Deconstruction continued….

My head has become a catch-all of details and images from the past two years. Rising to the surface is acomment made by a dear, departed friend and teacher about a glass of wine: “You know how people are always saying that something isn’t half bad? Well this wine is half bad….”

***

Before we knew it, July blazed in and it was time for my husband’s follow-up scan. I tried to be optimistic, but I couldn’t get rid of that deep fist in the gut feeling that his big ugly scary tumor had left baby scary tumor cells behind. Indeed, the images showed something unfriendly cooking in both my husband’s lungs. “Likely inflammation,” the oncologist said, “but we’ll scan you again in three months to make sure.”

Because I’m basically distrustful, I checked up on his assessment, and found that it’s not uncommon for inflammation to develop in the months after a lobectomy. I kept my fingers crossed, said, “Kine hora” and spit three times to ward off the Evil Eye. Then I moved on to other matters.

With the torch now firmly in summer’s grip, the contractor determined that doing any work to improve the heating system made no sense, as it couldn’t be accurately tested until the weather got cold again. We agreed and set October 1st as a date for replacing the feed pipes and testing the radiators.

In the meantime, the powder room was rehabbed with the toilet we wanted, freshly painted walls, and luxury vinyl flooring our contractor recommended. Our wonderful cast iron sink—original to the house—had recently been reglazed and fitted with age-appropriate fixtures, so we were all set there. The finished room looked beautiful, apart from a sloppy paint job on the door where a big patch of the old paint had chipped away, and flooring that bounced under foot.

As if we didn’t have enough going wrong, it was right around this time that the new, expensive smart oven I’d bought to replace the 14-year-old stupid oven that conked out after my husband’s surgery, decided to have a major tech meltdown. Fortunately, I had purchased the store’s extended warranty. A few days after calling customer service, a serious young man with a briefcase showed up at my door asking if I’d tried shutting off the electricity to it and turning it back on. Ah! The prescribed fix for tech issues! Power down for a bit, then power up and wait for a reboot. Only, the oven hadn’t rebooted. Nor did it reboot for him when he tried it. It was FRIED. He pulled off the front of the oven and got to work, attaching it to gadgets he had in his bag of tricks. Half an hour later, it was working, at least for the present….

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