Alone Again, Naturally

The house is completely quiet, except for the hum of the laptop fan and the tick-tock of the clock on the window sill near the kitchen sink. The cats, after their usual morning breakfast, are sleeping upstairs on my bed, shedding their fur all over the comforter so that I can breathe it in tonight and wake up tomorrow morning with a stuffed-up head.

In a few moments, there will be noise aplenty; I'm going to be turning on the table saw and cutting some floor panels to finish up the basement rooms downstairs. The "mechanical room" (that's what they call the room where the furnace and water heater reside) was walled in nearly four years ago, but we decided we didn't like the layout and want to change it - which is why the walls were only temporary; and it also didn't include the wood subflooring panels which were installed throughout the rest of the basement last year, so those have to be put in place.

Then I'm going to put up the walls, including the walls for the basement bathroom. After that's done, it's time to finish up James' bedroom.

I'm not sure if it's possible to get it all done in the next few days, but it would be nice for Cheryl to find a few improvements when she gets back from visiting her sister in Iowa.

The kids handled the long trip very well, she said last night on the phone. They completed (or nearly completed) three books-on-CD, and the trip seemed to take no time at all.

I was just happy they made it there OK. It was raining when they left, and the idea of driving through (or around) Chicago in the rain, with the annual construction (because they don't know how to build ice- and truck-resistant roads in the upper Midwest) did not thrill me at all.

But they are there, and safe, and enjoying the visit. And doing lots of work, packing up boxes full of stuff for moving or garage sale or whatever they end up doing. I miss them all immmensely, but have enough work around here to keep me busy as well.

Speaking of which, I'd better get to it. It's getting late.