The Honest Courtesan

Since Friday was Little Christmas, I took the decorations down and put them away; next, the tree went out to the fence, where we stack brush and the like to keep naughty animals from trying to go under.  Then it’s vacuuming up all the remaining needles, and mopping the floor before finally moving the table back to its normal angle, and the living room was back to the way it looks for 7/8 of the year.  De-Yuling the house is always just a little sad, but this year it felt a bit more so than usual; I actually managed to take it relatively easy during the holiday this year, so I suppose part of me is reluctant to go back to the usual level of activity.  But that’s really a good thing because, as everyone in my life is constantly reminding me, I work much too hard anyway.  I still have far too much to do on the annex project to just blow it off for the rest of the winter, but I’n not going to drive myself like I did last winter; I can keep that promise pretty easily because I’m not trying to get a roof in place or pig-proof a fence.  The remaining tasks for the annex are mostly small indoor ones: I need to finish the bathroom; install the wood-burning stove; help Jae with the decor; plane down several door frames so they don’t stick when the wood swells in wet weather; fix a small leak in the hot tub plumbing; close up a few gaps where rain blows in under the eaves; finish up the vestibule outside the bathroom; seal the shop roof and the annex roof join with Durabak; finish the main atrium floor and the lower deck; and a number of other similar tasks.  But if that sounds like a lot to you, take a look back at the diaries and annex columns for the first few months of last year and you’ll see it’s small potatoes in comparison; even at a more leisurely pace, I don’t think I’ll have trouble getting the entire project wrapped up before my birthday this year.  And then next winter, I’ll be able to relax and enjoy the thing without feeling as though I owe myself a full afternoon of work every day.