November 4, 2026
You know how it goes. You’ve only
got so much time each day to do what needs to be done. If you’re like me, that
means you make a plan. A schedule. So that you’re organized.
As an adult I have always been
somewhat anal. There was the time we were going on a cruise, and I plotted out
each day’s agenda so I could then detail my wardrobe, right down to the jewelry
I would wear in the evenings to accompany my “dinner” outfits.
I no longer feel the need to respond
to the prodding of those around me who seem to want me to justify such
behavior. I needed to pack enough but not too much. On a cruise ship one has
not sufficient space for a ton of luggage, so packing as little as necessary
but all that was necessary seemed to me to be a fine idea. And how could I know
that without knowing the itinerary of our cruise and co-ordinating
outfits accordingly?
Not the mention the bonus of
spending that planning time in the “vacation realm”. It’s a way to stretch your
dream vacation that costs only time and imagination.
But these days, I no longer
travel. My weekly grocery lists are still detailed and constructed on an excel
spreadsheet, ruthlessly sorted into the order I will find the items as I
travers the store, and then printed out and slapped onto my clipboard and
carried into the grocery store….but I no longer travel.
A week ago this past Monday I
was mentally prepared for the work on our basement to begin. Once it started, I
knew it would be a week and a half to two weeks of a work crew in our house daily.
We have dogs that we had to have a plan of care for. We also have a couple of
dog gates so the easiest thing for us to do would be to sequester the dogs in
the living room. That way the men working on reinforcing our basement and
installing a drainage system could come and go in and out of the front door and
up and down the basement stairs (outside the mini gated community) as needs be without
being in danger of being accosted by our fur babies. One large gate has been
permanently installed on the door frame into the living room, so that was
covered. Our second gate is an old baby gate that we purchased when we had Mr.
Tuffy. That one we were able to set up in the short hall from the entrance way
to the bathroom and kitchen.
And happily, we now have a
door between our bedroom and the bathroom—as well as the main bedroom door that
opens from the living room. Thus we could move from living room to bedroom to bathroom
to kitchen and/or my office, while the gates were secured and the dogs more or
less trapped in the large living room.
Of course, except for
necessary functions, I would be trapped in there with them. I wasn’t going to
desert them while strangers were in the house. These are chihuahuas and they tend
to be nervous under the best of circumstances.
Alas, the crew canceled at the
last moment but rescheduled late in the afternoon this past Monday to come
beginning the very next day, which was yesterday.
Our plans were activated, although
I was annoyed that my entrance hallway floor wasn’t as clean as it had been a
week before….but I got over it.
Yesterday, the dogs barked a
great deal each time the men opened the basement door or the front door, as
they worked to bring in their equipment and get set up. But that pattern of
barking came to an abrupt end as soon as the jackhammer was employed.
The crew needed to chisel out
a trench to go around the entire space down in the basement. And as soon as
that jack began to hammer, the dogs got up on the sofa beside and between us
and shut up. We figured that they’d thought they were the big dogs and in
charge in the house until that moment. Somehow, they seemed to believe there
was a bigger, badder dog downstairs. They couldn’t see him, but he sounded fierce!
The crew finished around two-thirty
yesterday afternoon, and the dogs settled well once they were gone. We’d managed
to get them outside at one point while the crew was outside eating lunch. Then we
got them inside and settled again just as their break was done.
I thought that today would
have been an easier day, as jack’s hammering was mostly done. Ha. Those poor
workers had to suffer being barked at every time they came up those stairs
carrying out the buckets of broken concrete.
There were a lot of buckets
today, and that was very heavy work for them.
Now, here I am, in a suddenly
and shockingly quiet house, writing. And I’m giving the side eye to the large,
printed calendar I have just to the left of my keyboard, trying to convince myself
that two weeks surely won’t be that long, at all, and I can certainly handle
this.
Operative word: trying.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
