I thought today was supposed to be a basement work day. We knew it was going to be blazing hot (and worse tomorrow), and we were going to spend both days tiling the downstairs shower. The best we got in an entire day was the concrete board hung (with shims to compensate for the horribly bent foundation wall). And in doing so, Mr X discovered that the shower pan dips almost a full inch from front to back. Pulling it out and leveling it is not an option. He will be cutting tiles to match the slope. I am not going to argue. Time is short and the weather is too hot to make him do any more than that.
As it was, he has nearly completed a project I thought was either going to be punted to the fall or not happen at all. He had promised me a patio where the old garden was (promised this before the decision was made to separate), and as time ran short and bigger projects jumped in line, I thought it was never going to happen. But yesterday he brought out the rototiller to level the ground and today he laid all of the flagstone that he had pulled out of other random spots where it had been living in the yard. Just tilling the ground completely changed the feel of the garden out back. With the raised beds on that side, and a chain link fence, it felt like that part of the yard was inaccessible and small. After the new fence went in and the vegetable garden moved, things improved a little, and then with the ground flat and tilled, the fence edged with roses, carnations, and plumbago (yes, I know, wrong climate zone, but I'm trying anyway), the whole area opened up. It feels twice as big, and totally usable. There are a few more flagstones we can scavenge, and then I will move my fire pit and the Adirondack chairs we made from the old fence in Charleston over to that side. It will be a lovely place to hang out once the weather turns cool enough to burn things again.
I made the mistake of spending most of the day away from home. Now, I don't regret the things I did. I got a massage, showed a house, and did a major stocking-up trip at Costco (sending my dogs away with two big bags of dried mangoes for treats, for example). But it was so difficult to be in the sun and heat that I came home and collapsed in an overheated sprawl. I never liked to be out in the hottest, brightest part of the day, but this is ridiculous. I can't even stand the sun coming in my car windows anymore. I want to blame the medications I'm on for making this so much worse. I just had to wonder out loud this afternoon, do you think that my condition is enough for me to qualify for a variance to the window tinting laws where I live? I don't even like the sun to hit my hands on the steering wheel. How hard would I have to beg to be allowed to tint my front windshield just a little bit? I feel like a vampire exploding into a cloud of dust on days like this.
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