Construction With Cookies – Day After Day After Day After Day ….

Has it really only been a week or so since I updated you on my cookie addic uh, our basement remodel?  The intervention … and the therapy …  seem so long ago …

So after we finished the floor I ran upstairs and ……………. have you noticed how often people begin their sentences with so?  I have.  I hear it more and more.  For example, “So tell us about your new cookie therapy practice, Dr. Sweet.”  “So, I’d heard of this crazy lady who was in the midst of a basement remodel and …” I don’t know why Dr. Sweet doesn’t just begin his sentence with I’d heard of ... ? Why the so?  Pay attention people.  So the thing is, when you’re watching the news anchors on TV and listening to the reporters on the radio you’ll start hearing it too.  So I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to NOT hear it anymore and next thing you know you’ll begin saying it yourself and before you know it you’ll be out of control and you’ll be writing it.  So I'm just sayin’ –be careful people.  

So, anyway………………….right after we finished laying the very last plank on the newly remodeled basement floor, I called my head bee to tell him we were ready for the baseboards to be installed.   “The bees will be out next week,” he said.  The next morning a bee showed up, table saw in hand.  Okay, not in his hand, but in the back of his truck.  It was Saturday morning and there was a bee at my door!  And I had no cookie plan!  Well, I had a cookie plan but that was for Monday and I hadn’t been to the store yet to buy the ingredients. 

I offered him my plate of cream cheese crepes covered in cherry sauce but he declined even though I told him I hadn't taken a bite yet.  I understood.  It would have been hard to keep the cherry sauce from dripping onto the saw blade and gumming everything up.  I couldn’t let him work without a treat but I wasn’t sure how much time I had to get something mixed up and in the oven before he would finish.  So I had to fall back on my tried and true brownie recipe.  

I just crossed my fingers and hoped I wasn’t giving him a repeat.  Anyway, even if I’d made them before, I couldn’t think what else would be quick and easy and good.  I just checked my blog and I’m ashamed to say, they were a repeat.  

Baseboards and door handles!

As we got closer and closer to the end of the project, the bees didn’t always come every day or stay very long when they did come.  I never knew if or when they’d show up at my door or if I’d need to bake, so I finally just made sure there was always a stick of butter softening on the counter and a selection of recipes lying nearby.  

Monday morning we knew we’d be gone most of the day but I couldn’t risk having a bee show up again with no cookies so I got up early, baked pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies and left them.  

But nobody came.  Until Tuesday.  I’d made the rash decision not to get up early and bake that morning which meant when my bees pulled up just as we were putting on our coats to leave again for the day, all I had to offer were the day-old pumpkin cookies – which is what I shamefully gave them. 

If only they would have come the day after when my electrical bee came to put in all the lights and plugs and switches.  I was ready for him.  I made him Irish Lace Cookies in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.  

And when he came back the day after that I baked him lemon cookies.   

Once the electrical work was done there was nothing left but the handrail.  Once again my bees showed up unannounced even though when I’d handed them those day-old cookies I had specifically asked them to tell me ahead of time when they’d be coming so I could be ready for them.  Honestly, this erratic work schedule made construction cookie-baking tough but you know what they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get baking.  So I did.  I baked the lemon cookies – again – because I still had lots of lemons and I knew they hadn’t eaten that cookie. 

And that was the end.  Of them.  But not the end.  Nope.  A couple of days ago we finished laying the flooring in my sewing room.  And that’s the end.  Of the flooring.  

Before

After

But not the end.  Of everything.  I’ll be posting some more.  Some day.  We've been moving furniture.  And organizing.  And I’m still baking.  Pumpkin muffins for Leslie and Ryan and the kids.  

Banana bread for our neighbors.  

You didn’t think I could stop cold turkey did you?  Wait, when did Leslie and Ryan and the grandkids show up?  And why is everybody sitting on the couch together … holding hands … looking at me ….?

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Construction With Cookies – Day After Day After Day After Day ….