What a change from yesterday. Barely grazed the mid-60s, cool and rainy all day. With my bum ankle it also meant I didn’t get out for a walk, which I would have done rain or shine under fully functioning physical capabilities. Because I’m a fair-weather cyclist, no rolling walk or bike ride either. The farthest I got was a careful walk down the drive to the mailbox. I seemed to have turned a corner with the ankle, anyway—instead of turning the ankle (badaboom). Can walk much more normally now, although lateral movement is painful, I found out the hard way when attempting to put my foot up on the ottoman.

The building designer and project manager came by for a meeting for a preparatory discussion on the house remodeling jobs. We did a walk through to discuss the sundry jobs. The good news is I don’t have to move Mom’s baby grand piano nor the washer and dryer out of the basement, the knowledge which will allow for a good night’s rest; I’d been dreading that. The piano is on a stage dolly, so easily rolled out of the way as the workers progress, although I promised to wrap the thing up in plastic and padding so as to survive the odd 2×4 dropping on it. The rest of the stuff in the basement we can move out with the help of neighbors and pack away (hello storage pod in the driveway for three months). Now that our driveway has been widened (thank you, dirt from the egress work), there’s plenty of room for a pod, portopotty for the workers, and staging ground for building materials.

The first job starts a week from Tuesday (upstairs bathtub and surround), followed by attic insulation, followed by two new decks (both tiny walkouts but required by code), followed by garage storage, followed by basement finish in late July. We’re told they won’t get to the master bath until the end of October at the earliest. I guess that’s a good thing because it will take me a few months to psychologically work up to that one. The invasiveness of the project (traipsing through our bedroom) coupled with the dust (they’ll put up plastic, but still) will force us to sleep in our brand new basement for as long as 5 weeks on twin mattresses we’ll carry down from the upstairs guest room. We don’t want to kick out our weeknight tenant from the other guest room for that long; besides we need his money to help pay for all this work.

My cleaner brought me a rose from her garden today, which is most incredibly fragrant. Spent the evening with Hubby working on our individual puzzles in the dining room and listening to the cleverly humorous BBC Radio play podcast A Charles Paris Mystery, about a B-list actor in London who solves real murders on the set.