Building a future

This week gave us another mass shooting devastating lives near my former hometown. Tennessee faught back against a racist, antidemocratic action. Our little reno is so unimportant in context. And yet I would say that this context helps us understand what freedom in America actually means: the hope that striving pays off, such as for the hard workers in our yard so far. They amazed me. Could you shovel and lift dirt and concrete planks for five hours in one day and maybe more? For possibly minimum wage because as a society, we devalue manual labor, no matter how difficult? (At least one worker was very young, but he worked as hard as anyone. I hope that I am wrong and that working on our house with our company gave them good pay for their hard work. ) I am amazed at both their ability, strength, endurance, and lack of expressed anger.

Monday was the first quite nice day of spring in South Bend, but we were a little trapped in the house. We can’t use our back doors without potential injury because we are lacking stairs or stoops. The front door is a tad inconvenient (whine). The workers came this morning and took down a fence section and measured for the next phase of work, which is laying the foundation for the extension. That will include steps for the backdoor, so we should have backyard access soon enough. Alas, they have gone, but left a Bobcat in the driveway (without a key) so we can’t get the car out of the garage. Of course, we forgot to get the cell number of our new project manager (duh!) so we had to text our designer. They responded quite rapidly! I’m very impressed. We were lucky that our designer wasn’t busy with another customer.

Saoirse, our dog, has proved to be incredibly upset when workers are outside, even though she has been fine–even happy–to see them in the house. We hope that she gets used to it because it will be a VERY long summer if not.

Lessons so far:

• Park the car in the street each morning before workers arrive at 8.
• Close the drapes so that the dog can’t see workers arriving to help limit her freakouts.
• Never forget to get cell phone numbers of your project manager!
• Value the people who are working hard for you!