Return to normal

We began carrying books upstairs today. 

What am I talking about?  Merely giving you an update following my last post.  The end is in sight.  The house, to a large extent, once more feels like a home.  The furniture is back in the house, and resting in its proper places. 

Only the piano is missing -- due back from the movers on Saturday -- and the books.  Tons and tons of books.  (Not literally, of course.)  We began carrying some books up from the basement today, and what I refer to the media room -- from which "Confused Ideas" is written, edited, and published -- is now fully restocked.  That amounts to seven of about 21 first-floor bookcases full of books.  We'll begin work on the "library" -- I flirt with pretentiousness -- tomorrow, and the living room some time after the piano has been reinstalled in its place of honor.

It's been tedious, and would have been impossible without the extraordinary labors of my brother and his wife.  Known informally to the world -- and on their t-shirts -- as P&V Contracting.  The back deck still needs to be cleaned -- in progress even as I type -- and refinished.  And the house needs to be retrofitted seismically -- a job that can't be done until late August.

It should all be pretty much completed, except for the retrofitting, by this time next week, at which time I'll be en route to Glacier National Park for a few days of exploration. 

Then I can begin worrying about new furniture to replace the present sofa and chairs, derelict after the depredations of generations of house cats!

It didn't have to be this way.  I understand that some people handle home maintenance as the need arises, rather than defer it for half a lifetime.  I find that concept hard to grasp.  Obviously.