PDride Speaks Out

Love it or Change it…One more weekend without a kitchen, maybe? Friday morning dawned a rainy day, so we slept in a little longer instead of going for our full walk and luxuriated in the thought of using the new master shower. The night before I had moved all of our bathroom supplies back into the master bath from the guest bath, towels, hair stuff, and soaps, we were ready…flick on the faucets…wait for the hot water to flow out of the shiny, new chrome…maybe because it hasn’t been run for a while…wait a little more…it’s getting warm, isn’t it?...well, we can’t wait all day…OMG…it’s f@#&ing FREEZING…WTF?...it got less than lukewarm at best. Make the best of it, hold your breath, dive in, dive out, splash splash, clean what we have to and GET OUT! T was much braver than I, but not very happy. My first text that morning was to the GC to see if it was something with the install that needed to be adjusted. We decided we would actually stay home for the weekend, in case the kitc...

Love it or Change it…Starting to love it, or is it too soon? The next morning the four of us headed out on our morning walk with an extra bounce in our steps after sleeping in our own beds and traipsing up our familiar street to find our familiar bunnies and to poop (the dogs, not us) in the usual places with just the right smells and foliage. It was a happy morning, still a little strained getting the kids fed and then sorted into their back rooms for the day with water, beds, litter boxes, and food, but we managed happily and arrived at work after our usual, known commute. Master bath, out of commission. That evening the doubt seeped back in as to our decision to move back into the house, when we came home to a garage once again filled with tools and building materials with no room for the car, further work on the master shower and toilet, so that there was only one toilet in the house available to us, and the master bath pretty much completely unusable. Shower, final p...

Love it or Change it…One more week, really?? Close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting on a leather wrapped seat, wobbling a bit as the legs search for solid ground on the cobblestone pavers beneath it, do you hear it? That Mexican melody playing in the background, not sure if it’s salsa, or ranchera, or bolero, but you know those distinct notes. Our house has been wrapped in that sound as surely as it’s been wrapped in plastic for four weeks. The intent last weekend was to take Monday off to eliminate one night stay in the hotel, returning that evening from the desert to stay back at the Marriott, the house would be cleaned as per our usual scheduled cleaning, at least as much as could be cleaned, and perhaps by Tuesday or Wednesday we would be able to move back in from the hotel. As the miles passed beneath the tires and we got closer to the house T kept trying to convince herself and me that maybe we would be able to just move back in now and not have to go to the hotel ...

Returning home after our respite in the desert we knew we couldn’t stay at the house for the time being, so decided to book into a Marriott Residence Inn. But first we had to go home and get our clothes for the week ahead, me for work, T for a trip to her biggest conference of the year, where her clothing matters more than on most of her business trips. I was confident I knew which boxes held which clothes and shoes she needed, and had left them in the bedroom in locations I would recognize. I was only mildly concerned that the painters had been into our room and what they may have covered up — as I had already experienced how they wrapped everything up in the other bedrooms and my office — but tried to not be too worried because I knew of course where all her clothes were…right? Everything gets pushed to the center of the room . Wrong! Our bedroom was wrapped up tighter than a burrito in plastic and taped down to the floor. The boxes had all been moved into the bathroom shower a...