The Summer of 2018

I'm not sure how I keep taking summers off of blogging.  This time has its own unique list of excuses, I guess.  That's what this post is about.

Excuse #1: I'm now a general contractor.

When we bought the house back in June of last year, it was considered a "livable fixer" with only 2 real bedrooms, a kitchen that needs an intervention and a (yet-to-be-discovered) river running through the basement.  I have been making it my business to get all these issues fixed.

With the help of some friends, we've managed to get the dying furnace out of the middle of the basement and replace it with something with air conditioning that's more efficient and out of the way of everything else.

From there we celebrated on the 4th of July and called a team of professional waterproofers the next morning to fix the newly-discovered river.  We were pretty shocked when they told us they could start tearing apart the basement in less than a week.  That put us in a mad rush to complete the demolition, preparation and to move Elisha upstairs from his temporary spot to nowhere in particular.

Basement waterproofing took three weeks and immediately I got put in the role of framing walls (it's only been 20 years, so why not?), repiping the house (it's only been 80 years, so why not?), redoing the basement electrical (it's only deadly, so why not?), ductwork (it's only...ok, you probably get it), drywall, flooring and trimwork.  If I forgot anything, I don't want to hear about it because it's not in the budget.  Here's some of our progress so far:

Excuse #2: WFH w/Kids

One thing they don't explain in the employee handbook of a company that is 100% work from home is how to handle summer break.  The kids have been running around my office screaming and throwing stuff for seven weeks now.  Just kidding, I don't have an office.  My office is going to be right where the laser is sitting in that last photo.  

Maybe by Christmas.

Obviously, things have been pretty distracting at "work".

Excuse #3: Jr. Bible Quizzing

Elisha spent the first six months of the year as a Junior Bible Quizzer in the Oregon District and learned most of the New Testament book of Galatians and some of the book of Hebrews.  He worked really hard and--let's be honest: I worked really hard--to get through the year.  The poor guy had so many distractions between January in June, but he finished his first year as Rookie of the Year for the state of Oregon.  Good job, Buddy!

Excuse #4: Cancer

This is the always excuse.  The good news is that the brain scans I referred to in my previous post came back very good.  Everything from the conventional surgery is gone and the site from the gamma knife surgery has had noticeable shrinkage.  That area is expected to slowly go away.

The real challenge this summer has been the chemo.  Anne-Marie has been on the chemo pills Xeloda and Tykerb for about three months now and the side effects seem to have a cumulative effect.  Anne-Marie is very sick on a weekly basis, often for stretches of a few days at a time.  Scans are due within a few weeks, but the date is pending.  We hope to have results by the end of September.

We did sneak away for a quick date night at the end of June to enjoy Anne-Marie's favorite restaurant ever.  We don't get out much, but we try to make it good when we do.  So--and I'm sure she would never say this herself--if you see her in person, know that Anne-Marie very much prioritized the event on her calendar.  

Just a few more weeks of summer left! I think we might celebrate by staying home and building some walls.