It's set in stone now

Concrete was poured this morning. Sweet little Mexican worker scared the crap out of me at 6:45 this morning. Sweet little old man BANGED on the front door to ask us to move our car for the concrete truck. Well, he probably just knocked, but it sounded like banging to me.






Here's Bobby, one of the great workers, wetting down the sand over the plastic tarp, getting it ready for the wet concrete. FYI: The plastic tarp below that sand is NEVER going to degrade. It'll stay under our house forever if left untouched. Wow. In this case, there is a purpose for this plastic under the foundation, but this also really shows how destructive it is for our earth and our environment when we don't recycle consumer plastic. It remains in landfills, soil, and in the oceans, leeching their chemicals, emitting gases when heated, and suffocating life. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, R--E--C--Y--C--L--E--!!!

If you click to enlarge this photo, you'll see that the blue concrete mixer is called the "Putzmeister". Interesting, that's one of Ed's favorite nicknames for me. Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!!!
This looked so cool! I was dying to hold the hose and pour the concrete, but I was summarily stopped. I guess the hose itself weighs something like 99,000 pounds.
This is the finished product. A nice, flat, finished slab of wet concrete. Sweet. It was all I could do not to stick my finger in there. It just looked tooooo perfect, ya know!?
Anyway, watching the concrete being mixed, I thought back to how far Belov-Ed and I have come. The best years of my life really. It is my constant prayer that we will be blessed with many, many more.

I remembered our sweet little boy Nick. Next month it will have been a year since his death. Gosh, I cannot even believe I'm reading those words. I remember him countless times every single day. Blogistan doesn't have enough space for me to describe what I felt for that dog and how much he meant to me and to us. He was with us for 615 short days, but those days were magnificent. Our first dog and our first Golden love.

The evil that is cancer took Nick from me and from our life. Cancer didn't allow him to enjoy his twilight years, perhaps only having to complain of old dog rickety bones and achy muscles, and then maybe quietly passing on in his sleep. Cancer robbed him of a lazy, fat, happy elderhood. NO. Instead, he had to contend with its pain and destruction in his waning days, and God gave us the trial of having to make the cruel decision to let our boy suffer no more.

My golden baby. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. Oh, how I miss you.

You know, Belov-Ed and I often discuss how being with Nick through his battle with cancer created an even closer bond between us as a couple. Someone just recently told me that if there are any fractures in a relationship, adding stress to the mix will either make the relationship crack, OR it will act as a bonding agent.

Ed and I didn't have fractures in our relationship (thank God) and we've always been best friends (thank God again) but it wasn't until we endured that agonizing battle alongside Nick that we were able to find some very special, very magical things about each other. A side of Ed I didn't know about yet shined through and I found myself in awe of the man who wants to share his life with me. I'll always love Nick for that tremendous sacrifice. He was instrumental in forging an iron bond between his mommy and daddy.

Our home is a sanctuary for us and for our beloved animals, whether past, present, or for all those yet to brighten our doorstep. This new addition is being built upon years of memories and, God willing, it will welcome a thousand more. I look forward to it.

So, I wanted to capture a wee bit of that spiritual energy in the foundation of our home. Symbolically, of course. I gathered some of my favorite pictures of us, like the one from Christmas 2005 when Belov-Ed gifted me with a personalized Chicago Bears jersey. We took a picture together with our Nick right in front of us. My favorite pictures of my Golden babies, Mighty Achilles and Milo Love-Love Bear, along with the Captain himself, also made it on my collage. Achilles, Milo, Captain Morgan, Nick, and and the two of us...we are all part of our little family unit. My boys. All my beautiful boys.

I placed all the pictures in an impromptu collage and laminated it. Also picked up one of Captain Morgan's tail feathers. (He actually makes more of a mess and "sheds" more than any dog we'll ever have!)

I went to where I keep Nick's little cedar box of ashes and some of his fur clippings. I took one lock of his gorgeous golden mane curls. The tears flowed as I remembered the scent of his fur. He even smelled sweet. Never had that "dog" smell. I remember how his curls would wrap around my finger as I'd pet him. My little Lion King.

I also included a cross Ed made for me our first year together on Palm Sunday. I remember being fascinated...it was kind of like Catholic origami. The cross has been in my car for over 5 years now, alongside the Quran I've had hanging from my rear view mirror for over 15 years. I figures I've got all the Gods covered in the event of an accident. :-)

Add to this a "lucky" penny (placed heads up) and I was off to set it all in stone. Literally.

On my lunch break, I rushed home and presssed them all into the damp concrete. Nicasio, one of our workers, helped me with softening the concrete a bit to embed the collage, fur, feather, penny, and palm cross. After some graffiti and doodling, I had an artistic masterpiece. Voila!

The concrete was smoothed out after these pictures and the stones were removed.


It was a long day. We had the good fortune of receiving a wee bit of rain (drizzle actually), which was enough to snarl traffic for HOURS. However, that moisture was a blessing for the concrete. It helps it cure so much better and allows it to harden perfectly.

This remodel has its wonderful, exciting moments, for sure, but it also has moments when I feel as if I'm going to live in this real life fun house forever. Like when I was on the phone with Laura tonight and I hear a loud BANG and then see poor Captain Morgan taking flight for his life. He flew headfirst into the dining room mirror! I thought for sure he was dead when he landed with a thud on the carpet. Thankfully, he was ok. Whew!

What frightened him so? Oh, nothing really. Just the temporary wall and stone slabs crashing off the huge hole that used to be our fireplace. His cage and table are right next to it so he had the crap scared out of him. I sat on the floor laughing, trying to explain to Laura that I was looking outside through a hole in the interior wall. It was raining and I had to figure out a way to get that wall back up!

But first, I had to take care of my little feather-boy. I found El Capitan angrily sqawking and complaining to the bird in the mirror, lamenting his lot in life.
Then El Capitan and the Bird in the Mirror escalated their verbal altercation into a full on beak fight. It was all I could do to separate them and return El Capitan to the safety of his cage.

Poor little green guy. He's probably wondering when all this remodeling madness will end so he can return to the good life, lazily munching on organice raw pumpkin seeds. Soon, little buddy, very soon.


Laura started singing "Bird in the Mirror" to Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" at this point, and I lost it. Couldn't stop laughing for while. Good times.


I love my animals. :-)