Home on the Dirt Pile

I don't want to say that I was anxious about my business trip this week, but when Paul and Ellie got home from work and school on Wednesday evening, they found the front door to the house standing wide open. Oh, the glass door was closed. But the wood door was open. It seems that I rolled my suitcase out the front door, put it into the car, and just left.

In my defense, we've had a landscaping crew out here all week and so there's plenty to distract the eye from teensy weensy little household details like an open door.

It's going to look so cool when it's done. The next outdoor projects are to build Ellie's swing set/play gym thing (as part of the retaining wall project, the landscapers are building a large, level play pit), fence in the back yard, add shutters to the windows, and eventually replace the brick patio with stone. It won't be too long before the outside of our house is looking pretty spiffy!

But for now we're broke. And the inside is our next priority. Coming up for the inside are finishing the basement family room/playroom, creating a "big girl bedroom" for Ellie in the guestroom (sorry, guests!), replacing all interior and exterior doors and frames, replacing the baseboards, and eventually building a new office for me. So I guess we're planning to stay here for a while!

But back to my trip. My meeting went really well yesterday. I'm glad I went and am excited about what might come from the strategy session. The travel itself was bearable, but a touch rough. For some reason, I had to fly on a little toy jet in both directions, and the best world to describe both landings is "yaw." Oh, how I hate yaw.

I stayed at a lovely Loews, which is usually a nice treat, but not this time. My room was literally on the back of the elevator bank and I could hear the elevators going up and down all night. The room wasn't even in the nicely carpeted hallway with the other guest rooms; it opened off the marble elevator lobby before the firedoors, directly across from the service doors, which slammed. A lot. My room's windows opened out directly onto a tar paper roof covered in broken glass, with nearby office windows close enough to read their cubicle posters. The walls were horribly scuffed. Worst of all, the bathroom floor around the toilet was liberally smeared with dried blood. Oh, yes. But I got in late and left early, so I didn't change rooms. By the time I noticed the bathroom floor, I was already unpacked and exhausted.

All in all, it went well and I'm glad I went and I'm glad I'm home. No matter how messy it gets here, I can still use the bathroom barefoot.