From the looks of it

The view out our front door will reveal that it'd be an uncomfortable first step if you happened not to notice that there's something missing, the front porch, that is. You may remember it was torn off the house some time ago to make way for an addition. Not a big, sprawling addition, but rather one that adds just enough space to make things a bit more comfortable and livable inside.

To be as brief as possible, I'll just say that this will allow each of our kids to have their own room and share 1 bathroom upstairs, Kevin and I will move downstairs and have our own bathroom, the foyer will be extended to make a place for the piano and there will be a new home office/She Knits headquarters and we'll be down to one living room instead of two.

Dodging the torrential rain from tropical storm Bill, the floor joists went on today and a concrete footing was added around an existing brick pier to support the current house better. It is old and apparently they didn't see the need for minor things like, say, a foundation way back when.

It's here that I must again hand it to the resident jack-of-all-trades, handyman, builder extraordinaire, hardworking machine that is my husband who just today, with his rain soaked hair standing on end (and he has a head full of it) like Billy Idol, had a coming to terms with himself about the benefits or lack thereof of doing all the work himself. It is a dilemma of epic proportions that I'm afraid he must struggle with internally. Will he continue to be a do-it-yourself-er or will one day he become a pay-someone-to-do-it-for-you-er? I think we already have our answer.

But in the meantime while he soul searches, let's just have a little look at his boots, shall we?

Can you see what I see?

It must be the mud in part that's getting to him, or maybe it's the grunt work. Neither of which are much fun.

And in response to the comments and emails from friends wondering how or why I seemed to have had a job and lost it, let me just say that I didn't explain myself very well. The job is still there, it's just that I'm one of the expendible folks who isn't full time and can either be scheduled last minute or cancelled last minute based on the sometimes vast fluctuation in patient census.

So, this time of the year like every year (I should know by now), many doctors schedule vacations not surgeries and there aren't as many folks in the hospital. The end result is I have some unplanned free time on my hands which at first bummed me out and set the chain reaction in motion of slight panic, which led to irritation, which led to imagination, and then mild elation. Let's just say I'm over it. And as I said in my last post, things can, will and do change on on a dime. In a month or two the hospitals will be overflowing and I'll be wishing for these days again. It's that whole grass-is-greener thing.