Freshly Cut Tiles and a Chicken in the Bathtub

You know the old saying, "If you give a girl a cut tile, she'll lay it in the entry closet. But if you teach a girl to use the tile saw, she'll tile the entire closet on her own?" Yeah, I'd never heard it either.

Until this weekend.

When we moved into our house, the closet in our entryway had what probably was the world's most disgusting, putrid carpet in the history of floorweavings. We should have donated it to science, as I'm pretty sure there was some new strain of Anthrax growing in it. Needless to say, Mr. W ripped it out almost immediately and we just left the exposed concrete in there and piled all of our junk on top of it.

Purdy, right? That brown stuff is carpet glue. A treat to clean.

But since we started working on the backsplash in the kitchen this weekend, and the tile saw was hot, we decided to finally put something more permanent down in the closet. We used leftover tiles from the kitchen floor, AKA the hardest, heaviest tiles ever forged. They took forever to cut because they're so solid, but it was kinda fun to do it.

After I sliced through several (and trimmed some of the marble ones for the backsplash—which were SO much softer and easier to cut) I even got really ballsy and tackled a corner cut where the molding intercepts the floor space. I think I may have a new career.

Here's what the closet floor looks like now:

Better, right? Still needs to be cleaned—but a big improvement.

And in case you were wondering, here's a peek at the new Carrara backsplash tile in the kitchen. (Don't tell Mr. W because he asked me not to share any more kitchen pictures until The Big Reveal when everything is finished. Let's pretend I'm just showing you the chicken apple sausages from Trader Joe's that we ate for dinner last night...)

Amidst all the tiling, we also had some major chicken misadventures this weekend. Saturday while I was clearing a new spot for kale and letting the girls free range, little miss Carrie Birdshaw hopped the fence, cut through a hole in my neighbor's hedge and wandered over to say hello to them. All of the sudden, I turned around and she was gone. As I started frantically calling her name (as if she's going to come when called...) I heard my neighbor's voice say, "Uh Melissa, are you missing a chicken?"

I raced over to their yard and there she was, happy as a clam to be cruising around on a lush green lawn. We exchanged some words and she went directly back into her run where she wrote "I will not wander into the neighbor's yard" 40 times on the blackboard.

While she was out gallivanting all over town, her sister Samantha was coming down with some unknown bird affliction. I noticed her acting spacey in the yard, and later she was sleeping inside the coop and seemed to be keeping to a corner of the run.

As per my natural mode of operating as a chicken mother, I panicked and started furiously consulting chicken blogs.

Then I remembered something a friend had shared with me on Facebook about remedying various hen ailments with "the spa cure." So I headed to Rite Aid and bought some Epsom salts to give my girl a bath.

Unfortunately I was so worked up, I didn't think to take a picture of her in the bathtub. It was pretty darn adorable. She was very relaxed as her little feet and belly had a good soak and I stroked her back and neck. It was so late when we took her out that Mr. W insisted we blow her dry so she wouldn't catch a cold when we put her back in the coop to sleep. Shockingly, she just stood quietly while we literally blew hot air up her butt. I thought for sure the sound of the hairdryer would send her into a frenzy, but I guess the calming, warm breeze overruled it.

How could anyone not love that face?

A little olive oil and some vitamins and oatmeal and she seemed okay enough to reunite with her sisters.

The next morning, she was good as new. Phew.

Now if she'd only get cracking on some egg-laying already.