Satisfied but exhausted

Last week's mountaintop metaphor feels literal - we're exhausted! Would have gone to bed at 9:30 if hadn't remembered to blog. But we're getting so close to watertight we can almost taste it. This week more roofs were completed - only two left and one (over the kitchen) will be done tomorrow. As shown below, the crew removed the old roofing material and built a new clerestory where the kitchen skylight used to be. They covered the whole area with big tarps to keep out the inevitable rain - one reason we're so tired is that we spent much of this afternoon removing the tarps so any moisture that had slipped beneath to the plywood would be dried away by morning. Converting that skylight required some hasty rearranging of kitchen gear, including the long-threatened demise of the gangly old Norfolk Pine (the two smaller Norfolks are temporarily in our "front yard," with uncertain futures.

The final interior stairs were put into place this week, so one can walk almost comfortably all the way up to the perch (roof of the elevator shaft). Comfort will be increased when all the railings are in place. One is almost entirely comfortable once on the perch and on the observation deck, thanks to a secure surrounding of iron railings.

More foam insulation was applied, and several window were assembled - most of the windows will be installed this week in another major step towards weather proofing.

But the real drama of the week belonged to Charlie, who disappeared and was believed to have escaped out to the street. After searching high and low, D. was utterly distraught and reported to me that we might never see Charlie again. He did this in the safety of a public place late in evening when I was, typically, exhausted, so the worst I could do was be icy. Luckily, when we got home I quickly found Charlie in the one place we thought he'd never go again - the neighbor's backyard. Despite his old age, aided by his low-carb diet, enraged that other cats were moving into his former turf, he had jumped our garden fence and climbed down the mulberry tree. Getting up proved more difficult, and jumping back from the tree onto the fence seemed utterly daunting. So D and I tore through the construction site gathering materials to build him a bridge. By the time we got back to the garden, Charlie was sitting in the kitchen demanding dinner!