July 2026 Island Trip – Day 7

Rug extraction is finally done. Well, it’s as done as I can get it. Im gonna estimate 97%. What ever I couldn’t effectively do, our general contractor will do. And speaking of our contractor…

After letting our buddy know (who said he could do the work this week), that I was going to request to get on the contractor’s schedule (who our buddy works for), and then reaching out to the contractor, I felt SO much better about my dashed expectations 😏. This has been a life-long learning experience for me. Whether it’s being told our buddy can get the job done and then isn’t able to, or expecting an experience will be the way I imagine it, and it’s then vasty different, I find myself feeling out of control. That’s why the lower barn got so much attention yesterday. I was exercising control somewhere 😂! We’re taking a late afternoon boat off the Island tomorrow, which will give us plenty of time to leave Stella ready for our contractor. I’m leaving him notes in Sharpie on the subfloor 🤣.

I got to see Tim today! We met at the coffee shop with his DIL (an incredibly lovely human), our friend Al, and another friend of Tim’s who is obviously part of the tribe. He was doing really well given his last couple of weeks. I’m so thankful to have gotten some face time 💜.

Surrounding time with the gang, I ran a few errands, hit the dump (including a 32-gallon bag of Tim-Trash 😁, and then went out to the great donation/flea market spot down the road from us to drop some things off. They didn’t want the big wood-framed fluorescent light fixture, nor a couple of other things. They did take a hard-wired smoke detector (I bought the wrong one) and a pleasant paper towel holder back from the days when paper towel rolls weren’t so rotund.

Then I got to paragraph one above.

The weather is blessedly mild. We’re going to BBQ a small piece of flank steak for dinner with sautéd mushroom, onion and garlic scapes, plus a nice baked purple potato from the garden. While there’s lots to do tomorrow, we’re relaxing for the rest of the evening.