August was a hard month for me. I was just so sick of the lingering inability to get anything done. This is the third summer in a row when my house has been torn apart and under construction. Summer is always a hard season for me anyway, so having this triple-whammy the last few years has made it so much worse. The best I can say for the month is that the construction is over, the boys are back in school, I anticipate some cool fronts soon, and I have less than two weeks until my vacation. Thank goodness.

Goals
After finishing my kimono, some cross-body purses, and a hat that was a total fail, I’ve zeroed out my yarn and that goal is DONE. I’ve also gotten four professional massages now, which was the minimum on my goal list. Most of the rest of my goals involve fitness, nutrition, and weight loss, which were put on the back burner again this month due to construction, band camp, heat, and unpredictable schedules.

Health
It was decidedly another bad month in health, as one might expect from the things I mentioned above. Plus, my insomnia came back with a vengeance this month, ugh. I did the best I could considering the circumstances, but there was still a lot of eating out due to not having a kitchen, and very little exercise due to never knowing when I would have time (our contractor’s schedule was variable and unpredictable). I managed to exercise on 16 days, though half of those were not intentional (like hauling furniture or books around to get to different parts of the room). Yoga was pitiful – I did one workout on the 1st and didn’t do more yoga again until the 25th, and I only got in 5 sessions the entire month. Oy. Altogether, I exercised for only 12 hours, and only managed to walk/jog 22 miles. However, the lack of exercise and poor nutrition seems to have been balanced by how often I had “active rest days,” plus not having any alcohol this month. My weight is down about two pounds from the 1st to 31st, but it’s all within an easy maintenance fluctuation range.

Books
I stopped binging on fluff books this month and concentrated only on those that I really wanted to read. Total books read: 3. Total books loved: 3. Favorite of the month: This was extremely hard to choose because I loved all three books I read this month, but eventually I settled on Strange Practice. Marginally.

In Construction
After months and months of not having a house, construction finally finished (by Jason and me, sigh) on Aug 29th. My prediction was Aug 25th at the earliest, so it looks like I was spot on!

Highlights of August
Given what I said in my first paragraph above, highlights are a bit thin on the ground this month. Biggest moment, of course, was finishing the house and adding back books, decor, furniture arrangement, etc. Here are a few other high moments:

• celebrating my grandparents’ 65th wedding anniversary and my grandpa’s 90th birthday
• buying the first Halloween decoration of the year
• writing the opening scene of a new novel
• The boys are finally back to school! Yay!
• getting several kitty-ducks to match my real kitties from one of my LuLaRoe retailer friends
• getting the best massage I’ve had in two years
• Ambrose finishing all his drive hours and driving test for driver’s ed (license test is scheduled for September)

Coming up in September
My plans for the month included rest, RIP reads, scheduled life, exercise, healthy meals, and an upcoming vacation (my first with just Jason in 4.5 years). However, on the 1st, we started having some major plumbing issues, and on the 2nd, our entire house flooded. We’re currently staying in a hotel until plumbers can rip our our xeriscaped front yard and repair a bend in the sewer line. That bend was causing calcium deposits to build up, which caused the blockage that flooded our house. The clogs are out, but the line must be fixed, and we have no working sewer line currently in our home.

At first, the prognosis was weeks in a hotel, canceling vacation, and spending nearly $10k on the damage (which includes having to replace our brand new living/dining room floor). However, our plumbers called in to have us put as a priority emergency repair, including getting an emergency permit from the city to have us use a backhoe to dig seven feet down into our yard. If all goes well, we should be able to move back home on Thursday, and the hole in the yard should be filled back in (after city inspectors verify the work) before we go on vacation. We may not have more than a concrete floor in our living/dining rooms, but that’s livable. It does mean that we may have more work to do as soon as we get back home from our cruise, but unless more bad news comes in (yesterday was a roller coaster of changing stories as the plumbers worked), we should at very minimum have a house to live in soon and a vacation to go on.

In other good news, Jason and I did pay for an insurance rider that covers backflow plumbing damage. We won’t know until tomorrow if that includes only the outside work, only the inside work, or both, but either way, something should be covered. And the plumbers are only charging ~$5000 for the work. The same guy has been working with us all weekend, coming out four times since Saturday, trying to schedule a backhoe operator on Labor Day, etc. These people are doing an amazing and honest job, and they will get the biggest glowing reviews I can possibly give them, and we’ll definitely call them for plumbing and a/c issues in the future. (Local peeps: Will’s All Pro Plumbing and Air Conditioning) You can never know too many excellent local folks who will give you fair, honest answers, prices, and work.

Anyway, I don’t mean for this to go on forever. Life is going to be crazy busy over the next little while. I’m going to disappear from the blogosphere until I’m home, or perhaps until October. Some book reviews might still go up (there’s one pending already from my last book of August) but otherwise, look for me in a month or so. And thank you to all the folks who have been following our saga on Instagram and Facebook, and lending support. Love you all!