Speaking Clearly

People often ask me, and often in Ed's presence, in a kind of hushed tone, 'How's Ed doing.'  When it happened the other day (this time in an email to me that could as easily have been to him), Ed said to me,   "They're asking the wrong question.  What they should be asking is 'What is Ed doing?'  If I'm not doing anything, I'm done."  Well, I think that's a little extreme since we all spend at least some time doing not much, but I get the point.  And I definitely get it about the hushed tones.

So in that spirit, I thought tonight I'd write about what Ed is doing.  Ed is mostly getting the Orchard House to a state of completion. George has moved on to his other work and so it's mostly Ed, with frequent assistance when it's a two-person job from our neighbor Tom.  I mostly am an independent contractor, carving out little jobs that I can mostly do or at least try to do on my own.  For Ed, this past week meant driving up to Richmond to select the carpeting; meeting with Bert, the carpet guy, who has dual citizenship and can thus work in both countries, about the measuring of the space (it involves three different rooms); making the threshholds for the relevant rooms so that the carpet laying can go smoothly; and, finally, driving again to Richmond to return the samples and order/pay for the carpeting.  In addition, he has cut and painted some easy trim as wekk as some very complex trim, been in attendance at the delivery of the new JennAir stove, which came from Michigan over about 5 weeks or so in a very slow delivery truck; mowed the lawn-paths at the Washington property (which is where we've been the past three weeks),.  Yesterday, I was going to mount the kitchen cabinet doors back on the cabinet faces, but I simply couldn't figure out how it would work (i have very poor spatial relationships abilities), so he has also done some cabinet door mounting. And just before we left today, he and Tom were pulling the painted carpet off the loft floor.  Back-breaking work, I'd say.

 As well, there is all the daily routine stuff: blogs, email, book and magazine reading, a couple of big runs to the dump to dispose of building material excess, and a 2-day burn of many fir branches that were yet again all over the yard..  And regularly, he takes many photographs and works with them in order to get them in shape to post to his web photo sites.  He has so much other stuff going on that I have taken over most of the cooking because it requires more forethought than he has time for right now, and at least I can do that without requiring his constant advice.  His energy and his stamina are noteworthy.  While I wheeze around with spring allergies/asthma, he just soldiers on to the next task.

We had hoped to get all the carpeting laid this coming week because Bert is leaving the following week for Los Angeles.  But the carpet company couldn't get it delivered from Georgia, I think, that fast (probably with the same company that trucked the stove), so that will happen around the 15th of May.  Which left this week open for us to come back to B.C. to restore some more order to this house.  Ed's first task will be to do the trim in the bathroom, which largely requires sculpturing pieces of trim to fit around the logs.  Once that is done, there is the computer room which houses his books as well as his computer collection to sort through; and his recreation materials room in the basement, which will require the same kind of sorting.  I'll be packing dishes and clothes.

And then, when a week Tuesday (7 days from now) arrives, it is chemo session four time, to be followed in a week or two by a CAT scan to see what all this treatment and all this hard work is doing for him.  By the end of May, the house should be essentially finished and we should know something about the effectiveness of the grand experiment.  And then he'll be doing something else.  There's an addition to the Orchard House off the bedroom that he had sort of planned....