The last time I wrote on this blog, I was preparing to head to summer residency in St. Paul. It’s been a whirlwind since then, so much so that I don’t even think that I’ve had time to properly reflect on my experience.
Fat cat teachers like me have summers off. Of course, my “summer off” involved teaching summer school, attending an eleven-day intensive grad school residency, and working on grad school work. I also did some work for the math department. Beyond that, my wife and I foolishly decided to take on a bathroom renovation.
Our house was built in the fifties, and only has one bathroom. It had brown tiles on the walls, everywhere, like a locker room. The floor? Different brown tiles. We had a pink vanity and a pink toilet (with a brown wooden seat.) Bromleigh and started knocking tiles off the wall and thought, “How hard could it be?”
Of course, we’d never tried to take on a project like this before. It turns out that there was an inch and a half of concrete under the brown tiles on the floor. Demolition took longer than we’d anticipated. We held off on removing the toilet until the very last minute. Then we moved into our in-laws house for a “couple of days,” and by that I mean the rest of the summer. Everything took longer than we thought it would. In fact, it’s still not finished, though it’s back to being functional so we can live in our own home. Some pictures:
We still have more painting to do. We also have to add beadboard around the room, and patch the ceiling back up. So, it continues to be a never-ending work in progress. The inordinate amount of time spent on renovating the bathroom took away from my writing time, of course. Fortunately, we finished it enough to move back in, and I used Labor Day weekend to go on a reading and writing frenzy. I was able to get my materials in on time, and I already have feedback.
So, I feel like I can take a breath.
A quick one, though, because I have to read ten books this month and do a bunch of writing. Let’s not forget that I’m back at work, and that I have to do planning and grading with my new crop of students. And one more thing – I started this program last January. By then, the football season was mostly over. Football season is just starting up, and I have NFL Sunday Ticket. So my writing will have to take place around watching hours of football on Sundays.
I can do it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
We finally finished our bathroom remodel like two weeks ago. This was the one that was supposed to get finished while i was at residency.
And while it’s complete on the inside, we still need to put drywall back up on the outside. And then clean up because all our construction stuff is just packed in our laundry and workout rooms.
YAY! We’re adults!