Construction With Cookies – Day 15 and 16 (I think. Honestly I'm Beginning To Lose Track)

Around 7:20 a.m. Monday morning Dean told me I needed to “call John (my head bee) and find out what’s going on.  We sat around all day Friday waiting for somebody to show up and then they didn’t.  We need to go to the gym today.”  He reminded me again at 7:58 a.m. but I didn’t want to seem too anxious so I ignored him and waited until 8:10 a.m. before I called, even though I knew we would need to leave for the gym around 8:40.   I had to leave a voicemail but I wasn’t too concerned because I willing to give up Pilates class and let Dean go alone if I needed to wait for a return call.  

As I found out later, his anxiety about talking to John had nothing to do with missing Pilates himself. It was because he didn’t want to go to Pilates alone “with all those women.”  (Apparently he’s so traumatized by just trying to get through the moves  that he hasn’t yet realized there are normally at least three other old geezers groaning right along with him.)  As it turned out he didn’t need to worry because my head bee and the drywall guy came at 8:25 which gave us plenty of time to discuss taping and texturing, get to the gym on time, and save Dean from facing – all alone – a room filled with crepe-paper skin, sagging boobs, and loose skin flapping off of upper arms.

Head bee had told me my worker bees would be here “after lunch” to hang the last door.  Time, I’m slowly learning, means different things to different people.  To me “after lunch” meant 1:05 p.m..  Since I needed to get over to Leslie and Ryan’s to make Emerson (home sick from school) some lunch, I only had about an hour after I got home from the gym to make my construction cookie.  My intended banana bread took too long.  Brownies are fast.  Had I made those?  I’d made so much stuff over the last weeks I couldn’t even remember, but when I looked back at blog posts, there they were.  What else? What else? What else is fast?  A quick Google and Monday’s construction “cookie” was … drum roll please … Chocolate Chip Blondies.  Mixed up, baked, cooled (just barely) enough to put on a plate and hand over to my bees in less than an hour.  

Where they sat until about 2:30 when they actually showed up.  And hung the final door.  

So as it turns out I could have baked the banana bread I had planned to bake after all.  But I didn’t mind too much because I figured I would just bake it yesterday for drywall bee.

However, yesterday morning Leslie called saying Emerson was feeling worse and asked if I could come over for the day so she could conserve her insufficient personal days in case the bug going around school infected her too.  I was happy to go, but what to do about drywall bee?  He was supposed to be coming first thing to begin creating the dust bowl in my house.  I didn’t have time to bake.  I couldn’t give him day-old Blondies – could I?  I did.  Just as I was ready to leave, drywall bee arrived and I apologetically handed off a plate of shriveled up day-old Blondies to him as I headed out with chicken soup, soda crackers, GingerAle and Twix (you’re never too sick to eat a treat).

About mid-afternoon the caustic smell drove Dean and Angus out of our house and over to the sick house.  If you know anything at all about Dean, you understand how horrible the smell must have been for him to risk contagion.  Dean’s the guy who opens every door with his sleeve pulled down over his hand – every time.  He uses the wipes at the grocery store to clean the cart handle – every time.  He sleeps in another room when I’m sick – every time (and would probably sleep in another house if he had the option).  He waves at sick grandchildren from afar but will not touch them.  I’m the total opposite.  I open every door with my bare hands – every time.  And sometimes I even touch my eyes right afterwards!  I have never, ever used the wipes at the grocery store.  The only thing that drives me to another room to sleep is snoring.  Not only that, I touch and hug sick grandchildren.  And guess who gets sick more often?  Just guess. 

Anyway……………….when we got home yesterday afternoon I braced myself for the nasty headache-producing smell but when we walked in the door it wasn’t half bad.  We opened a few windows for about half an hour and the remaining bit of odor disappeared.  My bee had already left but he’d gotten a boatload of taping done.  That drywall bee is fast!  Ho * ly cow. This guy is suuuuuper drywaller.  

A while later Leslie called to say Emerson was feeling much worse again and Myra had a headache and fever so I was pretty sure I’d be loading up with more Ginger Ale, soup and crackers and heading over bright and early this morning.  That meant I would have no time to bake for my bee before I left unless I got up suuuuuper early.  I love my bees but I love sleep more.  So I mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies last night.  I almost baked them too, but then they would be half a day old and anyway, there’s nothing better than a warm chocolate chip cookie.

This morning I was ready for the call from Leslie asking me to come soon but she surprised me by saying Emerson had recovered enough to go to school.  Myra, however, stayed home but she's feeling good enough that she’s happy for me to just stop by and give her chicken soup, crackers, Ginger Ale, her own special treat, and, of course a plate of chocolate chip cookies. When my worker bee showed up bright and early this morning I was able to be here to hand him a plate of today's just-baked construction cookie.  

Soon I will be heading over to warm up some soup and pour some Ginger Ale for Myra.  It should be late enough I'll miss the morning rush.

I know.  We need a new windshield.

And tomorrow, those bananas will just be that much sweeter when I bake the bread....maybe...we'll see...

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Construction With Cookies – Day 15 and 16 (I think. Honestly I'm Beginning To Lose Track)

Unleaded or Regular?

I was driving to the gym tonight after work and patting myself on the back because tonight was the fifth day in a row that I have pulled on my neon green shorts (purchased for a mere 50 cents from the Salvation Army) and my extra-large t-shirt with frayed neck, tied up my grass stained tennis shoes, planted my sorry, now somewhat larger, butt in the car, drove two minutes to the health club, parked, walked in and actually participated in physical activity.  In the past six months I am pretty positive that I have seen the inside of this health club a total of approximately 10 times.  I could blame myself for not placing exercise high on my list of priorities.  I could blame myself for not having the fortitude to suck it up and go even when there really wasn't a free moment.  I could have forced myself to get up and on that elliptical at 5:00 a.m..  Um, not really.  I tried the early workout once and almost threw up on the machine. 

What I choose to blame for my lack of healthy exercise, however, is acronyms.  Yes, acronyms.  Two, to be specific, which monopolized my time for months.  One I promised not to speak of til summer (hint....it begins with B and ends with D).  The other begins with a P and ends with an D and now resides in Ecuador.   And okay, there was Thanksgiving and Christmas, leisure trips on my favorite interstates, laundry, rare fits of cleaning, and those annoying habits of eating and sleeping.

So, as I was saying, I was driving to gym, congratulating myself on getting back in the saddle, so to speak, and I noticed my windshield was dirty.  I really hate driving with a dirty windshield so I regularly hit the little handle on the steering wheel that squirts water on your windshield and then automatically kicks on the wipers so next thing you know, voila! you have a clean windshield.   Recently I've noticed that when I wash my windshield with the wiper solution I smell this weird sweet fragrance.  I'm not sure what it is, but I'm 99.9% sure it's coming from my wiper fluid.  I'm not sure, but I think the last time I got my oil changed and they topped off my fluids, they must have put in some kind of sweetened wiper water.  Why would anybody want sweet wiper fluid?  I only smell it while the water is squirting so it's not like it would freshen your car.  I find it a bit too sweet for my taste anyway.  But there you have it.  My wiper fluid smells sweet when I clean my windshield.

Smelling that sweet scent tonight reminded me of other aromas.  One day I thought my car smelled like cat pee when I drove to work.  I don't think I had cleaned my windshield that morning so it's not like the wiper water rotted and started smelling.  And anyway, it smelled sweet the next time I used it so it couldn't have been that.  I didn't hear any cat screams when my engine started so I know there wasn't any cat up under my hood that sprayed itself in fear when I turned the key.  I only smelled it that one morning and it wasn't there when I drove home but I'm pretty sure it was cat pee.

And then tonight as I was on the elliptical, an overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke engulfed me.  I looked over and a guy had just gotten on the machine to my right.  He stunk.  Like cigarette smoke.  I tried to make excuses for him because he was a solidly built bald guy with a goatee and I'm partial to  bald guys with beards.  I wanted to believe he didn't want to walk into a health club, a place people go to be healthy, stinking like an ashtray.  It could be that his New Years Resolution is to quit smoking and get in better shape.  He was there, after all.  He was on the elliptical.  Maybe he is down to only one cigarette a day and he smoked it just before he walked into the gym. Maybe he really wants to quit smoking and he just hasn't been able to.  I tried to be sympathetic to the difficulty he's having trying to quit smoking but I just couldn't get past the fact that he stunk.  He reeked of smoke.  I had to breathe in those noxious fumes while I was sweating on the elliptical.  And I was breathing hard because I was working hard and that meant I was sucking in volumes, liters, gallons, cubic inches, pretty much most of the stinky smoky air surrounding him.  I might have lost minutes off my life instead of adding them.

There are things that happen in your body when you are working out.  There's something about physical activity that improves the flow of the blood and air through all your veins and arteries.  Gases that are normally under control discover new unimpeded pathways and routes of release.  Your guts are pushed and squashed and jostled so that little bubbles of air begin flowing and moving and gaining speed and momentum and in their excitement to be free it becomes more difficult to control their escape.  Of course there are some situations when control is easier than others.  Pilates, for example can be a challenge when you're throwing your legs up in the air and back over your head.  Pilates takes a great deal of concentration and control.  It can even require some preventive and proactive action before the class begins.  The elliptical, on the other hand, is just legs moving up and down.  There's not alot of jostling or pressing of innards.   It's rare to be surprised by freedom-seeking effluvium while on the elliptical. 

So, tonight, while I was inhaling stale cigarette smoke I felt no compunction to keep my gases in control.  I pumped my legs.  I sweat.  I stared straight ahead and yes, I did.  My silent mephitic gift to him.  My only regret is knowing Mr. Lucky Strike probably didn't even notice over the smell of his own cigarette smoke.◦

Unleaded or Regular?