This summer has been galloping by. Travel, construction, camps. Funny to realize there are only four weeks left. Four weeks that will be filled with more travel, construction, and camps, heh. My brain is therefore a bit scattered, and today I will discuss various tidbits of life!

House
The bulk of construction is done on our house. In other words, we have walls again, after two months without them. Here’s the deal: With a 45-year old house, you expect to have issues. You expect to fix things. And with a house formerly owned by a disabled, mentally-ill veteran who only used one room of the house, you don’t expect things to be terribly well cared for. We expected all this, and didn’t mind it. What we DIDN’T expect was to discover that whoever was “maintaining” the house for the mentally-ill, disabled vet was scamming him in the most disgusting, unethical way ever. Some of the “repairs” were so dangerous that they could have killed the former occupant or us. (Sewer gas venting into the a/c unit? Seriously?)

(top left is current: we have walls!)

The good news is that we’ve ripped apart a great majority of this house and have made a lot of repairs. Sure, we wish that we’d discovered the problems in February instead of the summer, because ripping out walls in 100+ degree heat is NO FUN, but all is well, and the guy who worked on our house did a fantastic job. Jason and Ambrose were both involved in the construction, and know how everything stands (the advantages of hiring a friend). There is still stuff to do – caulking, trimming, painting, etc – but we have walls, windows, and a front door again, and our house won’t collapse onto us. I do wish I knew who was scamming the vet, because I think he ought to be dealt with. Unfortunately, this was an estate sale and the vet’s mother sold the house from a distance, so there’s no way of knowing. So I’m letting it go. And it’s a relief knowing that the house is now in much better shape than it was before.

(And we have bookshelves! Still in progress, of course.)

Family
Yesterday was my sister’s bridal shower. Ambrose turns 14 tomorrow and will have his party later today. Laurence finished his two weeks of musical theatre camp and did a fantastic job in his performances. Ambrose just finished a week of programming camp at St Mary’s University. Morrigan starts band camp this week. Jason will be spending a few days in Nashville for work in the near future. And so the crazy continues.

turning 13 vs turning 14

Yarn
I think I have a yarn addiction… To be fair to myself, though, most of this yarn was either at really deep discount or given to me. And I’ve been making lots of lovely things! (Post forthcoming.)

And now, I’ve gotta go get ready for that birthday party!! See y’all later!