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 ….?

◦

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

Four-Legged Therapists

It’s been almost two weeks now since Shadow left us and the house is eerily quiet.  Shadow wasn’t a noisy dog.  She rarely barked.  She rarely whined.  About the only noise she made was when she would “talk” to Dean as he prepared her toothbrush in the morning, and, of course, the clicking of her toenails on the wood floors as she followed him from room to room ― or when, in the morning, she walked from the bed to the door, to the bed, to the door, to the bed and back to the door, then the bed, then the door .... long before the alarm was set to go off. But even so, without her, the house seems much quieter.

Shadow and I got off to a bit of a rough start.  We already had a dog.  I didn't want another one.  I didn’t want the shiny black dog that Dean “thought I wouldn’t notice” prancing and bouncing in the back yard.  But Dean and Shadow had bonded like a super glue finger sandwich within seconds of meeting each

other and separating them would have been as painful as ripping that flesh apart.  I’ll be honest.  It was a long, long time before Shadow and I became friends, and we were never devoted to each other the way she and Dean were.  We were always a bit wary of each other – especially during the times she was eating remote controls, ripping the couch, chewing through bannisters, sneaking any food left on the counters and demonstrating her skill in the fine art of escape.  Whenever Dean was away and her attempts at fleeing from me failed, Shadow would lie by the front door patiently waiting for his return.  If I happened to walk by she’d follow me with her eyes, and I know she was thinking, “when will he come home and save me from that woman?”

During the last couple of months of Shadow’s life, as she declined and spent more and more time sleeping, the cats got quieter too.  They had reached one year old and I thought maybe this new demeanor meant they’d left the kitty antics behind and had reached that dignified, mature, and somewhat boring, adult cat stage.  But now I’m beginning to think they had sensed Shadow’s illness and reacted accordingly.  As Shadow grew weaker and the sadness in the house increased, they became more subdued.  They slept more.  They quit chasing each other.  They didn’t wrestle with each other.  They didn’t play with their toys.  A lot of nights, instead of sleeping with us, they chose other places.

The day the vet came to put Shadow to sleep, Sophie sat nearby.  I don’t remember if she stayed through the whole process, but she was there, watching, when it started.  Maybe she was just curious, but I think she knew there was some serious stuff happening.   I like to think she wanted to be there for Shadow.  And maybe for us too.  The days after Shadow died the “girls” seemed to sense our sorrow and spent more time in our laps and once again started sleeping with us.  

 

And then, all at once, they began playing.  They wrestled with each 

other – in the dining room, in the family room, on top of me in the middle of the night.  They chased their balls and threw their little mice around.  Their paws pounded the floors like a herd of mini elephants as they chased each other.  On top of all the playing, Sophie decided to take over Shadow’s job of the early morning wake up call. Unfortunately she doesn’t tell time quite as well as Shadow did and has begun pawing on the bed around 

5:15 a.m.  If I wait too long to pull my arm out from under the covers and pet her she begins pawing at my head.  And then she grabs a chunk of my hair in her teeth and yanks.  The only way to stop the pawing (and prevent baldness!) is to continually pet her, get up, or throw her out of the bedroom.

Here’s what I think.  I think they decided it was time to move on.  I think they decided we needed to try and be normal again.  To laugh.  To make some noise.   So we are.  The house is still too quiet but there are

more and more bursts of kitty antics and laughter.  Like the other day.  Sophie was running with Maisie hot on her tail.  She tore around a corner only to find Dean blocking her way and when she tried to put the brakes on she ended up sliding on her butt right between his legs.

We miss Shadow.  I miss Shadow.  But just because Shadow isn’t here anymore doesn’t mean she isn’t with us.  And as the days go on we are remembering her more with smiles than with sadness.

◦

Four-Legged Therapists