finishing the remodeling

My husband and I listed everything we needed to do to finish our remodeling before our daughter came home after a summer in El Salvador. I gave him the list, packed my bags and flew off to Rochester, N.Y. for the weekend.
He worked alone, cementing down the last pieces of the new floor and finishing nail holes on the baseboards around the freshly tiled laundry room.
Tile by tile he scrubbed the laundry, kitchen and dining room floors before applying the sealer. All by himself, he moved the washer and dryer back into place and set up the clothes rack.
After a quiet morning of work inside the house, he decided he needed some exercise so he mowed the lawn, ate his solitary meal of leftovers and fell into bed.
Sunday night, as he drove to Little Rock to meet my plane, the pilot of my plane was saying, “We’ll leave as soon as we have one more signature on the paperwork.”
An hour later finally airborne, the stewardess explained, “We knew the gas gauge was not working correctly, but we had to verify we had enough gas before we could leave.” One people-protecting paper signer insisted 200 folks would rather be late than leave on time only to realize at 30,000 feet that the fuel gauge was right all along.
We collapsed into a bed at 4 a.m. awoke at 7 and groggily crawled off to work. That evening I cleared the last of the remodeling debris from our daughter’s room. Tuesday afternoon we headed for Little Rock eager to see the one who had laid blocks for two months for a retaining wall at an orphanage in El Salvador.
Her plane was on time. She wasn’t on it. Heart in his throat, my husband went looking for information. The agent said she had missed her connecting flight and would be on the next one.
While we waited, we went to town and bought lights to show off the new kitchen and laundry room floors.
At 9:45 she came sobbing off the plane. “I missed my flight. I was at the right gate and I was on time, and the lady told me my plane and was at another gate, and she was wrong.”
Wednesday afternoon we had to go back to the Little Rock airport. A couple weeks ago, my husband and I suddenly decided to invite a German exchange student to live with us this year. Her plane and luggage arrived promptly and we were ready to go.
But we didn’t. Another student from Germany not only lost her luggage but her host family as well. Our student interpreted at the luggage counter while the exchange student coordinator made phone calls.
We got home at 10 p.m. Wednesday.
We had all of Thursday and Friday to move her in and our college son’s stuff before he flew into Little Rock Saturday after a working visit in Indiana. After work, my husband installed the new lights, completing our eight-month remodeling project. A week after my husband’s solitary supper, the newly remodeled dining room overflowed with people swapping tales of their summer adventures.


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