Mother's Day present (4)
Two hours to go. Now I sand down the faces with progressively finer grits, blow the frames off with the air gun, and wipe on two coats of water-based poly, again sanding in between. One hour to go. Carefully peel off the protective paper from the acrylic. Print out two glossy pictures from our multi-thousand picture archive (digital cameras + babies = lots of clicking), sandwich them between the frame and backs. In thirty minutes, guests will arrive. Notice lots of dust on the acrylic, so blow it off with my shop air. Twenty minutes till the doorbell rings. Gotta wrap the stuff yet, and I didn't have time to get a card. Scramble on the computer, come up with two recent pictures of mom holding each baby. Double check to see if LOML looks good (she always does!) Of course, she looks great, babies are even smiling. Slap in a sheet of glossy photo paper into the ink jet printer, hit print. Go dig around the spare bedroom where all the gift wrap paper is hidden away. Find several pretty bags with rope handles from fancy stores. Pick two out, much easier and faster than wrapping paper. Go back in the office, cut the pictures out (3X5's), write " Happy Mother's Day, from (insert child's name here)" on the back of each. Double check and luckily the right girl is on the right picture. Five minutes till our extremely dependable, punctual guests arrive. Insert my latest projects into each bag, double checking again that the gifts match the cards. Walk downstairs like nothing happened.
Guests arrive exactly one hour late. Turns out the time had been changed, and someone forgot to send out the email. Anyway, mom loved the gift, especially since I made it. I already have lots of ideas for future Mother's Days.
Lessons learned: 1. If you plan your work out well, all you've got to do is work your plan. Yeah, right. Sometimes you're just lucky. 2. Clean, exact miter cuts don't require much glue for tack strength butt joints. 3. Make sure there's no slack in any glue joints, and within an hour of curing you've got plenty of strength to carefully work the piece. 4. If you're in a hurry, two coats of water based polyurethane can go on quickly. 5. All of that scrap you've got laying around is just dying to be made into something special, something you'd love to give to the most precious woman in your life, the mother of your children, the beauty you married, the hot babe you still get excited about, the lady who pretends that nothing's going on while you scramble to make something for her on a special day, the one who puts up with sawdust in the garage and credit card items from down at Tooland, Home Depot, and your favorite exotic wood lumberyard. Who else would put up with you, anyway?