No words necessary on this Wordless Wednesday….

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Well, right about now, dear Filipes should be sipping a rum and coke latte in Minneapolis. He’s on his way home. I’ll be picking him up at the airport in the City of Black Gold and Riches tonight.

After a 3 and a half hour drive. After the soccer cluster#%&$ jamboree. After I vacuum the gobs of black dog hair growing legs and mating collecting in the corners of our stairs, not to mention everywhere else. And we have to squeeze in some school work. We meet our liason lady on Friday and lately we have done a whole lotta crap-all in terms of structured learning via ‘modules’. So a week of catch up awaits us. And the newspaper…. Ugh. I can’t think of coming week just yet.

Let’s just get through this day of soccer cluster#%&$ and drive to Calgary.

However, we get the joy of coming home to some Ethel Lovliness…. Our cleaning lady. She will have been while we return from the city. The house will be awash in the scent of vinegar and lemons. And after being alone with my animals kids this week, some Ethel lovliness is just what this ittybittycottagehouse needs.

The kids will sleep at Nan’s while I make the trek to the city. Silence. Alone. Four hours. A little taste of bliss before the reality of this week comes caving in. Oh God… maybe even a little shopping…. and a duck into one of bazillion Starbucks….

Oh… and of course, there’s hubby. Bestill. Heart.

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Having one child at home overnight…. easy, peasy. Fucking lemon squeezy!
My eldest child chose karate and staying home with mum over camping in sub-zero weather, no propane for propane heater (”Jesus Christ, woman, we’re just gone for one night.”), carcinogenic weinies, and a porta-pottie. Oh, and again, no propane for the heater. In temps that dropped below freezing.

The kid’s nine. He knows from stooo-pid!!

So I had some good company with my frozen pizza and AI. One nine year old boy, given he has a little time in front of one screen or another, is fun to be around. Downright helpful, in fact. Without any drama.

We picked out groceries together. We cooked together (yes, I said frozen pizza- it still needs to be cooked!). We made some lovely strawberries and whipped cream for dessert together. We CLEANED UP together. We got all cozy and settled in and read a chapter of The Golden Compass together. We muddled and stumbled over big, long, ridiculously unfamiliar words together. And, finally, we got all cozy and settled in for an evening of TOOB together.

It wasn’t my night alone. I’d have liked that.

This was better.

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Today is one big day, alright. Firstly, the basement will be officially done… at least until we come up with the time and materials to really finish it. But it will seem pretty done. To us. And to our visitors. Who after eight years of hearing us talk about our small, cramped and painfully, soon to be eating our young as well as each other, inadequate cozy, little cottage house expected to be camping out on a plank floor in front of the pot-bellied stove, in our one room Rocky Mountain cabin.

OK, so they may have been close in their guess-timation of our lives here, but not anymore. The four of them, and their sudo-Uncle Andy, will get to inhabit the entire, now nearly finished, root-cellar basement. Which, let me tell you, now with flooring installed (almostly completely), does not feel like a root-cellar basement. Gulldurnit, it feels like a real part of the house, suitable for human children inhabitation and human adult inhabitation, alike.

So, it will be complete. But let it not go unsaid, for something like this I will continue to ensure gets said- repeatedly… over and over and over again, never ever to be forgotten… I will be completing this seemingly endless project myself.

Secondly, Filipes is taking the small people camping. With a neighbor and his own small people. In our new-to-us tent trailer. They will also be taking a tent. For neighbor. I believe Filipes will be manning the tent trailer and five, chile-weinie-marshmallow-chocolate-potato chip encrusted small people, himself, from his perch upon the convertible dining table/twin bed. Oh, God. I’m really sorry I will not be there…

NOT!

This will be a glorious time. Just me.

Just me and a pile of laminate. And the table and chop saws. And hopefully all of my fingers.

The dark imaginings have begun to take shape, seeping insidiously inside my squirrelly, compulsively over active little brain ever-cautious mind. I picture this night, the first alone in so many, many years… picture my peaceful WHOLE EVENING/NITE/MORNING ALONE ruined by the fact that a sawblade has chopped off most of the fingers of my right hand, save for my stubby, little thumb. And my WHOLE EVENING/NITE/MORNING ALONE is spent first, in shock; followed by bleeding to death, my life slowly draining from four dull-blade ravaged stumps, unable to get to the phone due to aforementioned shock; concluding with my perish-ment in the root-cellar new, clean and recently floored, oh-so-liveable downstairs space.

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