“Hey, Foster, what’s out there?”

Panda’s voice broke into my reverie. “Squirrels,” I responded. “There are squirrels playing out there by Mom’s stepping stones.”

Panda jumped up on the windowsill to look over my shoulder. “Uh-oh,” he said gravely. “Mom is not going to like this.” I had to admit I agreed. “I know,” I said. “She’s probably already Googled ‘how long do squirrel germs live in direct sunlight?’ ”

“It’s been kind of a mess out there lately,” Panda observed. “In fact, wasn’t she just working on a blog post about her stepping stones yesterday?” I nodded. “Yes, but she ended up deleting it. She said the computer hadn’t saved her work properly and she lost a whole day’s worth of writing. She was pretty unhappy about it. Didn’t you notice she went and got a filet of fish and an iced caramel coffee?”

“I did notice that,” Panda said thoughtfully, “but I thought it was just because she was hungry.” I paused for a minute before replying. “Well, she probably was,” I remarked. “But she got one last week too. She’d never go back and get another one that soon unless she needed comfort food.”

“Oh, I get it,” Panda said. “It’s like about three years ago when she was having technical difficulties with WordPress and she had to get some Vitamin M to supplement the ones she usually takes. So did she feel better after having her filet of fish?” I said I thought she had. But she had shown no interest in rewriting the blog post. “That’s too bad,” Panda remarked, perhaps more to himself than to me. Then, suddenly, he jumped down from the windowsill and went over to the laptop. Our eyes met knowingly. “Let’s write the post for her!” we exclaimed in unison.

Fortunately, Mom had already uploaded the photos for the post, and they hadn’t been deleted from the media gallery. “Let’s start with this one,” Panda said. “It looks like she took it when she was sitting on the ground working on that stepping stone.” I agreed that this would be a good photo to start our post with.

“Oh hey,” I said, clicking through the media gallery. “These must be the plates she got at the thrift store. It looks like she used all three of them on this one.”

We studied a close up of the stepping stone appreciatively. Panda remarked that he liked the texture of the pink pieces. I liked how shiny the glass gems looked interspersed among the ceramic shapes. “I heard Mom say that the price of plates at the thrift store has gone up since the last time she’d bought some,” I commented. Panda agreed. “She says it’s important to look at how much of a plate has designs on it. Most of the designs are usually around the edges. That’s something you have to take into account when deciding if it’s worth a whole dollar or not. And sometimes she’ll get them if they are a really cool solid color, like that pink one.”

“It looks like she’s on the second tube of Liquid Nails,” he continued. “She’ll probably have to get some more before this week is up.”

We both agreed that this one turned out really well. Mom had told us that sometimes the backs of plates have designs or names on them that you can use in your design. This one was a definite example.

“Hey Panda, do you know how to put two pictures side by side?” I asked. “That would be cool for these grout photos.” Panda frowned at the computer screen. “I think I can figure it out,” he said, pressing a few things on the keyboard. “There!” he said when he had finished. “That wasn’t too hard. Why does the grout look so dry in the first one?” I explained that Mom always tries starts out mixing grout with less water than she thinks she will need, and then she adds more water gradually until the grout is the consistency she wants it to be. Panda nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. “I guess she was going to explain that to her readers.”

“She was probably also going to remind them that the blog posts about projects she does are DIM and not DIY,” I added. Panda laughed. “That’s right,” he said. “Did It Myself as opposed to Do It Yourself. Is that water and white vinegar she’s using to clean off the grout haze?” I replied in the affirmative. “She says she thinks you’re supposed to wait until the grout dries all the way, but she usually doesn’t. Once or twice, she’s left the grout on something too long and then it’s really hard to wipe off.”

“Those look pretty good,” I commented as Panda found a picture of three newly grouted stones. “Is that gravel in between some of them?” We both studied the photo closely. “Yes, I think it is,” Panda replied. “I remember hearing Mom say that years ago, when she first started putting the stepping stones out there, she filled the spaces in between them with pea gravel. But it looks like she’s going to have to buy a lot more, if she wants to fill in the whole area. You can see how the gravel has settled into the ground quite a bit.”

“She said she looked it up online,” Panda continued, “and a .5 cubic foot bag of pea gravel will cover three square feet at two inches deep.” I did the math quickly in my head. “So, one bag will fill in roughly three of those spaces. And there are around twenty spaces in all.” We looked at each other and shrugged. “Well, we’ll have to wait and see how that works out,” I said.

“Check out the glass gems on this one!” Panda exclaimed as we continued to click through the photos. “Those are cool!”

“Wow!” I said when Panda inserted the next photo. “It’s almost done! I wonder why she didn’t finish it last night?” Panda said he thought he’d heard her say something about mosquitoes coming out in the evening. That made sense. Mosquitoes always try to bite Mom every chance they get. She says it’s because of her sweet personality.

We were amazed to see the next photo that came up. “Ewww!” we exclaimed in unison. It looked like one of the stepping stones was covered with bird, umm, well, you know. “I hope she’s not planning to put a mosaic on that one,” I said once the shock had worn off. Strangely enough, that was the only stepping stone that seemed to be affected. “It must be right under where the birds always sit,” Panda surmised.

Mom had apparently taken a picture of the tree above the stepping stones, whether to make a point about the bird droppings or just because she thought it looked cool, we weren’t sure. We decided to include it for whatever it was worth. As an afterthought, I asked, “Panda, are you remembering to save this as you go?” Panda replied in the affirmative. “So far, so good,” he replied. “Now to see if we can figure out how to publish it. . .”