Teamwork

A blogger friend described what grief does to a mind: it makes the edges fuzzy, it blurs and distorts. I am was a very organized person. Friends would lovingly say that I had OCD. :-P But for the last eleven months that organized person has been on hiatus. Basic things like washing my clothes BEFORE I have to get dressed for work has become a serious challenge. I can't even count how many mornings I've stared into the empty fridge as the realization dawned on me that I'd forgotten to make food for my next meal. I'm lucky if I make it home at the end of the day in one piece. Gone are the days of lists and planning and productivity in general.

The point of this is to explain that I have a new-found appreciation for productivity, as it now has a tendency to escape me.

This past weekend was the first exception in a long time. Drumroll please...

...Our long-standing bathroom remodel has progressed! We have gone from tiny, disgusting, leaking, claustrophobic 1950s bathroom to the skeleton of a new and vastly improved space.

Maybe it's just side effects from breathing in too much mold and asbestos for the last two days, but looking at what we accomplished this weekend I get this strange tingling in my belly. Sort of like, could it be, happiness??

Nah.

But at least a sense of satisfaction that productivity has happened. Perhaps the elusive is not so out of reach as I had thought?

And I'd just like to say how much satisfaction I get from working on these kinds of projects with hubby. Remodeling is our hobby, and I remember having a lot of fun doing this kind of stuff, but with all of the insanity it had been a while. We make such a good team. This work is almost therapeutic to me. We can be standing in the midst of an open pit where a bathroom once stood, covered in dust and splinters, staring at rotten framing boards and cabitzing like old farts over how best to fix it, and I'll just look him in the eyes and start giggling.

I love this man.

I love that we're a team.

Last night after picking the last of the construction debris out of my hair we went to our church Christmas cantata. And in the darkness, as the bellchoir played and one of the young "sheep" wandered off the stage, he wrapped his arm around me, and that belly tingle progressed into a smile.

Happiness. :)