Towanda gets a brand new hat...

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Like omigawd, I swear2gawd that I did-dent know this was on the engine when I named Towanda! Peter called me over and had me climb the ladder to "look at another of your buses synchronicities," and there was "Tonawanda." I swan, I got a serious case of the goosebumps when I saw that. CLEARLY, I was honed in on Towanda's Spirit when I so named her. wow...

Another curious sliver (very thin) of synchronicity is that there's a "Towanda, KS" not far from the place my Towanda did her years as a public servant. Give me break, I SAID it was a sliver...

BTW, for those of you who might not understand the origins of the name "Towanda," you really owe it to yourself to read "Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Cafe" by Fannie Flagg. Ms. Flagg was one of my mother's favourite stand-up commedienes, but as an author, she's simply brilliant. Although the book is (of course) far better than the film, the movie's worth your time, too. How can you go wrong with Jessica Tandy, Kathy Bates, Mary Louise Parker, and Mary Stuart Masterson...not to mention the amazing Cecily Tyson!?! Yowsa!

The last couple of days have been frantic, as we've been racing to get as much painting done on the bus as possible in the alotted window of opportunity. Peter is running as fast as he can to keep his eBay biz generating enough income to keep us afloat, and we've had absolutely perfect weather in place for a few days, so Thursday and Friday were dedicated to the bus renewal project. We got a LOT accomplished in two days.

First we gave the interior ceiling and walls two coats of white primer mixed with the Magic Pixie Dust (the ceramic insulating additive, for the unitiated). That stuff dries just about as fast as it hits the brush, but I figured out that if I dipped my brush in water every fourth time I reached for paint, the paint flowed a little easier. Masking and painting the interior took us all day, along with prep work on the floor and Peter thoroughly scraping the SCHOOL BUS signs off front and back, outside, so the very last thing we did was to lay down our floor coating. First the floor was patched with Liquid Nails and wood plugs where needed, then painted with a layer of latex flooring primer I had on hand and figured we might as well use, then coated with the elastomeric goo used to seal mobile home roofs. The goo went down pretty much in the last of the dying light of the day, so we could only hope it looked good the next morning.

Our rationale in using that product in such a way was that it would stay flexible and thus not crack with the movement of the bus, and it would provide both a vapor barrier and a method of sealing in the dirt I couldn't get to under the plywood substrate. The plan is now to put in a layer of hard insultation, then a slim layer of BC plywood, atop which will go padding and carpet between the two rows of cabinetry.

This morning we got up to discover a great looking interior
So the day was dedicated to cleaning (again), prepping, and painting the exterior. As I write this, it's late, the photos are still in the camera, Peter's outside cleaning up, and I'm trying to muster the strength to get up and go flop on the couch until bedtime. More in the morning...