Tim and I have been very busy (as you may have noticed). He needed one more piece of pipe for the french drain. He always measures things out exactly. Precisely. My take on it is that you might want to have just a smidge extra on hand. Just in case. He's not a great believer in smidges, so it regularly happens that we are almost done, but we run just a bit short. Yesterday, it was the pipe.
"Huh," he said.
I said, "I really hate that you do this, Tim. If you wind up with an extra piece, we can return it, but it really is a pain in the ass to be almost done, but not quite...."
And he said, "Well, it's probably good that it worked out this way, because I think that I'm going to go ahead and set it up so that the gutter system on the roof runs right into the french drain as well." (As opposed to just running on top of the ground).
I let him think it was a good thing that he'd shorted himself on that extra pipe.
So last night, he said, "I'll go finish up the french drain. If you could finish up the bathroom at the rental, that would be great."
I said, "Yes. I can do that. I have a pile of books to donate to the library anyway, and it will give me a chance to wash my summer clothes. I'll pack away my sweaters."
"Okay," he said.
So I got up and started laundry first thing this morning. I packed away the books Cara wanted to keep. I gathered up the books that she didn't want to keep, took pictures of another book case to send to her so that she could make her decisions on that.
I watered my tomatoes, peppers and hanging baskets.
I dropped two shopping bags of books at the library and then headed over to finish up at the rental. For good measure, I did weeding.
I came back home, folded laundry, put it away.
I popped the chicken in the oven and chopped vegetables to steam. I went down to meet William.
I finally texted Tim at five. "Where are you?" I asked.
He was still up at the new build site. I figured he was fiddling with the french drains still, but when he walked in the door an hour later, he was plainly exhausted, sunburnt.
I looked at him in amazement.
People: William and I had sealed where the footer and the bottom of the wall met. That's what the inspector asked for. Today, Tim decided that he wanted to tar the whole way up the outside of the basement wall. He did the whole thing. By himself. The thing is, he did not have to do that by himself. There was not one thing that I did today that could not have been pushed to another day, had I known that he (once again) decided to do things differently.
"You need to keep me in the loop," I said, and I wasn't very patient about it. "So what's going on tomorrow?" Turned out the Amish crew was returning.
"Tim! I haven't got lunch figured out!"
In thinking it over, I decided the best thing to do was to just go ahead and get sandwich meat and sliced cheese from the deli. They could make up their own subs, and lord knows, whatever did not get eaten could be tossed into the freezer. We'll be needing quick grab and go lunches for the foreseeable future.
Tim was so exhausted, but he said, "I'll drive you."
"No, actually, you'll stay put, eat supper and relax. William and I will run out."
I bought two pounds each of smoked turkey, roast beef, honey ham, and salami. I got swiss and american cheese, having cheddar and provolone at home. I bought three tomatoes to slice, along with a head of lettuce to shred. I bought another case of water, two boxes of ice cream sandwiches (they love ice cream) and I picked up 24 pastries for their coffee break. I bought 24 sub buns. We got more gatoraid.
I don't think that we'll be running out of food this time. Unlike Tim, I always like to have a smidge extra on hand.
I got home and was setting things up for Tim. He came into the kitchen. He was stuttering so badly that I couldn't understand him. I stood staring at him, feeling sick. I was having a flash back of him trying to talk when I took him to the hospital back in January for his stroke.
Carefully, I said, "You're stuttering pretty badly. Do you feel okay?" Inside, my mind was ticking boxes.
F.A.S.T - Face: he smiled at me, as if I was being ridiculous. No drooping.
Arms: he was putting groceries away. no weakness.
Speech: Scary. He was trying to say 'parole officer'. Several tries later, he got it.
He scared the shit out of me. Of course, he thought that I was over reacting.
After the boy went to bed, I let him have it. He needs to keep me in the loop. He cannot push himself like this. I made it clear to him that if he ever pushed himself like this again, I would simply not let him go up there by himself. It was stupid, and it was unnecessary and by GOD, he'd better never do that to me again.
He's in bed right now.
I'm too upset to sleep. Amazingly, I'm also too upset to cry, but I think that I'd feel much better if I could.