So much time has passed . . .

Hmmm . . . where do I begin? As I re-read my last entry, I almost laugh out loud. I was so naive.

Since I last wrote, HW was unexpectedly called to work some ridiculous number of hours for work, and then even called away, literally a couple of hours before his plane was to take off, to go on a week-long trip for work to Alabama. Between work here and the trip, he basically didn't get a single day off for 3 weeks straight. The only benefits that came from this were that 1) his boss saw what he did and he got kudos from him and other higher-ups in the company, and 2) he worked so much overtime that the paycheck almost doubled. When he told me how much overtime he worked, I actually counted up the number of hours in a week, subtracted his working hours, and came up with a number so small that an amputee could count left over hours to spend on sleep, bathing and eating, on the remaining appendages. Ugh. He's a bit exhausted.

Oh, and I've been working with more clients. For my job. That pays for this stuff.

Needless to say, doing this all without him STINKS. I've gotten all the doors poly-ed, most of the walls primed (and a little more sheetrock mud on the stubborn areas), removed the stool of the window (yep, I looked it up!) so that we can make it shallow-er so HW doesn't scrape his elbow on it each morning at the new vanity, and installed standards in the linen closet area, with brackets and shelves. We'll have to take the shelves and brackets down when we build the mirror/fake door/access area to the linen closet, but for now, I'm just enjoying the fact that there's new storage in the house.

Meanwhile, out in the living quarters, the walls that now form a new hallway and cat litter cubby are done with sanding, trimmed out, caulked, primed, painted, and in some places, already pre-scuffed.

The two areas that I had not been able to tackle just yet because they needed finessing by the Wrecker were the entrance door to the new hall we've created (you still had to lift the door into position when you closed it), and installing the stops and the door for the new coat closet. We were able to tackle that this weekend, so we now have a proper-swinging door, as well as a real coat closet in that hallway, complete with hanging bars and a door and everything. I still have to caulk and paint the new trim around the door, and paint the brackets that hold the clothes poles in the closet, but hey, everything's in, and that should count for something. It's totally bizarre to open the hallway door and see a "finished" space.

Meanwhile, back in the kitty cubby, HW built a nice, strong, sturdy shelf and custom-fit it for the cubby, sitting on a cleat running along the back wall and sides of the cubby, to hold 100 lbs of litter and acutrements for poo removal. I also found some cool fabric (online, if you can believe it), out of which I will make modified curtains to stretch across the cubby to disguise the new litter area, complete with one new litter box and one almost new one (the old one was long-dead, as a diabetic, horse-peeing, non-covering-one's-own-pee cat can fill one up with ammonia so quick, and it's hard to get that awful smell out). There's still a delicate balancing act of getting his blood sugar regulated and his water consumption down, and not killing him, so unfortunately, we have to err on the cat-pee side. Yay. Hopefully these new curtains will keep it down a bit.

Sometime during the week-long trip while HW was away, I was also struck with a migraine so bad that I had to get a neighbor to take me to the urgent care center to stop the nausea and pain. That also put quite a crimp in the plans, as only 9.5 hours of porcelain-throne worshipping and sledgehammer head can do.

So to sum up--we still have to reinforce the bathroom floor, so I can't lay tile just yet. I still have to sand out the remaining areas of sheetrock that had patches on them. We still have to install the poo-room door. We still have to build the vanity. We still have to build the "front" of the linen closet and install lighting. I still have to "privatize" our window so we get light but not peeping-Toms. And we still have to demolish the current closet and build a shower, plumb it, tile it, etc. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll be done by Christmas? If HW's job keeps calling him away, it may very well take that much time. And especially if I just keep typing instead of working. Which, at the moment, sounds much better than working. Or I could go outside and "forget" the time and enjoy this awesome weather. . . .