celebration

Doing It… Doing It… DONE!

/ Diane Henders / 34 Comments

We did it!  Or, to be precise, we’re doing it right at the moment this post is being published.

Wait; get that look off your face!  We’re not ‘doing it’; we’re doing ‘IT’:  That is, moving into our finally-at-last-thank-God-could-it-possibly-have-taken-ANY-BLOODY-LONGER?!? much-anticipated and mostly-complete second floor (we still have to hang doors and do some finish carpentry).  As of 9:00 this morning, the movers are hauling all my office, fitness, sewing, and art equipment, along with Hubby’s N-scale model train layout and all his astronomy gear, out of the garage and into its final home upstairs.

Are we relieved?  OH HELL YES!!!

Are we still sane?

Not even close.

Our intellectual capacity has diminished to the point where we can’t retain even the most basic snippets of information for more than ten seconds.  Our most frequent conversation for the past couple of weeks has been:

“What about (fill in construction question)?”

“Are you really asking me that?!?  I just told you half an hour ago!”

“You did not.”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

“Did too…”

I’d love to say that it’s all Hubby’s fault because he never listens to me; but I’m not quite sure how that would explain the fact that I’ve done exactly the same thing.  ’Cause I always listen to him.  (Hubby, stop laughing.)  Maybe we’re simultaneously developing acute dementia caused by paint fumes.

I’m so brain-dead I can’t even feed myself.  When the building inspector departed after giving us a passing grade on our final inspection, I allowed myself a celebratory Lindt truffle (or maybe several; but I’ll only admit to one).  They’re one of my favourite indulgences:  An oh-so-smooth-and-delicious soft chocolate centre enclosed in a chocolate sphere and wrapped in pretty foil.

So I peeled off the foil and put it into my mouth.  The foil, not the chocolate.  Seriously; if I had to take a mental competence test right now, they’d lock me up so fast I wouldn’t even have time to yell, “Hey, where’s my truffle?”

I’ve also developed an unnerving tendency to forget where I’m going and why; resulting in a scenario where I stop in my tracks, thump my forehead, and mutter, “Come on, brain, you can do this.”  (For the record:  It can’t.)

But I can hardly wait to unpack and settle into a period of blissful normalcy… at least until our budget recovers enough that we can afford to install flooring up there instead of the painted plywood we have now.  Then the renovation insanity will begin all over again; but we’re both so heartily sick of construction that there’s an excellent chance we’ll put off installing flooring for another ten years.  Maybe longer.

Or maybe we’ll just wait until the trauma fades; which, given the current state of my short-term memory, could be as early as next week.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to resuming my life now that I no longer have to spend every spare moment either thinking about or doing construction.  We’re done!  HOORAY!!!

*does happy dance*

And in other news… I just hit the halfway point on Book 13 – woohoo!  Now I’m looking forward to having some quality time to bomb ahead with it.

*does another happy dance*

 

Feeling Green

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

The green stain has worn off my upper lip at last, and I’m here to tell you that a meal consisting of green beer and jalapeno-loaded nachos is extremely unkind to the digestive system.  Johnny Cash had obviously consumed that meal the night before he sang about the burning ring of fire.

Leaving that aside as TMI, I’ll focus on the other life-changing aspects of Monday evening.  Yes, for the first time in my half-century on this planet, I actually went to an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I am actually Irish on my dad’s side, and I’ve been proud of it ever since I was a kid.  I didn’t know anything about Ireland or its heritage then, but our family used to watch the Irish Rovers on TV every Sunday night and the Irish Rovers were cool, so there you go.

A couple of decades later I became the keeper of our family tree.  That’s when I discovered the Henders name could be traced back to County Wexford in 1765, and at that date the research hits a brick wall.  There are many reasons why a family might suddenly change its name, but I haven’t made an effort to trace it farther just in case the reasons involve prison terms or compromising positions with sheep.

But despite my (possibly misplaced) pride in my heritage, I’ve just never gotten around to celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in the traditional manner.  (Well, the traditional North American manner, which has virtually nothing in common with Irish St. Patrick’s Day.)

This year our local Irish pub advertised no cover charge, green beer, Irish dancers, and (for some unfathomable reason) Scottish bagpipers, so it sounded like the place to be.  Or the place to avoid, if you subscribe to the notion that bagpipes were conceived by a drunk watching a farmer carry a squealing pig down the road under his arm.  I can’t remember who told the story, but I seem to recall it concluded, “Unfortunately, the instrument never managed the clarity of tone achieved by the pig.”

Anyway, we got some friends together and went.

The beer was indeed green.  So were my lips, teeth, and tongue.  And fingers, thanks to the bartender’s bad aim with the food colouring.  The Irish dancers were energetic; at least as far as I could tell by the bobbing of their heads, which was all I could see above the crowd.  The three pipers were earsplitting in the tiny space, but that was okay because the “background” music blaring over the speakers all evening was so bloody deafening I had my earplugs in by then anyway.

The conversation was probably enjoyable, but it was hard to tell by lip-reading.

Dazed by the din and the press of increasingly inebriated green-clad bodies, we staggered out at last and went home to eat ice cream doused with hot chocolate pudding – it was the best part of the evening.

All in all, it wasn’t one of our more enjoyable nights out, but I can mark it off the bucket list now.  And next year I’ll tip a few drops of green colouring into my beer while I listen to Frank Patterson at home.

Happy (belated) St. Patrick’s Day!

Did you mark the occasion?