(no subject)

Does 'the cat threw up all over the bathroom and then pooped on the stainless steel work table in the kitchen at 1 AM' count as first thing in the morning if I hadn't yet gone to sleep when this happened? Because I'm hoping that I can count cleaning up barf and poo as the equivalent of eating a live toad first thing in the morning so that nothing worse happens the rest of the day.

(For the record, the cat seemed to be fine as of my leaving the house. He has trouble evacuating from one end and his efforts to make it happen occasionally result in things evacuating from the other one. I've been putting pumpkin in his food the past several days to try to make things easier for him; I'll be going to the pet store for anti-hairball and digestive care treats as well, because I found a fairly sizable hair agglomeration when I was cleaning up the bathroom, and because when I've given him those treats instead of ordinary greenies he usually doesn't have this issue.)

(no subject)

Work resumed on the headboard this weekend after all. I'll stain the rest of the bed later, but for now I've been working on French polishing the top and sides- at least as best I can do without the use of pumice to fill in the pores and mineral or olive oil to lubricate the pad, since the oil didn't much seem to help with the nightstand.

This covers from ‘hey, it’s been stained!’ up through ‘hey, I just spent half an hour or more applying very thin layers of shellac to one part of the headboard, whee!’.

Further progress.

I did more work on it that wasn't photographed, mostly on the sides and front. I'll take pictures to document that work before starting on any more layers. I should probably also note that the shellac I use is specifically amber-colored, and that Zinsser shellac also comes in clear, and that I have no idea whether this is 1-pound or 2-pound or even what those numbers mean, but apparently they're important if you do French polishing the proper way. All I know is, I saw 'shellac' on the shelf at Home Depot when all of this started and thought 'hey, low VOC content and it's from a renewable source*!', and it kinda snowballed from there.

*This little lady, specifically. Shellac is the secretions of the lac insect, and as such is currently the only major industrial product primarily derived from bugs.