The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

It’s almost scary to write about our kitchen remodel because it is moving along at breakneck speed and with fewer snags than anticipated. I don’t want to jinx the amazing progress we’ve made and still need to make. To date, we have a level floor, and we have light. Daniel has been busy; he demolished the kitchen. He worked with our contractor, Gary, to level the floor, lay down the new floor, complete drywall repair, add sockets, fix broken sockets, change the refrigerator socket to the new sub-panel in the kitchen, add drywall to the places that were destroyed by past inhabitants, taped, skimmed and painted. He even painted our backsplash a hot color—Tabasco! And all in a week! And, without moving out the refrigerator or our monstrous rolling butcher block table.

The cabinets are due to be delivered Tuesday, at which point we should have a kitchen sink again. Now that’s exciting! Washing dishes in our small bathroom sink is not the most convenient. Do I wash a dish or brush my teeth? Are the dishes out of the sink so I can brush my teeth? If not, that could get messy.

Meanwhile, our kitchen “stuff” is still splayed outside on the deck, on the lawn (covering up the crabgrass), in the upstairs bedroom, and the laundry room. The good news is that I am beating all my friends on Fitbit. I have more steps accumulated just from making a cup of coffee than my friends do playing tennis. Coffee, coffee pot, and cups are all in different locations, I tend to walk around in circles a lot.

With the dustiest part of the remodel done, (hopefully), I decided to start tackling the mess. Needless to say, dust is everywhere. I feel like I should start naming the dust bunnies, they’ve almost become pets. Even Mugsy is sneezing while dragging dust from one end of the house to the other. I considered attaching a dust rag to his tail, but he’d probably just run around in circles, literally chasing his tail. Currently, he’s too focused on catching every fly flitting around the house to be a good duster. Everything we eat tastes gritty.

I usually try to be kind to the environment and not be wasteful, and now I’m just trying to be kind to my sanity. We’re using paper plates and plastic silverware, but I won’t give in to plastic wine glasses. Some things are sacred. I have found that my toaster oven can substitute for an acceptable pizza oven, and store-bought rotisserie chicken is a lifesaver when it’s 107 degrees, and it’s too hot to stand over the grill.

My garden is laden with zucchini, peppers, cucumbers and the tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, just need someplace to cook them. There are still mysterious goings-on. I planted two seeds of Cinderella Pumpkin in the same planter. They came from the same package. One is growing a large green striped fruit ball; the other plant has bright yellow fruit. And one I didn’t plant volunteered a few feet away and is developing a small light green round ridged fruit? Squash certainly seems to have a mind of its own here.

Today is our day of rest, and we’re both tired. No Home Depot runs, no dusting or cleaning, and I am not even going to try and figure out the squash plants. Today is officially a No Progress Day, a mental and physical recoup time out. Dust can accumulate, and those random plants can just keep appearing. I enjoy riddles when I’m not too tired.