Construction With Cookies – Day 20

There were no worker bees yesterday.  That was probably just as well because after reading my friend Art’s comment on my last post I began to realize that because of all the taste-testing I’ve been forced to do, it's getting harder to get MY cookie/brownie/cake/lemon squares/apple bars butt through the doorway.  If this basement isn't finished soon I may need to hire my bees to widen all of the doorways in my own house which would mean more days of worker bees which would mean more days of cookies which would mean I might not fit through the wider doorways so I’d have to hire them again to widen the doorways even more which would mean more days of worker bees and more cookies and … oh, no ... come back my worker bees!

I got up bright and early this morning to mix up today’s Black Walnut, Cranberry and White Chocolate Chip construction cookie.  Head bee had told me they would be over today but I didn't know how early they would arrive.  After I looked outside, realized how cold it was and saw the blowing and drifting snow, I wasn’t sure they would come at all.  I decided to put the dough in the fridge and wait to bake the cookies if/when I heard my bees buzzing at the door. 

In the meantime, since we used the blowing snow as an excuse to skip the gym this morning, Dean decided to clean the splattered texture from inside the light fixtures while I got comfy on the couch and read.  It wasn’t long before he came up and asked if I could do something for him downstairs.  It’ll only take ten minutes. 

Really?  I’d just spent hours down there vacuuming on Sunday.  After I vacuumed that mess he decided to go find his trusty MacGyver tool and scrape up all those little floor splats, so I got to vacuum those up too.

He pulled out his trusty Boy Scout knife when the scraper just couldn't do the job.  Right after I took this photo he looked up and said, “you’re going to make me look bad, aren’t you?”  

Since splats of texture on a cement wall are unsightly, Dean decided those had to be scrubbed off, by me because high school football makes raising his arms very high for any stretch of time painful – or so he says. 

Later, after everything had been scraped and washed to Dean’s satisfaction, he remarked on all the dust we’d been tracking from the splats on the stairs.  I sighed, grabbed the bucket of water and rag and scrubbed the treads of the stairs.  In all fairness Dean did offer to help, but I knew his shoulders would hurt if he scrubbed, and I didn’t want to hear him complain see him in pain.  And then, like an idiot, I scrubbed the whole basement floor, on my hands and knees.  A couple of hours later when I finally finished and crawled up the stairs, starving, expecting to be praised, Dean pointed out to me they’re going to make more of a mess when they come you know. Not only was there no “atta girl,” there were no construction cookies to reward my hard work because since my bees still hadn’t arrived, I still hadn’t baked.

Finally, about 2:30 they knocked at the door and as they got right to work putting the casing on

the doors, I got right to work baking the cookies.  20 minutes later I carefully carried a plate of

warm cookies down my scrubbed steps to the basement and stopped short.  The floor was covered in sawdust.  I recovered quickly and I don’t think my bee even saw the tear in my eye when I handed him the plate of cookies.  Or maybe he did, because later I heard my vacuum cleaner running.  Of course, before I took my bees the cookies I had to taste one first.  And just in case the cookie I ate wasn’t indicative of the quality of the entire panful, I felt obligated to try another.  Then I remembered I’d had a salad for lunch which meant I deserved just one more.

I wonder when it will be a good time to discuss door widths with my bees.◦

Construction With Cookies – Day 20