Good Morning Joe meet Mr. Sandpaper

What is better in the morning that some pretty pink roses and a hot cup of coffee?  Not much if you ask me - especially if you are sitting on your porch watching the tide roll in.  I have a project in the garage that I'm procrastinating on.... it needs some major sanding.  Muddling over all that sanding, got me thinking about how people are kind of like sandpaper (work with me on this one....).

Sandpaper is basically abrasive paper that comes in all different strengths of irritation.  Ok, I'm laughing a bit but here, but we all come in contact with people that are rude or abrasive right? So how do we handle this?

When working with furniture, sandpaper is used to remove small amounts of material from surfaces, either to make them smoother, to distress, to remove layers of paint or varnish and sometimes, to make the surface more rough - where you might want to prime or glue something on it. The smaller the grit, the more abrasive the paper. The grit refers to the number of mineral grains found in a square inch.  I use a sanding block for almost all of my furniture distressing.  Primarily I use a 100 or 220 grit for this.  It's also where I take out some of my frustrations. :)  The neat thing......and this is where I'm going with my thought for the day......is that if we work with the irritations or those little annoyances in our lives, not against them, it helps us get where we want to go.  The sandpaper, although irritating in nature, produces the result that we are looking for.

If you are trying to minimize your brush strokes after you have painted, you can use a 320 or 400 grit to finely sand the strokes out. On occasion, I will use an 800 grit for that final glass like finish.  It rubs out all of the imperfections left on top of your last coat.  So it's still an irritant yes, but it gets you exactly what you want in the end.  (Steel wool "0000" grade does the same thing)

People aren't always nice.  So when they aren't, I try to work through what is happening and help make the situation better. Sometimes people are just having a bad day.  And....there are times, which I have to admit, when I'm the 80 grit sandpaper (not often, but admittedly it happens).  So we have to work with the annoyances and let them go, make amends where appropriate and work towards that 400 to 800 grit of good irritation.  Being slightly abrasive and willing to work out the little imperfections in life can sometimes be a good thing.

I hope you minimize finding abrasive people over the weekend.  And if you do, I hope it's those with the higher grit.

Have a great weekend.

Paula