Happy holiday

The holiday is over and it’s back to work for me tomorrow.  You could say I knocked off early tonight.  Quite obviously I’ve sunk into a very deep pit of psychometric mud.  I have no clear concept of what the hell I’m supposed to be looking for.  Asking an extra three little questions has me totally confounded.  Surely to God I’m making this much harder than it needs to be!  Dr. Cockroach is not handing out any tidbits of wisdom lately.  Perhaps I will call him Cockroach Grinch until his behavior improves.

We had a delightful holiday.  Visits from my sweet daughter and her man, and my sweet step-daughter too.  Time with Gracie.  She really is like a terrible-two year old human.  If I stay on her case and keep no-nonsense control of her, she behaves pretty well.  I think she has improved today, but it’s the kids and work crew here tomorrow, no doubt she will regress.   

Our Gracie

I took my nervous, newly 16-year olds driving for the first time today.  Over to the high school we went to drive around the parking lot…around, around, around for like an hour.  I sipped a mug of warm tea through a straw and tried to remain calm (my wound is maybe somewhat better today).  There was once I thought Emily was going to run us into a tower of wood pallets, and once when it seemed like we might take down a sign...but the car remained unscathed.       

Our work crew was back today and gutted the main bathroom upstairs.  It was an awesome feat for two men - all day!  We got good news - the water damage to the floor was limited to the plywood that overlaid the subfloor.  The underlying structure is still solid.  Here is our gutted upstairs bathroom:

Sink side



Tub side

celing is insulated - no floor in the attic above

This is our new lovely half bath on the first floor.  I have to go buy cabinet knobs and a towel bar.  Also some shelf liner for the drawers.  With messy people in the house, I like to protect our wood inside the drawers and on shelves.  

First floor half bath - needs some decorating.

   Here's a photo of our new deck (as promised).  It's a bit larger than the old deck.  We like it. 

Our screened porch rescreened, very nice!  Can you say, "office outside"? 

our lovely new floor

Erin put up and decorated our little tree.  It's really not a little tree.  Erin asked me what was wrong with it after she put it together, and I failed to notice it's short stature.  After she had it all decorated like this, I realized she left off the whole bottom layer.  I told her it was perfect.  Really, it was wonderful to have her do this for us.  It's a lot of work to carry all that stuff upstairs.   

So well, that's it folks.  It's time for me to go redo this bandage on my face.  Then, I'm going to play piano a bit before calling it a night.  I hope anyone who reads this blog has had a nice holiday.  I had a nice one despite my face, the inconvenience of construction, and Dr. C. Grinch.