Where we are.

"We" being me + the house. Fourthborn did two rounds of cutting-in on the perimeter of the ceiling in the living room. I got the first coat of paint up, and about 20% of the second before we ran out of paint. At which point we were both ravenous, so we combined a paint run with dinner and a yogurt run, getting home just as daylight was fading.

We work well together, and as she remarked, we tend to forget how often we need to take breaks. So we didn't get anywhere near as much accomplished as I had hoped, but what we did was good solid work.

More importantly, we enjoyed the process and the time together.

So during the coming week, I will finish up the ceiling in the evenings after work, and maybe get started on the walls. I am trying to figure out how to remove a shelf that Beloved put up. It is very solidly attached to the wall, with no visible clue as to how. (There are none of those little wooden buttons that people use to hide countersunk screws.)

It is a great shelf, and there is another in the kitchen, and each has supports painted the most lovely shade of red. The shelves are barnwood from a barn that belonged to someone in Beloved's first/late wife's family.

I would like to keep the shelves, and I would like to *move* the shelves, and those red supports are not likely to play well with the shade of green that I am repainting the walls. (Or they will make my living room look like Christmas 24/7, which is not the look I am going for.)

The chandelier-ish lamp is down from the ceiling. I will probably donate it to Habitat for Humanity. It is absolutely lovely, and it gives great light, and it is absolutely not-me.

I discovered another wall plate after we took down the curtain rod and brackets, this one for a co-ax cable. I may be stuck with it, as I don't think the manufacturer makes those in the Texas star pattern I am using, any more than they make blank ones. I will probably just have to paint over those, or hide them with furniture.

I had originally planned not to get together with Fourthborn next Saturday, except to meet her and Firstborn to pick up our quilt blocks. I had planned on having solo adventures. And that still might happen.

But I had also hoped that we would get as far as ripping up the carpet yesterday, and we're a long way from that, and Thanksgiving is in less than four weeks, and one of those weekends I'm going to be making a getaway with some of the other kids, so time is of the essence if I want to have enough space to set up the air mattress so Fourthborn can spend most of Thanksgiving weekend with me, playing with dolls and helping me decorate for Christmas.

Whew! Pausing for air.

It will all get done. Maybe I won't be able to put up two trees (one big, one little). Maybe we will be painting and ripping and planking the floor right up to the very last minute. Maybe it's unrealistic to think we can redo the living room in three weeks when it took a month and a half to do the hall.

Maybe.

But we can try.