Any Day Could Be Your Last

Last night Kenny came over to get paid for the week. It wasn’t a good week for Kenny and Burt (Kenny's cousin and co-worker). Monday Burt’s brother-in-law died. He found out while he was eating breakfast at a restaurant. Someone came over to give their condolences and he had no idea what they were talking about. Kenny and Burt both went to school with him, but Kenny said that he just couldn’t go to another funeral this year. He’d already been to four since January.

And, two days later Burt’s wife’s grandfather died.

Kenny said that there are four girls in the sixth grade at his sons’ school that lost their fathers this year. All of them were in the 30’s and died unexpectedly from heart attacks or aneurisms. Kenny looked pretty freaked out about it, and I can’t say that I blame him.

I must admit that I typically assume that I’ll live forever. Well, not really, but at least until I’m crotchety, evil, and impotent in my mid-to-late 80’s. Genetically, this is probable – living till I’m 80 something. My grandparents were all pretty nice folks, the evil and everything else is all me and my itchy fears. That gives me another 50 years or so to really screw my life up, and I’m looking forward to at least three hours of it.

Seriously though, the truth is there are no guarantees. So, have a good weekend, do something nice for someone (like your mom), and don’t take unimportant things too seriously (like my first two years of college), it could be your last day (not so sound like too much of a hypocrite, I’ll admit that I probably need to remember this more than most).

Even though it was a turbulent week and he was working solo for most of it, Kenny got a lot finished. Here are some pictures:



This is Gideon's room sans the 100 years of moldy, old wallpaper.

Yeah, I know. You're thinking, "Okay, it's a door. So what?" Well, if you tried closing it two days ago, there would have been a 2 inch gap between the door and the left side of the jamb. The was is really messed up from age, abuse, and the move. Now, the door and its trim look good and function like they should.

Kenny has started laying 1/4" plywood in preparation for the yet-to-materialize, new wood floor for the main hall. We want to run the new floor length-wise like the original floor, so we need the plywood to shore it up.

We're chasing two leads on flooring. We're hoping to get 300 square feet for less than $1,000. Wish us luck.