Fool Me Once, Shame on You...

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me!
(Life in RenoLand...the Second Time Around.)

I always swore I would NEVER AGAIN live in a house undergoing renovations. Clearly, I am a liar. Because here I am, with my merry band of hounds, and Foster the Kitty; smack in the belly of the beast.

Because the hounds are extremely aged and high-maintenance, and because Foster is extremely young and high-maintenance, they cannot hang out at the already-renovated and usually-empty other house while I get this one ready for market. They need Staff. And that would be me, because I can work pretty much wherever I'm planted; as long as I have a torch to melt precious metals and a whole bunch of expensive bending tools that look eerily like bending tools at The Home Depot. So the six of us, along with Foster's precious stuffed RatRat, are hanging out here for a few weeks. And I am melting things, and serving as "Staff."

This is a four-point project. Part one, new appliances in the kitchen. Cake. Deceptively easy, in fact. So easy that the Appliance Switchers encouraged me to allow Foster the Kitty to "supervise", a role he takes rather seriously. They pulled the old cook top, Foster inspected the existing wiring for code violations. They installed the new cook top, Foster sat on top to test load recs. And he shared RatRat when they broke for Chick-Fil-A. There is something innately incongruous about a Fetching Kitty on a construction site.

Part two. The icky 1987 shiny-tiny white tile and peach entry marble had to go to its just reward. A Supervising Kitty and a jackhammer is not such a great combo; and the hounds insisted on "warning" me with every blow of the hammer...Danger, Will Robinson! So the six of us retreated to my basement studio. Where hounds found renegade beads and precious metals on the floor and consumed them; causing precious and quite attractive poop. And Foster, with his innate 1/2 Siamese wisdom, employed ancient feng shui principles to rearrange my workspace. My Sam's Club bottle of Acetominophen has seen a great deal of action this week.

We are now embarking on Phase 3. Refinishing floors gouged by a collective 80 dog toenails for a good ten years. None of which will TOUCH the finished product...the are going to wear socks from here on out. Because the fumes are quite unpleasant, we will vacate the property for a couple of days. Which means that tomorrow, between reveille and 0900, I have to gather absolutely everything we might need for the next 5 days and stuff it somewhere in the rental car. My personal car, an Audi tt, is really just a go-kart with a roof. I couldn't possibly pack five days of stuff for a herd of dogs, Foster the Kitty and myself in its minuscule self. I had to rent a Hyundai SantaFe or Similar Vehicle from Budget Rent-a-Car.

Then, finally, there will be Phase Four. We will paint the walls and trim floor to ceiling. I am certain that Foster will have our best interests in mind as he oversees the spraying process...

And then...through the magic of the Internet we will connect with the exact person who wants to inhabit our lovely, renovated Atlanta Zen Zone.