The entire house is a work in progress, the hall is torn out, the bedrooms need to be re-floored, the kitchen is well under construction.

This year though the focus has been on what can we do outside.  How can we make it better?  How can we make it so we spend more time outside in the sunshine, letting the beautiful rays brighten our days?  So we decide to take down the dead trees that threaten to do damage to the house, take down the leaning tower of a chimney that was threatening to give us a skylight in our bathroom, and build ourselves a patio.  At the rate we are moving forward I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t become another kitchen nightmare.

It’s frustrating to see things move slowly.  While I understand sometimes it’s just outside of our control, it’s frustrating and makes me wish we never started the project.  It’s just another thing to be upset about.  Another thing to drag me down and feel sick about.  So my back yard oasis that was meant to make me feel good inside, and help perk me up is now going to be another item on the list of things that just depress me.

Here’s hoping that I’m wrong and that the oasis becomes just that my oasis.

The privacy slats are fairly easy to put in but are time consuming, as in I spend a lot of time putting them together and forcing them through the chain link fence (I have the blisters on my hands to prove it).  The back fence was only 3.5feet so it had to be replaced to a five foot fence, down it came (relatively easy) where my husband and Mark cut the internet and phone service to the neighbour.  Some Bell guy felt the best way to ‘bury’ the telephone wire was to weave it through the back fence.  A black cord through the bottom of the fence?  Yea that’s real smart.

So we called Bell, they came out very quickly and probably one of the kindest tech’s I’ve ever met in my life.  I don’t have his name and I’m hoping my husband does so I can e-mail Bell later and tell them of this wonderful employee and how he was so pleasant, humerous and kind.  I would have him here any day to do any work on my house.

Yesterday was also a beautifully sunny day at 26 celsius with the sun shinning bright.  I know the sun was shinning bright because my red and burning shoulders, tell me so.

Today my husband and father-in-law are out in the cloudy – could rain any minute – weather putting in the fence posts they didn’t put in yesterday and hopefully that means I’ll soon have a wonderful back fence again.  After that the two side gates have to go in and then it’s the patio.

Of course all this means more work outside making the oasis I’ll hopefully get to enjoy for a few months…

As for me, and my crispy shoulders, it’s a day indoors writing I think, nothing I can do outside so might as well make use of the day in the best way I can – writing a book.