Life and All that Jazz: Renovations

The past two weeks have been crazy! Our church recently moved into our new building, so we had a two-day open-house celebration, and on Sunday the mayor spoke, as well as regional church leaders from the Catholic church, the Protestant (State) church, and a few regional leaders from our church’s denomination. We were directly or inadvertently involved most of the time. As we are both active in our church, we’re often there; with the Advent season, more so than usual. Below is a photo of our new church, with the playground in progress. It is already a huge attraction in the town!

Also, the work on our balcony finally began in the last week of November! If you don’t know already, we discovered extensive water damage back in April (actually, it’s been ongoing for 4 years, but every time we’d have a repairman, he’d fix one thing and say, “that was the problem – all done.” Fix. Fix. Fix.) In April, we started the ball rolling with extensive repairs – but it got lost in the works as our management company had personnel changes; someone took our file home for work, then either went on vacation or was let go (unsure which came first). The summer flew by, and finally, in September, all the ducks were in a row – insurance, neighbours’ consents, etc.

Our balcony was ripped up, the privacy glass walls removed, scaffolding set up, and repairs began – but last week, they discovered a problem that brought work to a stop: The wood underneath our balcony window was basically compost. Now, the specialist for window repair has been brought in; an offer will be made, but all tradesmen go on holiday from the 20th of December, which means things cannot be ordered/received/scheduled… until late January 2025. Sigh. It means we cannot even go onto our upper balcony until possibly March… Scaffolding will be removed and re-installed when it’s needed again.

With all of that going on, and workers coming and going, I haven’t had any time to even think about creative writing apart from the novel I hope to wrap up (first draft) before Christmas, so that, over the holidays, my beta readers can read and give feedback.

In all of that, my sewing machine died (at least I could do crafts of some kind between workers, phone calls and appointments); I’ve been wanting to replace it ever since, but I haven’t even had time to go three streets over to the shop! After our church’s celebration, the organizer had a box full of out-of-date flyers for the event; she was going to throw them away when her son suggested giving them to me (I have a bit of a reputation; so far, I’ve also inherited four craft rooms…). When I’ve had time in-betweens, and couldn’t focus on writing because of noise (drilling, hammering, etc.), I’ve been making notebooks from the flyers, covered with scrap paper. I took a batch on Sunday; most were handed out at the welcome station! More, ready to go!

This morning, for the first time in ages, I’ve been able to think about blog topics once more! So keep an eye on this space for another blog this week. Thank you for your patience, and keep learning, keep being curious, and if you’re a writer, keep writing!