope it formerly clung to into a ravine, where a later camera shot caught the rest of it following, bringing the last of the pavement with it.

Yes, I'd driven it, never imagining the vulnerability. Mountains are all really really big rocks, right? You have to cut their surfaces smooth, right? What do you mean, talking about fill to smooth the little valleys? 

In our direction of travel, we'd have gone with the first drop, on the outside curve, had our timing been a few years worse. Luckily there were no casualties. The mountain has been shifting for a long time, and just after the repairs had been finished it was noted there was a new crack / gap in the pavement. But our timing was better, any personal disaster left to the imagination, or perhaps those dreams which wake one in the wee hours, trembling and sleepless for a while. I don't know yet, having just watched the video footage from the safety of a warm, non-moving home.

But hey, you know me: if it happens, you'll hear about it. But for now, breakfast, coffee, and a shower. More stuff to do... on level ground.

Baby Birds

It's been nice returning to Minnesota, if for no other reason than the birds. The drought of the past several years has broken, at least for now, and young birds are in evidence, even if indirectly in some cases. 

The first one - singular - I noticed this year was a sandhill crane colt with its parents in a field adjacent to Highway 8 between Forest Lake and Chisago City. Even if I tried to tell you which field, it wasn't in that one again for any of the subsequent times I drove by. Steve and I looked, of course. We'd see turkeys occasionally, but only adults, and other cranes, but again, only adults. At least we didn't see my worst nightmare, a family of four strewn along the highway as victims to some motorist, about 8 years ago. So far this year, none. A couple roadkill turtles of course, but no cranes.

The next sighting was right over our front door while staying with my youngest as we have every summer we've headed north from Sun City. We have a deeply recessed entry between the house and what used to be an attacked garage, now converted to a 4th bedroom. One of the first years after the house was built, barn swallows built a nest taking advantage of the tiny lip of the front door fame to anchor their nest onto. It was predictably messy. Still is, as over the years a few other nests were built in the same location. My son built a wooden ledge with dividers and mounted it up at the top side of the entryway, and occasionally another family of barn swallows took temporary residence. The issue with all of them is us, passing way too close as we enter and leave the house. Somehow they persevere however. 

This year it was a robin family, with what turned out to be 5 young, countable as they outgrew their nest. I cleaned the glass front door windows, braced the screen door open, and got a few pictures from inside the house, until they fledged one night during a thunderstorm.

Just a couple days prior their eyes were still closed, but with bills wide open in wait we could see a fringe along the side of the bill. Our best guess is that helps keep food, once latched onto, inside the mouth until swallowed. The entire family relocated after that storm, and sometime in the future the trailing nest will be removed so another one for whatever bird family can be built there.

We have a lot of coming and going these days, and it eases the conscience a bit knowing we're no longer disturbing the nest. However, there are new families at our new home. And we're doing a lot of coming and going there as well, in preparation for our final move in. I'm hoping to catch the younger new family before everything is disrupted with hours of hauling in furniture and boxes. But it took a few days to finally identify them.

There are a pair of old bird houses on a single pole lining the sidewalk from parking space to front stairs. Both are in need of paint, aesthetically. I'm not sure the parents agree, because they settled in for the duration despite the "property values" of the houses. Or was it because of them?

On the day in question, my first  sighting, we were having some pieces of furniture moved into our new home. We needed places to sit, and had thrift-shopped our way to possession of a nice sofa and a recliner. Family was helping us bring them in, since of course we two can't move anything much bigger than a multi-roll of TP in size, especially up the 5 steps to get in. But the exterior plantings had been neglected for a while and bushes were growing over most of the width of the sidewalk. It had just rained and brushing those bushes soaked whatever touched them. Out came the pruners, planned for ahead of time. First the tallest bush, spreading out almost over the hole in the tallest birdhouse. Snip snip snip. I noted a young tree coming up the middle of the growth, to be tackled later, but after stepping away for a respite, I noted 3 young house sparrows hopping into the newly revealed opening in their bush, waiting for their next treat. 

Too bad. I had more work to do. In the interim, that family moved out. The adjacent bush was not only wet as well, and draped across the sidewalk, it was a rose bush, full of thorns to snag at furniture and those carrying it. Especially me. I could not touch a branch, however carefully I tried, without getting snagged and/or stabbed. Not only did I have to clip them back, I had to finish that in time to remove the clippings off the pathway. I did note buds, yet another tree, and a low bush long since covered by bigger neighbors which was still trying to bloom (later identified as a bleeding heart). I decided to allow the rose to finish its blooming, but then it is going to go away, along with the weed tree and most of the largest bush. We needed a clear sidewalk, especially for later when Steve had access to his scooter again.

As I stood for a moment, I saw a different bird fly to the roof of the lower birdhouse, then up through the door of the taller. It was terribly skinny, no appreciable belly at that time, though it has apparently caught up on feeding itself along with its offspring by now. In that brief moment I saw black, with what appeared to be a white stripe heading back over the top of its bill and another under in the chin area. What little time I had left before it disappeared allowed me a good view of a bright yellow caterpiller in the bird's bill, kind of rough textured and much like a one inch long yellow wiggly toothpick with tiny legs. 

After that I finished my clearing and cleaning, got busy with the new furniture coming in, and saw no more of the bird. Still, it's weird shape and pattern baffled me. I tried googling by what I remembered of its description, asked a knowledgeable relative and checked her suggestions out, and was still stumped. The only way was to take the camera along for future visits, sit in the car, and wait for better sightings. Days later, along with many bad photos including many with the bird just gone into its door or flown away coming out, I finally got a sequence that worked.

Here, complete with dinner, is a chickadee! Duh! Of course it is! I grew up with these birds, put out suet feeders for them in winter - and will again in a few months. Now as I walk by their home on my way to or from ours, I can hear their familiar call scolding us for interrupting dinner for the young'uns. The parents will be on the neighbor's roof, waiting for us to go away so we don't "discover" where their nest is.

Too late! But we will be sure to either stay in the car a few minutes or hurry past on our own business. Welcome to our yard, guys! 

Chic-a dee, dee, dee, dee, dee.

You Know You've Been Packing Too Much...

We've been starting to put things into the new home to make it ours while we're waiting for our PODS to arrive from Arizona and we can really move in. Things we need but didn't pack, or didn't even know we'd need, are being ordered, and as they arrive at the "old" place  for continuity, meaning somebody will be around to receive them. Except for the freezer, of course, as it has to be installed as part of delivery.

The frequent rains give lots of reasons to head over to the new house, successful as they are at (over)-growing bushes, weeds, and invasive Johnson grass, already taller than most of the long established bushes. Steve can sit inside, since there is only one outside chair over there until the PODS arrivesn but a couch and recliner now fill their assigned spaces, and dream his dreams and make his plans for where furniture ends up and what vacancies still need to be filled, from furniture on down to small organizers to pictures on walls. Laundry now gets cycled there as well.

When we're back at the "old" house we do much the same, looking around our current space and deciding what can head over now and what we still need to live with here. It's also our only current source of wi-fi and TV, not to mention being able to cook and clean up the kitchen. Paul set his system up with Netflix, brand new to us, except for recognizing the name of course. Almost immediately we latched on to "Heartland" and have been going through it all in sequence. Beautiful horses, spectacular mountains, and characters we get some life lessons from along the way, both positive and negative.

This morning we were in season 16, an episode where Great Grandpa Jack had been unsuccessfully trying to repair a very old generator after a storm took out the power to the ranch. He'd struggle, get it going, and within a few hours it would fail... again. After stepping in a puddle from the freezer's lack of power, he was finally persuaded to purchase a new generator, something almost anathema to him since repair was always his go-to. It was gorgeous, shiny, in colors other than rust, and the scene showed the old man still with the strength needed to lift it out of its box.

My comment to Steve? "Great box!"

Yep, I've been packing too much.

When We Got the News

We had waited so long, so many obstacles, so much paperwork, so much stress tied to such high hopes, so much money spent. Sleep had been interrupted or prevented with worrying about every last little thing.  For each bit of progress there followed a new obstacle. We found ourselves inventing reasons it wasn't going to work. That last night I was obsessing about the fact that were we finally rejected, there was absolutely no second choice. We'd have to start over, or try, knowing the obstacles which had caused our first failure. Or maybe there'd just be more delays and we'd have to rethink our time schedule for organizing the move and all the people who would help. 

That last night we'd been called with one last obstacle in the paperwork and having to argue that it was just what it was, I couldn't prove how I'd changed my name back in '68 by selecting the three I preferred out of the four I now had after getting married, I just dropped the middle one I hated and everybody accepted it. Period. I actually had a pretty large identity footprint, it was all me, and there should be no problem for professional investigators to follow my trail for all my 75 years and discover how law abiding and responsible I was. Sure, a couple mild speeding tickets many years ago, but who among all their park tenants  didn't have one or two of them somewhere in their long past?

Steve was doing his own version of the same kind of inventing reasons to be rejected. He's actually never checked his credit history. He worried about qualifying for their required credit score. He's never held a mortgage, never bought a brand new car, hasn't bought any car recently since we now get along on one. He kept insisting he didn't even have a credit score! But long ago he straightened out his spending habits and began saving, has taken care of paying some household bills on a regular monthly basis, has bought several cell phones on payment plans and payed those monthly charges, and recently even has an ongoing account for a piece of medical equipment which alerts with GPS should he fall and be unable to move or reach his phone. 

He has a credit score! We just don't know what it is. We do know mine is certainly high enough, however.

Early that next morning I got my phone call with the good news. Steve was sitting right next to me, heard me address the caller by name so knew what it was about, saw my vigorous thumbs-up as I listened. As the fairly short call progressed his smile grew to match mine. As soon as I hung up I confirmed the good news: We were approved! We could buy our new home and move in, ASAP!

Steve was too excited to sit in his chair. He stood up, turned to face me, and yelled an extended "Hooray!" that was so loud that even as I was watching him it made me jump! He followed that with, "I'm sorry, but I just have to do that again!" and did so. While still standing, he thought for a minute, turned apologetically to face me more directly, said, "That was exhausting. I'm going to bed," and left.

Meanwhile I proceeded to do the first thing I could at this early hour. I started emailing friends and family our official new address. After breakfast I changed ones I could online, like financial accounts, arranged for our PODS to be sent north, worked more on the must-do pre-move shopping list, notified the owner of our new home she didn't have to pay the June lot rent after all, and when should we get together to pay her and do the title transfer? The ball was now rolling!