Isolation Report, Week #65

This week we had a new roof put on.  You know, when they tell you that contractors will be arriving at your house at the crack of dawn and making a lot of noise over your head, you say yourself “duh.” Of course there’s going to be a lot of noise.  But knowing it and experiencing it are entirely different things.  For 3 days, everyone in the house was woken up far before they were used to being conscious—even our middle child, who is the only true morning person in our family.  Lack of sleep was just the beginning though: the loud noise and massive amounts of dust coming in his window made our middle child (who was recently confirmed to be on the spectrum) fairly discombobulated,^* the indoor cats hid under the bed for 3 days, and the outdoor was scared to go out but not scared enough to be coerced into using the litterbox like a normal feline being.  We couldn’t let the dogs out in the yard because they think they’re vicious and want to “attack” the workmen.  We couldn’t run the air conditioner, because the roofers covered it in plastic to keep the dust from getting sucked into the vents, but we also couldn’t get in the pool, because stray pieces of shingle and once even a tool were raining down on it.  And the constant doorbell ringing: there are rotten beams, you should probably replace the gutters, we had to add new “fascia boards,”^** can you move your truck out of the driveway so we can park a porta potty there instead?  (It’s still there, by the way.)  It was a lot.

Next week they’re coming to turn the power off for up to 6 hours so they can replace our electrical panels (so that should be a load of fun), then the actual solar panels get installed.  As I say, it’s a lot, but at the end of the day we’ll have enough solar power to never have to pay the power company again, and a battery backup which should last indefinitely the next time said power company turns off our electricity for specious reasons.  Assuming the solar company isn’t full of shit.  We shall see, I suppose.

On the pandemic front, our humans are now 60% vaccinated, which is to say 2 of us have had 2 shots, 2 of us have had 1, and one of us hasn’t had any (but only because she’s too young).  Moving forward to a better future, hopefully.  Again, we shall see.

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* The technical term is “emotional dysregulation.”

** No, we didn’t know what that meant either.