This Is Getting Weird.

In my last blog entry, I mentioned that shortly after work began on the block walls of my basement, our block mason's wife was in a terrible accident.  (She has surgery again, this morning and my best thoughts are with her.)  And I posted pictures of the work that had been done when he and his crew returned to the site.  Until yesterday, no further work was completed and for nearly a week, I had no clue why work had been discontinued.  Yesterday afternoon, when I made one of my regular visits to check on the hole, they had returned and I found out what had happened.

The last time I'd seen my block mason, the crew on-site consisted of Our Block Mason, His Regular Crew Member, a Second Crew Member and the 2nd Crew Member's son.  Shortly after I left the site, they got an urgent phone call that the Second Crew Member's healthy, young sister had suddenly passed away. (Possibly an unexpected allergic reaction to a prescription medication she'd just begun. Very tragic and my heart goes out to her family on their loss.)  As the four of them had traveled together from out of town in one dual cab truck, they hastily shut everything down, cleaned up and closed the site for the day, then made the 30 minute drive up the highway to take 2nd Crew Member and his Son to their family.   After they dropped them off and extended their condolences, the Block Mason and his Crew Member decided to return to my site to get in a few more hours work before sundown as they knew they'd be short a man for the remainder of the job.  As they were heading back, they got another urgent phone call -- Regular Crew Member's healthy young sister - who lives a few  hours north of here had suddenly suffered a stroke.  They turned the truck around, immediately, to return the regular crew member to his family so they could pack and head north to be by his sister's side.  That left the block mason with no crew. This is why work was stopped.   The Regular Crew Member returned, yesterday afternoon -- his sister is in bad shape but is expected to recover (I am keeping her in my best thoughts, as well.) The 2nd crew member is understandably still grieving with his family and attending to arrangements none of them thought  in a million years they'd be making.

Corners are in place to lay remaining bottom half straightaways - scaffolds up to begin top half courses.

The reason I titled this blog entry "This Is Getting Weird" is because it's starting to seem like the Universe is intentionally trying to delay our return home.  And that it's now hurting people to do it.  I know it's all just coincidence, but each and every step of this process has met with roadblocks and delays... some due to the incompetence of others, some due to vacation season, some due to red tape, some due to our own state of shock and grief slowing us down and some due to the lack of tools we're used to having to accomplish the kinds of tasks we had to undertake and having to find ways to accomplish those tasks without those tools.

It's been a long journey through a dense jungle and at times it has felt as if we were stuck in quicksand or were cutting our path through the tangled foliage with a swim noodle.  I'm tired. I'm homesick.  I'm anxious to reach our destination and rest my head on my own pillow, in my own bed, staring up at my own ceiling.  Today is one of those days when it seems that destination is no more near or real than if I'd set out in search of Eldorado, Atlantis or the fountain of youth.   May tomorrow bring the mirage of home into sight once more, on the horizon.

  

 (Work is tentatively scheduled to resume, this afternoon, if all goes well with our Block Mason's wife's surgery, this morning. Perhaps I'll have pictures and a brighter mood, later today or early tomorrow.)

UPDATE:  Nobody had showed up at the site as of 3:30 this afternoon.  I hope his wife is OK following her surgery.  My mood regarding our own situation remains somewhere between sad and panic.  We are nearing the point, now, where any more delays will put us past the date of our insurance deadline  for completion and content replacement -- and I don't exactly have anywhere to put an entire household of content until we have a house to put it in, so the content replacement deadline is already a likely bust.   Even what I should be pre-ordering, now, cannot be ordered because insurance hasn't cut a check on any of the content I've submitted over the last 2 or 3 months.  We keep being told "by Friday."   I wish they'd tell us which Friday because the freezer we've chosen is on sale right now and will not be after this Friday.  :`(   I am really hoping to get it at the sale price and we just don't have it, out of pocket.  Today is one of those hard days -  I want to go home so badly I ache to the marrow of my bones and to the pit of my soul with homesickness and no matter how fast I run toward it, I seem to get no closer.