FLOORED

I am floored by so much these days. The breakout of war and all things Trump; the suicide hanging of my friend and former employee at 54 years old; the fire that destroyed the properties and severely burned the thighs of another friend in the Yucatán, and the cancer that was recently discovered in my sweet, street rescue god, Rufus. The list can go on but I will save my dear readers the death y doom that tries to destroy my current Alegre at making a move to Puerto Vallarta, a city that I have traveled to for 1.5 hours each way, nearly weekly for 20 years while running my former B&B business in Sayulita, Mexico.

Today, while scouting for a potential live/art gallery space, I popped in on a real estate friend’s open house. I was floored. Built ages ago, this renovated charmer featured onyx floors, something this architecture aficionado has never seen before. If the house itself weren’t so charming, I could imagine just buying the floor to look at all day. Rumor has it that it is particularly spectacular at night.

I know floors. I removed multiple layers of linoleum tiles, scrapped and scrubbed with toxic chemicals the Douglas fir tongue ‘n groove floors in my 1800 sq. ft. historic Sausalito ark in the heat of summer. Then sanded them with a small hand sander, sawdust flying everywhere. Then hand waxed and polished them til the old patina emerged. I’ve torn in bits and pieces, the hated astroturf that insulted the living room floor of my ark, and had dry rot replaced and repaired in its bathroom and dining room. I won’t mention the catwalks, and huge deck as well.

In Sayulita, I studied every imaginable type of Mexican floor — stone, granite, tiles, and more before deciding on polished cement with stone details and stone floors in the showers.

Onyx? A whole other thing that makes me marvel at both the availability of the various colors as well as slicing of the piedras, laying them in the white cement and removing the excess cement before pouring a matte sealador over the whole shebang.

I am grateful to el piso onyx for lifting me up from the doomsday activities that surround me, and all of us worldwide as we watch the not-so-slow deterioration of democracy and our beloved planet and its people.

I stand strong despite it all. Particularly on such beautiful and fun onyx .

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