2012-11-21 – So I was mistaken when I wrote my post the other day about the lack of an advent season for Thanksgiving. It does exist. It’s just a lot different than I would have thought. It’s not about pausing to count our blessings. It’s about taking those blessings away! It’s about suffering, so that when the suffering ends, you feel oh so thankful.

And that’s how I’ve been observing my Thanksgiving advent season this year.

It’s the remodeling. We are having our floors redone. All of them, except for the bathrooms and the basement. For most of the house, this entails sanding and refinishing the hardwood (including the stairs). For the kitchen, this entails tearing up the existing tile floor plus the subfloor and replacing it with hardwood. It also meant ripping all the cabinets out.

All that is history now.

To prepare, we had to move most of our possessions, like nomads in the desert, so that the floors would be clear for the work to be done. Of course we are not nomads of the desert, so we moved it all to the garage, the basement, and our deck. The furniture is on the deck covered by a huge blue drop cloth. The books, and there are thousands of them, are bagged up and line the floor of the basement. The clothes are in bags on the ping pong table.

As I write this (Tuesday), the last workman is sanding the final sections, making the new kitchen floor match the hardwood in the rest of the house. When he applies the finish, we will have to leave for the night because we won’t be able to get to the bathroom. We’ve been sleeping (and living) in the basement for more than a week, but we’ve been able to get to a bathroom. Tonight that will be cut off, so we’ll be bunking with family. Tomorrow, we’ll return to start putting things back.

But “start” will be the operative word. The return to normalcy will be slow. Walls are going to be painted. Baseboards, removed to allow the floor work, will have to be reinstalled next. And most of all, the kitchen is going to have to be rebuilt. Today we’re going out to look at new cabinets.

While I’m out, I’ll have to find a Starbucks or some other place with wifi so I can post this.

Tomorrow, when I return home, the first phase of this project will be done. I will be very thankful to be sleeping in my bed again.