Gabriel isn't entirely buying the fairy bit, but he wants the cash enough to play along.
Another very difficult coming-home tonight, and that's with not going to work today. Katrina's tentative state transitioned to full-on toddler-tantrum after a stinky diaper change, and her furious rejections of anything I tried to calm her afterward resulted in me standing outside, holding her and feeding her. My back has been inflamed and irritated today (always is ultra-sensitive after physical therapy), I had things on the stove, and this was just not good.
Insisting on being held suddenly flipped to demanding being put down, so she had some dinner outside while the boys pushed each other around on a little firetruck.
I'm doing something wrong, and I think I know what now. I doggedly quizzed my hapless mom-friends about how they handle getting home from work, walking in the door with three, making dinner, and not losing your mind. After careful analysis of the data, I've reached the conclusion: stop cooking! This is a bummer, because cooking has become fun for me, though it's exactly opposite of fun when I burn a panful of garlic because I have to run outside for the 200th time to scold bothersome brothers. Other than self-indulgence, I have no excuse for trying to actually cook. Everyone's fine with semi-convenience foods, and I have 5 Trader Joe's within 15 minutes driving distance, two freezers, and a telephone.
The remodel project is becoming onerous. Every time we go to the jobsite, there's more major news. The electrical run to the upstairs and the downstairs subpanel need to be replaced. The main plumbing pipe from upstairs wasn't right. A whole new fire-rated wall, a great deal of new plywood sheathing, new siding, new subfloor, a ton of unexpected framing to support floor joists that were suspended in mid-air, a tyrant of an inspector who really will make us tear out a whole wall if it protrudes 3/8" into a setback.
All these things are possible when you open existing walls in an old house that's been added on to several times, but did they all have to happen? I haven't dared ask our contractor how our schedule is looking, because he'll tell it to me straight, and I'm not sure I can take it.
Still, the good news is that the whole team takes every development in stride, and deals with it, no excuses, no heel-dragging. We really have top-quality resources. I especially rejoice in scenes like this: the jobsite foreman (who's excellent), the kitchen designer and architect all talking together.
No communication breakdown is going to prevent the kitchen bay window from being placed at absolutely the correct height for the countertop to flow into it!
I continue to express my appreciation with baked goods; today the crew got (slightly overbaked) zucchini muffins.
Meantime, I still prefer our new neighborhood, and while our rental house is pretty plain, we're more than getting by. We're going to end up with quite the palace, but I'm more of a quaint farmhouse sort of person. That is, provided it works well, which ours didn't. Still, how do these things get away from me?
8/22/08
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