Saturday Soundtrack

Seems like just the other day I was describing the sounds of a Saturday: lawnmowers; radios; children squealing on a slip-n-slide. How about pounding hammers, whining screw guns, radial arm saws buzzing, and the mix of laughter and profanity?

Yup, we're back at work on the house. After quite a sabbatical we are once again spending our "free time" fixing up the house. Last fall we hung up our tools on the afternoon of September 15th, calling it good enough for baby. Sure enough, she came on the 16th, and it has been plenty good.

Now, faced with the opportunity to sell our house for more than twice what we paid for it and reinvest the whole shebang into another house that, once complete, will offer the same sort of return on investment, we must pick up where we left off. Our parents warned us that anything we didn't complete by the time we brought the baby home wouldn't get done. And lo, it has not. What has been done is a hell of an impressive body of work at Trampoline and a bang up job on the first year with our daughter.

Now it's time to put our noses to the grindstone once more to ensure the best future for our family. All we need to do to get this house ready for sale is to complete the trim upstairs and do a few paint touch-ups. Ciocci Jeannie and Nana Jan are here lending a hand. Nana has been scooting around the neighborhood like a peacock with Briar in the jogging stroller. Ciocci Jeannie has been providing the laughter and saw buzz to the soundtrack, Sean the profanity, hammering and drilling. Ok, that isn't quite fair, he hasn't really been swearing. I am just so used to trucker talk going hand in hand with carpentry that I think I hear it even when it's not uttered. I think he thought about it when I insisted on using bits of left over refinished hard wood to plug the bare spots under the door trim.

Two things I do annoy him during home improvement days. Scratch that, there are two things that I am aware of annnoying him when we work on the house. The first is that I do too much, or don't do enough of one thing. So today as we have been doing trim, during the lag times for me, I have started painting.

Ya, that annoys him.

"Let's just finish the one thing we started on so that we can cross something off the list, rather than have 100 things a third of the way done."

Twinkling eyes, crooked grin, and slightly protruding lower lip, "But I really want to paint and it needs to get done anyway, AND I'm not doing anything in there right now."

Dramatic collapse of shoulders, knowing grin and, "You're lucky you're so cute."

The second thing, insisting on taking the long route to perfection (or closer to perfection) as opposed to the direct, quick route to done. That's what I did by deciding that we should use patch under the door trim. He always comes around and says it was for the best, but part of the dance is fighting it.

Funny how good teams do great work, but sometimes argue getting there. Maybe the good team reality is that you argue, but you get past it because you know it's what makes you good. The not so good teams focus on the fighting and not the great results.

If I am not careful there'll be a thrid thing that annoys him - typing on my blog during work hours.

Back to the f*#king trim!