Managing Construction and Festival Stress

Isn't easy. We've had to move entire rooms of #^$%, I mean stuff every day. The heat has been substantial. The drilling of the jack hammer (breaking through the concrete from the old basement room to the new and for the plumbing) has been mind-numbing. We eat dinner, do homework and watch DVDs on the laptop in our 1 bedroom. It's a little like pioneer days, but with electric fans, DVDs, high-speed internet, flush toilets (except for the day when the plumbers had to shut the water off for 3 hours), and a beer fridge in the garage (glory be!). Except for all that, it's EXACTLY like pioneer days... ;-)

So we're waiting for the inspector to arrive at 10, so that we can begin phase 72... My desk is still temporarily in the basement, The jackhammer, thankfully is quiet for a few minutes while I type. That said, 2 members of our construction team are right here measuring wood. Hi guys.

In addition to the construction, the 2-3 weeks that precede the Celtic Festival are among my most stressful of the year. I have county permits, additional applications, buckets ad buckets of publicity and development issues, ticket sales, incoming questions from the public, internal conflict, and maybe 10 or 11 other things BESIDES keeping the kids occupied and out of harm's way and boredom...plus there's a really big fly in my bedroom. Grrrr.

I really don't want to be a whiner because of course we did bring this upon ourselves and we can already see how amazing our house is going to be, and we were aware of the stress that would result, but having the festival and what seems like the construction zenith collide is wearing me the blank out.

So, I'll stop now because I'd really like to go out and run for a few minutes before it gets too warm. The kids have been taking everything in stride and Mike and I haven't yelled at each other yet, but I find that any time I have to be quiet and/or just think is like taking a mini-vacation. Here are a few pictures. Katie's room will become Andrew's larger closet and the hall to our room. This room is our nursery, and while it's moderately painful to dismantle it, neither we nor the kids need it anymore. Katie can't wait for her princess suite and Andrew looks forward to a bigger closet, a new window, and having his room back! I'll remember nursing 2 tiny bunners in this room.

"...And The Walls Came Tumbling Down"

So today was the day that the guys worked on the kitchen/dining room wall. And by "worked on" I mean destroyed. What didn't occur to me is that I wouldn't have access to the kitchen AT ALL from 8:30 (Got my third cup) until 6:15pm. Luckily I had some snacks for the kids (and me) in the garage fridge...and frozen Christmas cookies. I even had a chance to walk out into the new portion of the big new space, but I didn't have the foresight to have my camera with me. It's really nice and big...I can't wait!

So the guys finished up by 6:15-ish and I was able to fire up the grill and get my number one grill master on cooking us up some chicken. I was very close to just telling Mike I wanted to go out, but instead we pulled together grilled BBQ chicken breasts, frozen green beans and mashed potatoes (from a box- don't judge me! I bought it for nights like this!) We just finished and are thinking of scaling the ladder to check out the new room. I'll bring the camera if we do.