By now I should have learned to travel with equipment and options for when plans change on the fly. They certainly did today, and I was not properly prepared. I dressed this morning to go to the doctor, not to the mountain. I did both. Thank goodness I followed the urge to spray on strong sunscreen when I allowed myself the luxury of a sleeveless shirt. Unfortunately, it was a cute shirt with sequins, and now it has pine sap on it. I hope I can get the sap out.
I was just getting into the car after my quarterly visit with the rheumatologist when I got the message that the Mr hadn't even cleared town yet, when he had intended to leave for the hills by 9 am. I offered to meet him in Boulder, to go up and help, even knowing that he wasn't able to go home to pick up appropriate clothes for me. He also didn't have much for me to carry up, other than the rubber boot tray we used to keep by the front door, which we will use for the batteries from the solar panel array to sit in on a shelf up high in the cabin, and a couple of aluminum corner channels. I'm not used to climbing the hill with such a light load. While the man loaded up the cart he uses to haul large loads of lumber and supplies, the dogs and I started up the steep section of the hike. I fully expected to be passed on the path, as I always am. For the first time since we bought this property, I was the first human to arrive at the campsite. As always, Elsa and Murray beat me there, but I was so lightly laden, I was able to traipse up the mountain with relative ease. I was so surprised and proud of myself for finally winning that race (although I'm not sure the boys knew I was racing).
There was very little visual progress for this build day. The man pulled up some of the temporary decking that made an entire second floor, and started moving planks to where they will eventually stay, with a six foot sleeping loft and a two foot battery shelf. The rest will be open floor to ceiling. I got a good idea how it will look from my chair below to the fixed window on the east side. Even that view is lovely. Every which way I looked outside today was beautiful, honestly. Inside was a little more stressful. There were dozens of boards piled around and leaning on each other at weird angles. Trying to move through the cabin and grab the boards we needed was like a giant game of pick up sticks, with a little more at stake.
Moving all of the boards up high made for buckets' worth of sawdust falling from above. My hair still smells like wood. Elsa shows us often that she is an old dog now, by wanting to lie around and sleep all day no matter where she is, and today she sacked out in the middle of the cabin floor, and refused to move even when the sawdust fell all over her. I brushed her with the broom, and she still didn't move. We had to chase her out when things got too dangerous for a sleepy old dog to be in there.
We plan to go up again on Saturday. I may get one more good day of autumn color pictures, before everything is gone, which is sad because autumn doesn't actually start for more than a week. We are racing against winter to get this cabin sealed up, which feels weird to say while it's technically still summer. I hope we can get it done by October. November first at the latest, right?
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