Eking It Out

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Yesterday was just a terrible day. Everything went wrong.

Today was very different, albeit no less exhausting.

We spent most of the day at the doctor's office; Wings was finally, after five years of trying, granted referral to a local orthopedic specialist to see about fixing his knees. They've been in bad shape for more than a decade, but the last five years it's become increasingly urgent, and for the last few years he's been bone-on-bone. Literally. I've seen the films. I can't imagine the strength it takes him to get through each day with this kind of pain, and I know from pain.

So. We have a provisional date for his surgery, in less than a month. It all depends on his labs, so that may change, but if all goes as currently planned, my September is going to get exponentially busier, since I'll be the one picking up the slack on the labor here. This doc is great, worth waiting for — he dropped his guard sufficiently to tell Wings that he's one of those patients that he, as a sports medicine guy, is just thrilled to be working with. He's an artist in his own field, so they get each other, and I could not be happier.

By the time we got home, though, the crew was already done for the day, and the photo above shows what we found: window and door frames. I meant to take some close-ups, but I'm just completely beat, and I forgot. But these guys do precision work, and this is all mortise and tenon joint work, all by hand (well, and a Skil saw), and they're just amazing. Up above, you can see one of the big front windows and the front doorway. We have a door! Of sorts. An opening. It still feels like a big deal.

Side and back windows:

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Those are for the back end of the living room and the utility room.  As you can see, they got four rows of adobes laid yesterday, and in that corner, got started on the fifth.

Below, the back door:

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Okay, so it's technically a side door, but it serves the same purpose.

And we had one more expense that had been in the works for some time that had to be taken care of this week:

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Those three beautiful things are the supporting beams that will be in the living room. They called us a couple of days ago to tell us they were ready, and we picked them up at the local lumber mill on the way home from the doctor's office this afternoon.

We are, I think, just going to eke out enough for the labor this week. That is thanks to a lot of folks who, over the past two days, have stepped in to spread the word, share the links, make purchases, and donate, and I have spent more time bawling over the last two days than I have in quite a while — today, out of sheer gratitude.

Of course, there's a long, LOOOOOOONG way to go yet. WE scrapped the window schedule completely yesterday, turning it into something we could all live with, and that we could get at better prices, hence the new frames today. Now that we have the RO numbers for them, we don't actually have to buy the windows (or the doors) until we get much further along, so that's a gigantic expense that we can defer for a while yet. The guys will have a lot more to do tomorrow and/or Friday, depending on rain of both sorts, but at least there's progress. And we did have that conversation with our crew chief yesterday, as difficult as it was, and the result was just more proof that we've got the right crew. his response was, "Well, that's the way these things go. When there's no money, there's no work. I get it." But we feel an enormous responsibility to these guys and their families, and we know how important this job is to them in very concrete terms. So we want to do everything we can to keep them employed consistently. [And that was the biggest source of my despair yesterday. If push came to shove, I could deal with the delay, time crunch or no. Hell, we've done it for six years already. But I was failing other people who were relying on us, and it was killing me.] So of course, what this means is that we still need folks to share links for us daily — via the widgets on our YouCaring page, including the code from the purple box at the lower right that gives you this:

We also need folks to continue to share the link to Wings's site daily, because sales are truly our bread and butter, and business is down all over the area still. We've actually been more fortunate than a lot of folks, because Wings has established a steady online clientele of repeat customers. Most folks around here don't have that, and tourism continues to be way down (and the ones who do visit are spending far less than they used to).

Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts to everyone who has given us a hand, especially over the last 36 hours or so. You have my undying gratitude. Tomorrow, I'll have some more photos, and we'll see where we are on the week.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.