I am not a programmer, nor do I play one on TV. Trust me, if I were, say, Felicity Smoak, I wouldn’t have had so much trouble with my CSS. All that is (mostly) fixed now. I promised myself I’d get this fixed before NaNoWriMo started and here we are. Ignore the piles of building material still tucked away in the corner. Speaking of which…

The bathroom is almost done! It’s impossibly small, so it’s difficult to get a full picture, we have to wait at least another week for the custom glass shower enclosure (gad, those things are expensive), the heat lamp in the fan is not working and they had to go through the wall in the small hallway that runs from the master bedroom to the bathroom to re-seat the spigots because they were too far back so couldn’t turn, and the hand-held portion of the shower head is just fine for my husband but too tall for me. However, in the meantime, we have the toilet and sink back, so there are no longer three adults sharing the front bathroom for everything.

I’ve learned a number of things through this process that are definitely life lessons. The big one is that, if managing a project is going to wind up my responsibility, I’m much happier at least being present for the early stages.

The other one is that while the workers may be great, the “project manager” for a contracting firm is there to sell you more services. Never take anything they say at face value and always be wary of anything additional they’d like to do “as a service.” It could very easily come back to bite you. Oh, and when you say “No,” to something, you are not required to offer an explanation as to why, even if they try every trick in the book.

I choose not to dwell on that; the end is in sight and the space feels lovely to step into. It’s fresh and it’s very much in my style, something the rest of the house is not. It’s a new beginning, even if it’s still unfinished around the edges. For some reason, that feels very appropriate today, as we set out the candy for the trick or treaters to come and I have a new Scrivener file empty and waiting for the NaNo project.

Now, if I can just restrain from stealing a few bars from the bowl before the kids actually get here…