Has this ever happened to you? (Sledgehammer and waffles)

Imagine a tranquil Sunday morning. You sleep in, rise refreshed, and decide to make your lovely mate waffles for breakfast. You've just cooked the last waffle and are settling down in your cozy breakfast nook: waffle, berries, maple syrup, strong coffee.

Then suddenly, your lovely mate, the same one you made this breakfast for, leaves the table, goes to the garage, and returns with a sledgehammer. Without a word, he fires off 3 quick blows to the end of the counter top, sending shards of tile flying in all directions, including into your remaining waffle.

Has this ever happened to you? Well. If not, welcome to our world.

What, you might reasonably ask, could prompt this shocking act of kitchen violence? One word, my pretties, one word: tile.

Now, forget anything you might assume about the Fairy Queen in terms of physical grace. Name notwithstanding, she does NOT glide through the world on size 6 feet. Nope. She and her colossal clown feet and freakishly long arms stumble around, bumping into stuff, tripping over air, and dropping things. Dropping a lot of things. And tile, you see, tile is the enemy of the clumsy, the nemesis of the dexterity-challenged. When the Fairy Queen dropped things on the tile countertop (a lot), these things broke, every time.

And while I said the provocation to kitchen violence could be summed up in one word (tile), we might add a footnote in order to describe the tile: blue, colonial blue, or as our friend Ms. M put it, country with a K. Yuck.

But the thing is, if you live with something long enough, even if it's horrible, even if you hate it, you eventually stop seeing it and you never do anything about it. But if the corner of your counter top has been transformed, via sledgehammer, into an eyesore and a life-threatening menace (oh, what the Fairy Queen could do with that sharp, jagged corner...there are not enough Band-Aids in the cupboard), well then, you have to deal with it. You have to quit sneering at the available options (linoleum too boring, granite too fancy, etc.) and MAKE something. And when you decide to do that, all manner of interesting things happen.

For example:

• The first collaboration between Phrodaux and the Fairy Queen's dad, the Wood Master;
• The chance to save gorgeous wood from the landfill (the source wanted only certain length; scraps went into the dumpster);
• The subsequent inspiration to pair this luscious counter top of purple wood with scrap aluminum as a backsplash;
• A final product which is exactly what we wanted but couldn't find because duh, we had to make it.

So there it is, sweet peas. If your best beloved introduces a sledgehammer into your idyllic breakfast, it's not always a bad thing.