When the girls were little, we used to read to them every night, before they went to sleep, and one of our favourite stories was
The Very Noisy Night. It's the story of a little mouse who cannot sleep, and who thinks that the night-time noises outside are big, scary things. He wakes up Big Mouse repeatedly, looking for comfort, and at the end they both sleep through the morning alarm because they finally fall fast asleep.
I'm still waiting for that last part, even though it's almost 3am here.
The wind is howling outside. It's raining, sometimes hard, and every noise makes me jump. I tried to go to bed, but our room is the one with the tarp on the roof, you know, the tarp that keeps the rain out of the room, and every time the wind blows the tarp shifts and groans up there, and I'm pretty sure it'll be in next door's pine trees by morning.
We had hired a roofer, he was all ready to come out and install and brand new beautiful roof on the whole house, and then Bri got laid off, so we waited. And then Becca got into college, and our 'roof fund' became our 'we have to pay for college 4 years earlier than we thought' fund, so we waited. And now, the roof just HAS to be done, it's leaking, the insurance company are unhappy, it's a mess up there - and our roofer just got offered 3 months works, 7 days a week, working for a builder.
It just wasn't meant to be.
So I spent the evening on the internet, searching for reliable contractors with good reviews, and I have 4 emails out to people. One called my cell phone yesterday evening, and one emailed me, which is good news - I'm thinking there aren't many people installing a new roof in November, so we should be able to get it done pretty fast - but not fast enough for me to sleep through The Very Noisy Night.
I went to bed, I did my kakuro puzzles, like I always do, I lay down, turned out the light, and listened to the noises, marvelled at how the wind is SO loud it even drowns out Brian's snoring, and eventually gave up trying to sleep! I will do more puzzles in a minute, now I'm comfortably ensconced in the basement, with the fire blazing and the upstairs rooms between me and the tarp knocking on the roof. It's quiet down here, I'm yawning, it's looking good for at least 4 hours sleep!
My laptop died again today, it has taken to doing this, like an elderly actress looking for attention it comes over all dramatic and faints clean away. It took much of the evening to coax it back to life, and really, there are so many things wrong with it now that it's probably going to be cheaper and easier to just replace it - but roof first, aging laptop later, hence the continued application of smelling salts. It's that month, the one where All The Things need attention, and we're doing our best to attend to them all, we really are, but we'd be grateful if there were no more 'things' in the last 8 days of this month.
The Aga is still sitting in the kitchen waiting for a small nozzle and a little screw thing to arrive at the local gas showroom in the mail. They are the last 2 remaining parts for the burner, which currently is set up for
The Wrong Type Of Gas. It's one of those things, along with all the other 'one things' that are currently taking up space in our heads. Soon. Soon it will all be clearer, some things will be finished, dealt with, done.
Small victory for Brian this week - he did get his life insurance policy issued - only 5 months after we began negotiations with ING. Working for a smaller company has its down side - we have to get our own insurance, and that's not easy since we are not citizens. Mine is still awaiting a visit from a nurse, who did not take enough blood last month, and so has to come back for more. I can hear
Tony Hancock.
There are times when I think life in our family would make for some good stand up comedy, and November is definitely turning into one of those times - maybe a new career opportunity exists here...
