Hark! What Yonder Breaks?

It is a PATIO! Oh, and something about Juliet being the sun. But what's really important RIGHT NOW is the PATIO!!

Before:



During:



and now, finally, almost an After:



It's not done. You know why? Because we were supposed to finish this Project that Wouldn't Die this weekend - and then I woke up at 4:30 Saturday morning with a raging sinus infection.

Yes, if there's anything better than backbreaking physical labor on Mother's Day weekend, it's trying to do backbreaking physical labor on Mother's Day weekend when your head is trying to explode.

So, the hubby took off Tuesday - the day I'm supposed to stay home and write my darned cowboy books. Had to get it done - major storms were forecast to roll through (and boy, did they!) And then he woke up with a fever at 2 in the morning.

You know what happened next. We tanked up on behind-the-counter drugs (the good stuff - the stuff you have to prove you're not a criminal to ingest) and caffeine and Gatorade and did it anyway.

We ate dinner out on our patio that night. The whole time, he and I were going "ugh," or "man," because we were that damned tired.



That stuff on top of the pavers is sand and about a zillion maple seeds (in this house, aka Whirlygigs). Gets swept into the cracks.

We still have to fit in the edge pieces and then cut in the curve. We still have to backfill the hell out of the little moat area that currently surrounds the edge of the patio. We still have to fix the step I was working on before I got sick - the math wasn't quite right (not that I'm pointing any fingers!) and we were half an inch off. Gotta fix that. And we're getting to the point where I can start to seriously think about landscaping and plants and - you guessed it - sod. None of which is going to happen until the pinched nerves in my wrists stop firing and the bruises heal and the snot drains out of my head. (Lose your grip on a 40 pound paver because your wrists feel like a wasp is stinging you, and it don't matter how much padding you've got on your thighs. You will bruise.)

But it is now a usable space. A patio. And, as my kid would say, "We did it ourselves!"

The Project That Wouldn't Die is still not dead. But it's on its last legs!