Deconstruction continued….

Something like this was hanging around our front porch yesterday. Every year toward summer’s end, a large nasty-looking creature appears in that location. Last year it was a giant bright green grasshopper, clinging to the front storm door, daring me to open it.

I didn’t. I stayed inside, hoping it would just go away.

If only things were that simple….

***

No one involved with the addition worked much between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. By this time, the structure was framed in, and super insulated, but there was no heat.

This was another source of disagreement with the contractor, who immediately nixed my choice of flat panel, aluminum radiators, because they wouldn’t “retain heat” the way cast iron ones would. Since he kept citing his credential in mechanical engineering as the backbone of his expertise, and I didn’t have the energy to press the point, I told him to go ahead and have the plumber install the baseboard radiators he thought would provide superior heat.

But, of course, first he had to get the plumber to the house, which was a chore in itself since every time he assured us the guy was coming, there was a reason he couldn’t. More than once, when the contractor told me to be up early so the plumber could start work at 8AM, I wound up rising at the crack of dawn, and waiting for hours only to get a text saying he wouldn’t arrive until noon, or later in the week…maybe…..

To make matters worse, the contractor told us he’d just taken on another project—a large, multi-story dwelling….

***

On January 7th, 2025, my husband had his lobectomy. The initial report was what we hoped for: clean margins and no lymph node involvement. At this stage, things looked good.

I spent the night in the hospital with my husband, on one of those torturous institutional recliners, and was astonished by how quickly he revived the next day. He was clear-eyed, hungry, had a good breakfast, and wanted his usual espresso with it. I went down to the hospital’s Starbucks to get it for him. By late morning, he was off supplemental oxygen, and by early afternoon, he was up and walking. At five that evening, he was discharged and assigned an agency for aftercare.

His recovery went as smoothly as we’d hoped, but for the first few weeks he didn’t want any work going on in the house. He needed rest. He needed time. You can’t take part of a lung out of an 86-year-old man without expecting that.

So work ceased until February rolled in.

Shortly after the first of that month, my husband asked me to let the contractor know work could start again.

The contractor’s response was “Great!”

And then we didn’t hear from him for a solid month….

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