Wednesday started with the luxury of lying in bed past 7 AM, because the roadwork is DONE!

I still need to move my car out of our single-width driveway every weekday so that contractors can potentially park there instead, but I no longer have to scramble to do it before the street fills with backhoes, skid-steers, dump trucks, trenching equipment, or other heavy machinery. Very happy, me.

(Technically I don’t have to move the car at all, street parking is no longer prohibited, but I’d rather let them have closer parking. They’re doing all the hard work, after all.)

Fancify-Floor 2 progress is…progressing. Slow but steady. The tilesetters arrived yesterday, set the shower floor, and discovered that the rest of the bathroom will require a lot of extra leveling to bring it up to spec for tiling. So today they installed the cement backerboards for the shower wall and tub surround, then proceeded to do a buncha extra leveling work involving materials that need to dry.

A truckload of wood also arrived. Doors, doorframes, wood moldings and other trim are all stacked and waiting for installation, and I confess I am excited. IT’S ALL SO PRETTY.

proof of progress

Getting up early does have its benefits, especially when the weather’s as hot as it has been. Today was anoher 90+ day, but I had all the outdoor puttering done before 8 AM.

“Puttering” as in I watered all my potted plants, yanked up the day’s allotment of purslane, harvested a tomato and two cucumbers, and admired the pumpkin blossoms.

True confession, I grow pumpkins because I love the huge flowers and the way they cover vast amounts of ground in three short months. Most years, I don’t get any actual pumpkins off them, because they are finicky about pollinazation and I neglect them. But! This year it appears I’ll have at least one chonker of a pumpkin, assuming the squirrels don’t eat it up before it ripens.

The rest of the day I hid indoors and did a lot more Olympics watching. First the live coverage of the Men’s All-Around Gymnastics finals (available in the wonderful four-camera zero-commentary mode!) and then 3 of the 4 individual equipment replays from the Women’s Team Gymnastics Finals — which were, to my delight, ALSO STILL COMMENTARY-FREE! So I’ve seen all the team floor routines, and balance beam. I'll work my way through the vault and uneven bars tomorrow.

Yes, this means I’m watching the routines I already saw live, but I was honestly focusing on individuals then, and rewatching means I ca see all the finalists’ routines. And that’s wonderful.

Thursday is looking soggy as well as hot (currently 80 degrees, 80% humidity, which leaves bare skin feeling slimy in seconds) The day’s chores are done, including a call to the optometrist to schedule for nest week’s refitting, the women’s all-around finals are on the multiview, my tea is iced & waiting, and a story I’ve been tinkering with for ages is loaded up.

Things are feeling good. Until later!

I recommend The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943..

I'f you’d prefer a completed, quirky slow burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser, choose The Stories Of The Restoration.

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