Diane: Well, now that the inside's done, why don't we slow down and just hang out for a weekend or two?
Doug: No, I want it done, so I can stop thinking about the work.
Diane: OK, well then if you want to just blitz the rest of it and get it out of the way, let's do that. I can take some vacation days and we'll just work on every day for a week and finish it.
Doug: No, I'm too tired to do that.....
After several rounds like this, Doug finally realized that I was in a tough spot--a slave driver if I pushed him to finish quickly but a source of continuing frustration if I advocated for taking a more measured approach so that we could "stop and smell the roses."
And that's what we've done for the past two weekends.
We still made progress on the outside of the cottage (more on that later this week).
In the meantime, we may not have smelled any roses, but we have admired a beautiful jarful of hydrangeas:
Roasted giant marshmallows on our new grill. (Doug also cooked a steak and thinks I should have included a picture of that instead...)
Sat on the porch at dusk with no lights except candles:
Watched Pax enjoy the porch for the first time:
Stopped at a thrift store and bought a giant bowl to be turned into a birdbath using the bottom of a broken wicker chair as a base:
The work will still get done. But in the meantime, we're enjoying what we've already accomplished, savoring what we already have.
Life is good.
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