I must confess I’m a little sad.
True, I’m sleeping tucked away in my new bedroom, safe and sound and bordered by my almost completely functional closet. True, the scaredy cat finally made an appearance. We feared she’d hide in a dark downstairs corner forever. This poor cat freaks when the floor squeaks, can you imagine her distress with all the power tools and the clunk of work boots overhead?
No, the touch of sadness is because of a new change in the landscape of construction.
The small hole in the wall is gone. For three days we had a special portal from old to new, and with a few bone-jarring cuts with a diamond blade super-cutter the whole wall fell. After the dust cleared (cough) my eldest daughter leaned toward me and whispered. “when we climbed through the window, it was like entering an alternate reality, like Narnia.”
Had I known Narnia lie on the other side of the window, I would’ve climbed through in my church clothes. Really.
Sigh.
But there was a wee bit of an accident to lighten the mood.
One of Rob’s friends came over to help with the wall dismantling. After the debris clean-up (cough) Rob brought in a small set of three steps. My husband, amazing builder/carpenter/hunk that he is has been doing quite a bit of recycling. Nice on two counts. 1) huge money savings. 2) takes the edge off new so it doesn’t feel cookie-cuttery.
Rob set the steps next to the wall and said “these are NOT attached, DON’T step on them.”
My mom and I and our buddy then stand around and chat about the openness of the room, Rob’s great work/ideas and blah, blah, blah. Apparently we ALL suffer from short-term memory loss because the buddy, whom I’ll call Joe_ stepped on the top step.
Mom and I watched in horrified silence as Joe_ hesitated and then surfed the set of stairs. In slow motion he shimmied while the steps bucked him off. He landed in three sections, feet, knee, hands.
All that lacked was sunshine and some Beach Boy’s music. (We had plenty of grit/sand.) (cough)
Silence.
By now you all know that a good tumble kicks my funny bone into gear. But I’ve never seen Joe_ in a compromising situation such as this, and a man face down on the floor, no matter how gracefully he arrived there might not appreciate the background music of giggles.
In the silence, he pulled himself off the floor, then bent over double and laughed.
I don’t need to tell you what I did, after I asked him if he was okay of course.
