How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Alison Henderson

I've just returned from a week without internet or television. You might assume I was camping in in the wilderness or visiting a Tibetan monastery, but you would be wrong. OG and I were in the heart of America's second largest city, working (in his parlance) like rented mules getting our daughter's new condo ready for her to move in. In fact, he's still there, bless him. She helped as much as she could, mostly driving us around to pick up tools and supplies, but she had to work, so it was mostly just me and OG.

She had expected to have all the tech services up and running for us, but nothing is ever as easy as it should be. All I'll say is there's a reason Comcast is the most hated corporation in the country. They're supposed to be coming back Monday, but I'm not holding my breath.

The week was marked by multiple frustrations interspersed with occasional successes. First, OG began to install a new kitchen faucet, only to discover that the water shut-off valve wouldn't shut off all the way. He persevered through a minor flood and being sprayed in the face multiple times while lying on his back under the sink--not a comfortable position for anyone, but especially a man approaching seventy. The faucet is in and works perfectly, but his back looks like I beat him with a fireplace poker. Even worse, he had to go back under there to run new wiring and install a garbage disposal. Both projects were successes, but he swears he is never getting under another sink in this century.

While he was busy doing that, I scrubbed twenty years' of accumulated grease and filth off the kitchen cabinets and cleaned the kitchen and bathroom floor tile grout with a toothbrush. Now that's love!

On a more fun note, PO&O and I put together this new pantry cabinet with only a little help from Dad because I couldn't reach high enough to put the top section in place.

OG plans to spend the next week replacing cruddy old electrical outlets and switches and painting, so we devoted quite a bit of time to color selection. Here's the test swatch of the lovely blue she chose for her bedroom.

The condo has wonderful space and an excellent location, but it has been rented out for the past eight years, and the condition shows it. OG assures PO&O it will be a palace by the time he's finished, but God only knows when that will be. He's already planning to go back in a couple of months for the next installment of the home improvement marathon. He wants to do a stacked-stone fireplace surround, among other things. He was getting bored because he ran out of projects around here. LOL