Welcome to the Jungle

Day #23

While I was repicking out kitchen cabinets,

 attending doctor appointments with Carisa 

and out of town at my church’s women’s retreat,

things continued to progress with our house construction.

This happened:

We found handwritten notes right on the outside of the house.

Which will soon be knocked out, so who cares.

Not sweet handwritten notes of greetings or encouragement.
Math.

 We no longer have a construction hole!

You know, Monte actually texted me that he was going to miss our hole.

It was fun.

But it’s over.

Time to move on.

We have walls now and a view from the upstairs bathroom that no longer allows for the windows to be cranked open.

Side view of addition.

Bathroom view.

 So it was decided that we would just take the window out.

It will be nice to not have to worry about if the girls 

are taking the time to close the curtains 

before taking a shower.

I have started to notice that 

ALL our bathrooms have windows.

Windows that always seem to have a construction worker 

right on the other side of them.

Many summers ago, we hired a crew of college kids to repaint the house.

I was using the bathroom upstairs when I noticed (too late) that there was a guy on a ladder RIGHT outside the window.

He waved at me.

Without thinking, 

I waved back,

while sitting on the toilet.

With that memory in mind,

I’ve started to use the basement bathroom.

And wearing my Nesbitt again because I want credit 

for all the stairs I’m running up and down!

When the worker, Jeremy, took the window out of the upstairs bathroom yesterday,

he found quite the colony, nest, hive or whatever you call a whole mess of stink bugs.

SOURCE

One flew up into his hat which he swatted and promptly squashed, thus releasing the aroma worthy of its name.

Jeremy handled it with all the panic and drama of the Child Detection Agency in Monsters Inc.

SOURCE

The debris piles keep forming and of course another dumpster was delivered the day Monte left town. He will be so sad if it leaves before he gets to throw in all the old paint cans and chemicals from our garage.

That man certainly does love a good dumpster.

Yesterday morning, I sat at the kitchen table doing my bible study homework.

We are doing Beth Moore’s Children of the Day on 1 & 2 Thessalonians.

It’s just fantastic.

It was a bit difficult to get the full impact of the homework with Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” blaring from the radio of one of the construction workers.

When AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” came on, 

I had to ask Jesus for some help 

and focus.

The booming and sawing and nail guns have put Nigel over the edge. 

If he isn’t on my lap, he’s right beside me. 

If he isn’t right beside me, he’s following me. 

If he isn’t following me, he’s hiding under the dining room table with a pig puppet that he snagged from Ellie’s room that I don’t have the heart to take from him.

As I typed this, I heard the familiar voices of my builder and workers rising louder and louder. There was a spirited discussion about something involving 5/18 or something in fraction form.

I looked around and Nigel was gone.

Not under the dining room table with puppet piggy.

 He chewed one of the eyes out!

 Is he “going quail” on me??

I found Nigel in the basement at the bottom of the stairs, shaking like a leaf.

He keeps asking for a nerve pill

with his eyes.

Please, Mommy!

As it turns out,

it really is a thing for dogs to go on Prozac and Xanax.

For the love of Pete.

In between Motley Crue, 

AC/DC, 

Ozzy Osbourne, 

Guns ’N’ Roses 

and what seemed like a loooong stretch of Pink Floyd songs,

I heard a big BOOM and a loud exclamation,

“Dagnabbit!”

It seems about right that Yosemite Sam would be apart of our “not so typical crew”.