Like John Oliver says at the beginning of every Last Week Tonight show, “It’s been a busy week. Only it’s been TWO weeks since the last post, hasn’t it? More than two weeks. Welp, that’s the kind of busy times I’ve been having.

Now, don’t get the idea I’ve been personally busy—I have not done much at all until yesterday. (Prosecution Exhibit 1: this is my first post since June 11.)

Lots of Busyness happened in fits & starts with Operation: Fancify Floor 2 because in a total non-surprise to everyone, the HVAC ducting upstairs turned out to be as wonky as the electrical & plumbing. (altho not nearly as dangerous, TBF)

Anyway, I got my sorta-wish for all that to be gutted out & reset, but that meant delays for paperwork and re-scheduling, plus the weather was brutally hot, so the roofing part got put on hold a few days too,, which meant other things kept moving around, and, of course, the street outside was a mess of beeping equipment and dust the whole time.

Living in a Fascinating Chaos Zone melts my brain into something about the same the consistency as Velveeta Cheese Food after 30 seconds in the microwave. It also sucks down my energy until I have less power than my laptop battery after watching a whole Bridgerton season in one binge.

(Which I have not done, by the way. I have rationed myself to one episode every few nights since the season dropped so I could save the last 2 episodes for a special treat.)

Every time I started to do something, I would pull up a new game of Contexto or Shanghai solitaire instead. Or I would go play in the yard, because the yard is happy and growing and there’s always something to yank out of the ground. (Weeding is delightfully cathartic if you look at it as a time-filler activity rather than a chore to complete.)

And now for excellent news! I’m finally going to get my special binge-watch treat, because some of the Busyness is DONE, and other parts are shifting into lower, quieter gears.

Operation: Lets Never Do This Again is finished. The basement is all floored & painted & cleaned, and we have confirmation that the sump system is working as designed. A big storm dropped 1.5” rain on us, and the pump kicked on & kept kicking on, a few seconds every hour or so, for about a day. Which, I am informed, is exactly what one wants it to do.

ANYway. Books, games, wall art, and gaming gear have been moving back into the Gamespace since Tuesday morning. So now we’re only storing two floors of things on one floor of the house. That’s fully one-third less chaos in my environment!

The remaining basement furniture, Assorted Stuff, & electronics will return to their rightful homes on Saturday. Then I’ll be able to watch Bridgerton on a big TV screen while Spouseman is gaming at the same time on his own TV screen! (Yes, I can make do with Netflix on my laptop or tablet, but…I’d rather lounge on the couch with popcorn, squishy potato that I am.)

In other construction news, (because watching construction is my life right now, not gonna lie) the extra-add-on HVAC work upstairs is also finished! The installers did an amazing job with our difficult space. The 70’s We have all-metal ducting now, placed logically, properly sized for the rooms and fully insulated. Given the constraints they were working with, they performed miracles.

So the only Big Work upstairs left is the electrical rough-in, which starts tomorrow and which I’m hoping is done by 4th of July just because that’s a nice obvious goal. Then it’ll be time for actual construction things! (Very exciting) Insulation & drywall, tiling & glass in the bathroom, then cabinetry, lighting, & carpeting, doors, and so on.

Meanwhile, outside, the water main work ended last Wednesday. Oh, but wait, there’s more—last Thursday a new bunch o’ contractors showed up with new equipment and started hauling away whole slabs of old. cracked sidewalk. Monday they poured new concrete into most of the holes on our side of the street. Wednesday, they tackled the other side & pulled the sawhorses from our new sidewalk.

The whole process has been mesmerizing. But! It’s mostly done on our block, so I am hoping I’ll get back some brainspace available for writing things or at least writing about things I’ve written soon. That’s my hope.

I have a lot of construction pictures. Some video, even. But I am feeling self-conscious about it, so I won’t inflict it on people unless they ask.

Cat pictures tho, I never mind sharing those. This post has geotten long enough, so here’s a fine highlights gallery of Pippin being the Pippin-est of Pips as your reward for reading all this.

Postscript: Okay, just a few construction pictures. A wild sidewalk appears