LOGICal eMOTIONs

The Teachings of Grout.

// February 17th, 2007 // Logical Emotions

Yes, you did indeed read that correctly and before you Google or Wiki to see who this Grout is, I shall save you the hassle by providing this link.

It is true, I am actually talking about the stuff between the tiles, I’ll explain the madness, and no, I have not been eating it… I think… tastes like chicken.

As indicated in my previous post, my life has been consumed by this Interior Design Show that is coming up in T-5 days, and for most of this week I have been laying ceramic and marble tile, as well as dealing with grout. Now, as of last Friday, I have never laid tile, or attempted to deal with grout before in my life, however, it is not nearly as difficult as it seems – trust me!

About mid way through the second fireplace I had to grout, I quickly began to realize that this is truly a skill I could do without and began to hate it immensely. Being hyper-aware of the negativity that was rushing inward, I decided to see what I could learn from GROUT!

So, here are the teachings of grout:

1. Sometimes you have to dig for the good stuff. When dealing with a bucket of Chamois (brown) coloured grout, you will quickly notice that the water you have added in and mixed for 7 minutes quickly leaves the top of the bucket and collects further down. It is like cement in that if it is too dry it is useless, and if it is too wet, well, it’s like spreading soup on a wall… What this means is that as you are applying your grout, over time (a short time) it becomes more and more dry, and so, you have to dig down and get the good stuff.

   I think the recent meme (did I just use jargon?!) of ‘Why I Blog‘ for many people, including myself, forced us to dig a little and get at the good stuff. We typically have our exterior self that we use on a daily basis, however, I think we all know that to get a the good stuff of what we believe, our values, our EMOTIONS, our dreams, goals, and passions, we have to dig. There are those that have these close enough to the surface that a simple scratch will reveal them, but I think for most of us it takes a bit of digging.

2. It’s gonna hurt – but not for long. The act of applying grout is remarkably demanding in the physical sense. Here you have this cement ‘stuff’ (which if you read the bag carefully, it will give you big warnings about it being a carcinogen… yay..), that you have to ‘float’ then clear off. Now, it reads simple enough, right? Well, when you’re dealing with 2″x2″ tile that is 3/8″ thick, the act of ‘floating’ is a combination of spreading while forcing this stuff between the cracks in an even manor. Oh, and the clearing off involves scraping the edge of your rubber ‘float’ (yeah, it’s also a tool?) as hard as you can to scrape off the excess, which in turn leaves you with less to clean off later. Above your head, and at heights below 16″ this is simply great fun! Beware of blisters too.

   It’s the whole pleasure vs. pain scenario isn’t it? Does the ‘pain’ of trying something new hold us back? Most of the time I think we don’t realize that the pain is the short-term part, and the pleasure is the long-term part – especially when all we can see is the pain in the beginning. I believe the big question is simply, ‘How long can you last?’ when it comes to these situations. You know the end game, you know there is a finite amount of time between the start and the end, so, really, can you last to the end?

   I came across this concept a few months back, and I really don’t think I fully ‘get it’ quite yet..

3. Water is critical. I touched on this earlier, and it is so true. If your grout is too dry, it will stick to itself too much and pull itself out of the gaps as you ‘spread’ it across. If your mixture is too wet it will simply run off that which you are trying to apply it with, and if you happen to get some actually on the wall, it’ll run out of the gaps. Water is absolutely critical to this mix, and remember to dig into your stock-pile for some good stuff.

   Now, there are a few paths I could go down on with this one, however, I shall simply say that the brain is 75% water, 1% loss of water and you feel extremely thirsty, 5% loss you become feverish, and 10% loss you will soon be dead.

   More water = better blogs.

4. Stop beating the dead horse. So by now it’s apparent that I had not done any of this before (and hopefully never will again), and it was a multifaceted learning experience. One of the things I noticed early on was that you can’t work with the same grout for very long. After about the second spreading/cramming, the water gets worked out of it and it begins to dry out. So, by simply tossing it back into the big bucket-o-fun, mixing it in again, you come out with new fresh grout! Yes, overall the entire mixture becomes slightly less moist, however, the initial impact is not noticeable and can be easily corrected on a larger scale later on.

   I think the message Grout was trying to tell me was that you have to stop beating the dead horse at some point and return it to the herd. Wait, that would mean we have a herd of dead horses… Tastes like chicken?

   Ok, perhaps the message was to keep fresh and not get bogged down or over-used. Sure it might be a good idea, but hey, you’ve been flogging it for a while now, it’s getting dried out – return it to the mix, stir it around, and what you’ll end up with in the end will likely work better for you. When the overall mix is getting a little sad, inject something fresh to bring the mix back to working functionality.

5. Beware of the brain. Applying grout is time consuming, and frankly, QUITE boring to say the least. Throw in the fact that I had absolutely no desire to do it, it becomes a very dangerous combination for someone like me. When left unchecked, my brain will begin to dwell on the fact that I don’t want to do this, I don’t know how to do this, I have better things to do than this, etc. etc. ETC..

   Times like this are prime grounds for the growth of negativity and the stregnthening of ‘the little voice’. Beware.

I honestly believe that the only thing that got me through the whole experience was thinking about this blog post. What could I possibly learn from this #*@&!%# experience and share with others in some bizarre post about grout?

For those about to grout, we salute you!

T.

P.S. Yes, yes, I know I said I would announce my return with a WW post, however, things went quite a bit better than expected today due to some greatly appreciated help from the ‘rents, and freed up a bit of time to share this with you.

 Photo Borrowed From: pfong

Popularity: 3% [?]