Commitment

Inspirational song: The Show Must Go On  (Queen)

I didn't want to get back up and write, but I made a commitment to myself over 800 days ago, and I pulled myself back out of bed. It turns out that all this hard livin'--stress, heat, junk food, and who knows what else--has taken a toll on me, and I went down with a migraine. I may need to rely heavily on pictures today. Lucky for me I took several.

We went up to meet with a second roofing contractor so that the seller could have a low ball bid (just guessing motivation). This guy kept pushing back his arrival time, from the original 1 pm, and by the time he actually showed up it was well past 5. We had run errands for the first delay, but we spent two hours at the house waiting, with no chairs, no a/c, and very little entertainment. We ended up weeding the garden to keep ourselves busy. I had a notebook with me to sketch out ideas for personalizing the place, but after a stint in the sun pulling weeds, I already had a splitting headache. I mostly just stared at the room, making precious few decisions. I am slowly seeing things that aren't as well-preserved as they seemed at first. Cut marks in the formica, chips in the glass door on the China hutch. I will maintain the original finishes as long as I can, but there may come a day when the turquoise formica gives way to a neutral quartz.

Two hours with all the windows open helped air out the overwhelming stink of freshly polyurethaned floors a little. The raised garden beds look much better without quite so many weeds choking out the good stuff that volunteered this year. So far we have sunflowers, kale, strawberries, raspberries, broccoli that has bolted, tiny tomatoes and basil that were stunted, and some horrible leaf that Mr S-P fed me claiming it was a purple variety of spinach. Damned if he didn't put horseradish in my mouth. I threw a fit, cursed, and grabbed a kale leaf to wash the taste out of my mouth. Yuck.

We aren't feeling really confident with this new roofer. The seller's agent said he came recommended from people the seller knew. When he didn't even mention replacing the cracked rafters, we wondered whether he might not be the hack who did that repair in the first place. I wonder what his bid will reveal.