While technically I’m still on “strike,” for all practical purposes this is meaningless today as there’s enough work happening on the house right now that aside from being on call, there’s nothing for me to really do except stay out of the way.
I have alerted my household that if anyone needs my help with something they can’t do for themselves, I will help them as part of the process of teaching them how to do it for themselves. In all other matters though . . .
Until further notice, I’m on strike, so even if you won’t excuse me, I’m off to play games, watch videos, and otherwise do absolutely nothing that I don’t want to do.
I have a new standard for “bad day,” a day so bad that you don’t even feel like talking like a pirate on Talk Like A Pirate Day . . .
(Another paraphrased encounter with L’s Mother.)
“Since you said you were going to wait until your foot was better to move the trampoline, I was going to move it for you,” she told me this morning. “Then I realized if I could move it, you could move it, and you probably meant you were waiting to move it until you could use it again.”
She was right too.
(The following is paraphrased, but still an accurate representation of what I took away from the event.)
“You were wonderful last night,” L’s Mother told me with a loving smile early Saturday morning.
Now it’s not that I’ve never heard that sentiment before, but this time it confused me. “All we did last night was sleep,” I reminded her.
“Yeah . . .” she sighed with contentment.
I think perfect objectivity is an unrealistic goal; fairness, however, is not.
Come to think of it, something else the recent work on the house is for me is an opportunity to observe how I currently respond to various stressors such as noise, random schedule changes, delays, etc.
I’d be snarkier about this, but I’ve actually learned some things about myself . . .
So if you’re wondering why I shifted my house around last week, it’s because sometime back in the Jurassic Period a pipe burst inside my kitchen’s wall doing a truly staggering amount of damage to said kitchen.
Fast forward millions and millions of years later, and the insurance company finally stopped dragging their feet and cut us the check they owed us so we could start repairs/necessary remodeling. I was doing some preliminary rearranging before work started when I dropped those shelves on my foot, in fact, but things didn’t get really serious until last week because that’s when they started working on the floors and that required a lot of shifting. Not only did I need to have significant garage space clear for their materials, since they have to do so much work in the kitchen (including the floor) anyway, we’re having the floors redone (on our dime) throughout a large chunk of the rest of the house while they’re at it. I’m trying to view all this as an opportunity to really look at my belongings and determine what is and is not still worth keeping since I’m moving so many of them around anyway, and while it is an opportunity, it’s an opportunity I could have happily had another time (or never, truth be told).
It is what it is, though.
Last week I learned how to move 2/3rds of my house into the remaining 1/3rd while using 1/2 of my usual number of fully functional feet, so that was unfun . . .
While L’s Mother and I generally consult with each other on household decisions, if she tells you “I don’t think so,” do yourself a favor and do not then ask if “her husband” is around.
