This is what my days are looking like.  My temporary kitchen is a mish-mash of various meals in progress.  Either that or it sits empty while we eat our takeout around the coffee table.  Today I have a tomatoey bolognese simmering in the slow cooker, recipe from The Kitchn.  The hotplate is grudgingly at work making a grilled cheese.  I get to take a break from the tiling because I am the food provider.  I am glad for the breaks, a rest is needed for my tired feet and aching back.  I rinse the marble dust and dried up mortar off my fingers, stir the bolognese and rotate the sandwiches in the skillet.  If not rotated, on side will remain soft and pale while the other becomes black and crisp.

Our counter tops are somewhere between Indiana and Seattle, they have estimated they will be here either March 9th or 11th, I don’t believe them, but we will see.  So far the husband’s estimate of tiling time of 19 hours seems to be off, but unfortunately in the wrong direction.  At this point we are maybe 28% done, with about 16 hours of work put into, you can probably do the sad math.  But after that all that is left is building and painting cabinets by hand, installing them, installing the counter tops, installing appliances, painting, building the kitchen island, and building a light fixture.  That’s ok though, because we have both decided that this will be the most amazing kitchen that has ever existed in the existence of kitchens.

 

But the other days are hard.  When you look at the same raw space for two months with sometimes barely perceivable change but still feel it wearing on your soul and callousing your fingers, it becomes a day by day battle.  When you are doing this in an 800 square foot house it becomes living in a construction zone.  There are various forms of dust all over the floor, in the bed, covering the cats.  My vacuuming is futile I know, but I’ve only half given up on that.  Of course there are days when you want to give up and cry in a corner and walk out and just something.  Something else.  It’s ok to feel that, crying in the corner is ok too, for a bit.  We all have those moments, that is life.  Then we pull ourselves together, wash off the mascara smudges and mix another bucket of mortar and know we will get there someday.  The smell of simmering bolognese and the thought of the monstrous plate of pasta that will be eaten makes it a little easier.