Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Tuesday morning we drove into Burlington with Lois and walked around the small downtown area while she had her hair done, after which we met her at the Foxville restaurant for breakfast. She obviously was a regular customer—the waitress plunked down a tea pot and cup without even asking her what she wanted to drink. I had a Belgian waffle and part of Monika’s vegetable omelet, especially the leftover vegetables which Monika disdained but I enjoyed.

Back at the dome, we found Matt and Susan hard at work. They were a couple that Lois had hired to replace the roof of the dome, which they had completed the previous month, and now she was paying them on an hourly basis to complete a lot of the unfinished interior work. We helped Lois clean, concentrating on the basement. Lois and Monika worked on the large semi-circular room while I worked on Merlin’s old workroom that was next door. Since Matt and Susan had a dumpster in the driveway for cleaning up their work I played pitch and toss into all the spare nooks and crannies of the dumpster for the rest of the day.

Matt and Susan are a husband-wife team of independent contractors who can, apparently, do almost anything. Lois said she paid $50 an hour for both of them, and after watching them work like beavers all day I thought she really got her money’s worth. They worked well as a coordinated team when that was required, but they also worked separately on the single-person type of tasks and never sat down for a moment. I don’t think they even ate lunch (which we felt bad about when we realized it later). I must admit it made me nervous to see this petite woman operating a large power miter saw with a 9-inch blade, but she obviously knew what she was doing. When we said we wanted to put some more stuff in the dumpster, Susan not only agreed but jumped in the dumpster and bounced up and down on the trash to compact it so we had more space! It was quite a sight, especially when she broke through a layer of brush on one bounce and sank in up to her hip. Fortunately, no harm was done but clearly she was as gung-ho in doing this kind of work as her husband.

In one day they completed the bathroom walls and ceiling, completed facing the beams between the kitchen and living room, hung several bifold doors that had been lying in the basement 15 years, and put nice-looking trim around the doors, the laundry chute, and god knows what else. Combined with the new counter tops on the island between the living room and kitchen area, everything now looked completed. The final effect was quite pretty, which I imagine is what Lois had in mind all these years. Lois was amazed and very gratified at all they had accomplished in one day. Best of all, they completely cleaned up after themselves when they were done for the day. As Lois said, they left the work area even cleaner than it was before, and she was right—I even saw Susan carefully raking the gravel on the floor of the garage as they finished up.

At lunch, Lois and Monika worked out a menu for Thanksgiving dinner that they then used to make a large shopping list. We took a break later that afternoon to make another trip into Burlington for shopping around 4 p.m., and I found some parts I needed for Lois’s car: a replacement headlamp and side marker bulb, a tire pressure gauge, and a large cork for the antifreeze reservoir. I finished installing the headlamp in the Sentry parking lot just before sunset which was great timing because I was running out of daylight and Lois and Monika were just finishing the Thanksgiving shopping at Sentry. Back at the dome we put the food away and finished clearing the large semi-circular basement room. That was really quite important because that’s where we have always danced Colonial-era contradances on Thanksgiving Day. It’s a family tradition! Copyright 2002 by Robert W. Holt