I have a balcony again!

There’s a second blue chair next to the other one now, this was taken mid-setup.

Getting here was not without Drama. The neighborhood contractor I hired sent two young men, we’ll call them Darryl and Darryl. (If you get that, you might be an Old.) They showed up early, tore out the nasty old carpet and made it disappear, and installed the new front door hardware, all before 11 a.m. Two thumbs UP!! They started cutting and laying the new indoor-outdoor carpet on the balcony, and had probably 2/3s of it in place around noon.

Then they went to lunch, and reappeared around, 2? I was on conference calls all freakin’ day, but did notice they were gone for quite a while longer than a standard lunch break. Then they returned and got back to work.

I started to get the feeling that laying carpet was not one of their skills. They were still out there after dark, and finally disappeared around 7 pm. Meanwhile, their boss was texting me to ask how it was going, and I sent him pictures of glue blobs and other distressing things. He assured me it would all be fixed to my satisfaction.

The rest of the week is a blur of texts between me and their boss, until finally on Friday one of the young men (maybe he’s actually the Larry) showed up and cleaned glue and caulk blobs for a couple of hours. He worked his ass off, was very nice, and I am now satisfied with the results.

The balcony had been out of commission for so long, I realized yesterday that Gidget had never set foot on it, and she wasn’t even sure it was okay. I sat out there as much as I could, encouraging her to join me. She was skeptical.

The old carpet was so nasty and moldy, there was no furniture and no access for the animals. The doors just stayed shut, all the time, and Gidget honestly had no idea that going through these doors was a possibility until yesterday. It took a bit for her to accept this unexpected discovery of a new room in Gidget’s House.

This weekend I spent as much time out there as I could. Ellie and Sophie joined me quickly, though, OMG, it’s so awful to see Sophie stumble over the sliding door track. Poor baby really is blind now, but she’s still smart and she does listen. I’ve been teaching her to do stairs by saying, “Step, step, step” with each step up and down, and now when she gets to the balcony, I say, “Sophie, careful! Step!” and she slows down and feels her way across the track. This is just so damn hard. And her liquid diarrhea is back, so we will be back to the vet again. And she’s sleeping a LOT. I mean, a LOT. Very deeply, with much snoring. She seems perfectly comfortable and doesn’t seem to be suffering, but she seems more like a 15+ year old dog than one who is 11 and a half.

Gidget is fine, and is getting over her fear of the balcony. She’s getting her hair done on Thursday, because she is exceedingly fluffy. She has filled out quite a bit since she was a head and a tail and bones in between, but there’s a lot of extra hair in this picture.

So, is it January 20th yet? How many more times must Biden be declared the winner before we can just get on with this? I did notice that the crazy old coot who drove around the neighborhood in a golf cart so festooned with Trump flags I was surprised it didn’t tip over has switched to Christmas ornaments. That’s a good sign.