Back to the Kitchen

After a few diversions, some pleasant, some really sad, I am back to the kitchen. In particular, putting down the cork floor.
Myself.
You see, I have this habit of thinking I can do something. Something I have never done before. "It can't be that hard", I usually think before ordering all of the supplies and preparing my family for the fact that I am going to be handy.
So far, the gathering of the supplies needed has been more work than I imagined. The difficulty started after I found the flooring I wanted. The initial contact with the company was great - the pleasant guy answered all my questions and sent me the samples I requested. The problem started when I actually wanted to order the tile. I sent the hand drawn, fairly accurate floor plan thinking I would get back an estimate on the tiles I wanted. Instead, I got an estimate that was about 50% more than I needed; based on the total dimension of the room, not just the area I needed covered (no I don't want to tile under the already installed cabinets, thank you very much!). A few more emails went back and forth with the final "you can order what you want" coming from the less than helpful salesperson. I ended up making a phone call to try and get the guy I spoke to on the phone. Yes, I know I need to order an additional 20% for mistakes, etc., I just don't want to order 2 rooms worth of tile for 1 room worth of work.
My order, finally made, is sitting in neat little piles in my living room waiting to be installed.
Tomorrow.
Yesterday I spent the day prepping the plywood base with the cement based filler that took 6 trips to 3 different supply stores to find. I pray it is the right one. I just now know that any cement based anything dries faster than you want it to and the harder it gets, the harder it is to move around the floor. My entire body is achy, so today, instead of putting the tiles down, I took the day off to recover. Other than carefully marking up the floor and quickly covering it with anything I could find to prevent things little and big from making a mess, I did nothing. Floor related that is.
Tomorrow I will be on hands and knees again - attempting to lay tiles down in a straight line.
Wish me luck.