It&rsquo;s Like Being at the Dentist&rsquo;s, Only Louder

I am sitting in my living room as I type this. I was crocheting a moment ago, and before that I was texting my sister. There is not a whole lot else I can do, except maybe go upstairs and clean Julia’s room, but why should I get all the fun? She should get to do some of it herself.

I digress.

While I sit here, with a sinus/stress/tension/not-enough-sleep headache pounding away in various parts of my skull, there is noise. Lots of noise. Big electrical cutting tool noises, and cracking and falling noises, with the occasional human voice. The voices are from the guys in my kitchen and my basement. They are the ones operating the big electrical cutting tools and dealing with the cracking and falling of debris – sheetrock – from the kitchen ceiling. And the plaster of the basement ceiling.

In my last post I wrote about the pipe that burst. Since that post, there have been a bunch of other delightful chapters related to that first story, but I don’t even feel like writing about any of it because I’m just tired of all of this. I don’t want to relive it. So I’ll just write about what’s happening at this moment.

The crew arrived around 8 this morning to do their demolition thing. Bill and I had moved everything out of the kitchen except for stuff in the lower cupboards – hopefully the crew won’t need to get behind the walls there. But I am not holding my breath.

We had also moved all the stuff out of the corner of the basement Most Likely To Have Been Affected By the Waterfall. Of course, that happened to be primarily “my” corner of the basement – my work area, where all my fabric and yarn and all the other creative stuff is. And you just don’t realize how much crap you have until you have to move it somewhere else.

Anyway, those are the areas the guys are working on. They’ve put protection down on the floors, and they’ve draped plastic over the doorways so most of the dust stays where they are and not where we are. They are all very nice and polite guys. It’s comforting to have a nice crew.

Alex is asleep. Julia is at a friend’s house. Bill is upstairs trying to take a nap because he didn’t sleep well at all last night and he has to teach later.

I am typing, and when I finish for today I’ll go back to crocheting.

Let’s talk about that. It’s more fun.

I’d started crocheting an afghan a couple of weeks ago, just because why not. I didn’t have any specific person in mind, I just wanted a big, mindless project. Something to work on while listening to reruns of NCIS and Criminal Minds. Because crocheting and murder are such a natural pairing.

Did I show you the other stuff I’ve been crocheting? Oh, yeah, I did. Well, some of them. I also crocheted a couple other little bowl/basket things. I’ll have to post some pictures at some point. They’re fun to make. Little yarn sculptures. But I find I need to pay attention (really?) while I’m making them, otherwise they get lopsided or ruffled or just wrong looking. I wanted a project that I could just do mindlessly when I needed mindlessness.

So I started an afghan. I had some teal yarn, a few different shades, so I used one of those skeins to start. I chained 201 and started single crocheting back and forth and back and forth.

It’s meditative. Peaceful.

And once I got about five or six rows done, it began to look like Something. So besides meditative and peaceful, it had become rewarding as well.

Julia saw me working on it as some point and immediately asked if it was for her. She asks that about everything I make, just about. I said no. I told her I didn’t have any specific plans for it. Yet.

She wore me down, of course. “Can I have it?” I finally said yes, so whenever I complete it, the afghan will be hers. She wants to change the colors of her room to teal and white (instead of the pink and purple she’s had for a bunch of years), so it works out.

And then I started thinking I really needed to make something for Alex. I’ve crocheted a couple of elephants, a basket, a hat and matching scarf and possibly other things for Julia since I started crocheting a year and a half ago or whenever that was. So I asked Alex what he would like me to make for him, because you know, when you have more than one child, you need to be fair. Not exactly the same, but fair. He no longer wants a crocheted dinosaur or any other little animal. He doesn’t like the look of crocheted hats, and he doesn’t wear scarves. He doesn’t seem to mind that I haven’t crocheted him anything, but still, I don’t want to discover, years from now, that he’s been harboring a secret pain and resentment because Julia’s gotten more crocheted things from me than he has.

So I’m making him an afghan too.

I had three skeins of a bulky green yarn that I’d bought last year just because I was buying yarn because I was Learning To Crochet! and I liked it – medium-dark green with flecks of red, mustard and blue – and maybe I’d make something with it so I should buy 3 skeins!

I still had that yarn, so I showed Alex and he nodded his approval (or apathy, sometimes it’s hard to tell) and I started with that. It’s bulky, like I said, so it works up faster than the one I’m doing for Julia. So I chained 176 and half double crocheted a bunch of rows and then realized the rows were getting shorter so I yanked it all apart and started again, this time Paying Attention at the turns so I wouldn’t shorten anything.

Alex’s afghan is nice to work on because the yarn is especially soft, and because as long as I don’t screw up again, it will go quicker. Of course, three skeins of yarn isn’t enough, so I HAD to go out and get more. I picked up more of the same yarn, plus a mustard color and red to pick up some of the flecks in the green. I’m also crocheting into the back of the V in order to give the afghan a more pronounced stripe effect. I’ll take pictures when there’s more of it to show you.

So today I’ll work on Alex’s afghan. I feel like I want to finish his first, since Julia already has other stuff.

The loud electric cutting tool noises have temporarily ceased. I haven’t looked, but Bill said they’re pretty close to being done. I’d imagined an entire day of noise. But maybe they’re just clearing debris before they start hacking away again. I don’t know. I am in my red chair near the fireplace, typing away and hoping that by distracting myself the tension in my head will subside. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think it’s working.

Anyway, after all the ceiling stuff is pulled down, the guys will test for moisture in the walls, and if a wall needs to come down (oh please no), they’ll remove the cupboards and have at it. Tomorrow the adjustor will come out to look at all the damage and destruction and evaluate it all and do her adjusting. We will decide what we’d like to have done and what we’d prefer to do ourselves. And we will go from there.

It’s been frustrating and miserable at times. I don’t think all the snow – storms every week – and the cold weather are helping. The kitchen has always been colder than other parts of the house, but since the burst pipe and we tore down a big wet section of the ceiling, it’s been even colder. Breezy, even. And then our second floor heat is now working properly, but it feels too hot, probably because we’re not used to being so warm up there. It’s like we have a whole bunch of different climates throughout the house. Maybe my headache is from jet lag.

I think they’re vacuuming up debris right now, and I think their boss is coming over to check things out, so I’ll close for now and go back to my crocheting.