it never stops

At least I'm getting a workout. By the end of all this, I'll finally have bigger shoulders.

Yesterday saw me and Dad carrying 12- and 16-foot boards ranging in size from 2x8 to 2x12 (that's inches for you metric folks: 2 inches by 12 inches by 12 feet). Today, we've been moving more pieces of furniture out from the downstairs and over to the cargo skids, where they'll be tarped up later to protect them (and the other boxes of possessions) from the weather.

I still haven't completed the camp kitchen, a fact that caused Mom some grief today when she heedlessly promised to make bibim-bap for the crew. She ought to have checked the facilities first, but once she'd committed herself to the project, she decided to MacGyver her way through it. With only a gas range, a laundry room basin, and almost zero cooking space, we managed to figure a way to make and serve the Korean dish (Mom did almost all the cooking this time around; she and I have very different approaches to bibim-bap).

The lack of prep space must've been frustrating for Mom. I desperately want to finish the camp kitchen, but I keep getting waylaid as renovation plans change and previously non-urgent tasks suddenly become urgent.

The crew has begun the arduous process of drywalling the downstairs ceiling. The basement looks strangely bare. At some point in the next few days, once the drywalling is done, we'll have to move everything back inside.

My brother Sean was over last night, and he remarked that, as a cello instructor who has been in plenty of houses in various states of renovation, he thinks our house is coming along faster than any he's ever seen. That could be good, or it could be very bad. The last thing the parents want is hasty, shoddy work. Thus far, things look good, but none of us in the family is an expert handyperson; we're going with our gut feeling more than anything else.

Well, there's a large, collapsible table downstairs begging to be hauled out to the camp kitchen. Gotta get back to work.


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