Update March 28

Neo-Unfinished continues . . .

Absolutely nothing new to report. After reading over my last blog I realized how entirely busy/doing taxes/sick/unmotivated we've been for the last month. Ugh.

Still working on the edge banding. Funny thing--the stain/polyurethane smells so strongly that I like to open the windows while I work to air things out. However, if I do that, the pollen from outside comes floating in and wants to be a permanent addition to the house by landing on my freshly stained work. While that may work well in anthropological settings when people dig up our remains in 20,000 years and discover pollen encased on poly (like mosquitos in amber), I doubt it really helps us much in this scenario.

The stains aren't exactly quite matchy-matchy to the cabinets, no matter how many coats I put on it, so we're trying to decide how much it matters to us at this stage. It might be imperceptible to others, but WE'LL know. Hmm.

Meanwhile, Rich has made efforts to get other trim installed in the hallway. All walls lead to the kitchen, though, which means if we install some, but not all baseboards, we're bound to hurt ourselves on mitered-corners-left-unmatched at some point. We haven't installed baseboards in the kitchen yet because the floor is still unfinished--another challenge we're considering this weekend. Can't install baseboards in kitchen leads to can't install baseboards on at least 4 other walls as a result, you may say it can, I say it can't, let's call the whole thing off . . . sorry. Where was I?

Oh yeah, the floors in the kitchen. We've got a sander, we have the belts, we have the means to wipe the floor with tackcloth. We have the poly and all applicator brushes. Now, if we could just find the time . . .

So we think we're gonna try for this weekend. This is more involved than you may think. It requires planning meals for at least 4 or 5 days, with ZERO access to the kitchen. No water, no dishes, no sink, no appliances. We can move the toaster, coffee pot, and paper dishes to another room, stock up on water and put it in the fridge in the dance hall, and plan on grilling a lot. But no microwave this time around . . . we let someone borrow it, so we have to go to plan B. No microwave really puts a kink in things. When you have to go ready-to-eat with no microwave and no stove top and no large oven, it makes for cold-cuts.

We think we'll prep on Friday and then do the floors Saturday, Sunday and Monday. With any luck, we can tip toe in socks on Tuesday and gradually move back in. It will be a drastic, beautiful change, but stressful. Keep us in mind for prayers of sanity, if it comes up!

Work's been challenging this year--mama needs some finished projects around here, but combine buyers not wanting to jump off the fence with other buyers that can't get qualified but really want to keep looking, and you get un-funded projects galore in the house. Can't finish without padding the coffers, and so it goes. And did I mention that Rich's work didn't withhold anything near what they were supposed to, so we owe gobs and gobs of money to Uncle Sam? So our primary focus has been trying to figure out where extra moola will come from. We knew it would be like this (working most of the year to get income before spending any), so that part's not surprising, but still unwelcome. The owing that large to US is, though. It means that maybe by June, I'll be working for us. It kinda drains all motivation from wanting to finish--between being tired, working, owing, and not wanting to spend money. And when the weather's good, Rich has to work on that weekend, and when it's great weather, he gets sick.

My cousin sent me this link: www.fairtax.org Very interesting.

So just a few hiccups . . . nothing to see here. Hope all is well in the rest of the world. Perhaps next week I'll actually have something GOOD to say.