This'll speed up the aging process. . .

I know an American woman who has lived in Lillehammer for about 30 years. I saw her at the showing of what is now Our House, and later told her how we had bought that crazy red 1950s house in the Søre Ål neighborhood. She said, "Oh! I went home to my husband and said, I'd love to buy that house. . . I'd buy that house if I were still in my 30s and had the energy to re-do it. But I'm in my 50s and don't want to do those kind of things anymore!"

Do you ever have those moments when you think, "I'm not old enough to be doing this sort of stuff. . . " Kind of like that Talking Heads song, "This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife! You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?" Sometimes I think. . . "I'm not old enough to be renovating a house. . . oh wait. . . I'm married, have a kid, finished graduate school. . . that's right. . . I'm 36. Sounds about right." If I'm not old enough, who is?

For those of you dying for house updates, and aren't on Facebook, here is a series of pictures over the last (gulp) month. The foundation seemed to take forever, but now that the walls are going up--now just over a week ago--the everyday progress is amazing. We now have a two story addition nearly completely framed in, a huge hole cut in our roof and half the rafters/trusses installed; inside, the bathroom floor has been tiled, and our stairs were installed! The stairs were made by a stair company, and they installed the entire thing in about 4 hours. My family members have commented on how they were not what they expected, both in shape and design. I hadn't seen virtually any drawings of them before they arrived, and they were almost exactly what I expected. They look like very typical Norwegian stairs to me, so I guess my tastes and expectations are shifting. 

I've been doing lots of insulating, lots of pre-painting preparation for the gazillion knot holes on the pine paneling, lots of nail-hole filing on the gazillion knot holes, assisting with installation of ceiling paneling and wall paneling, and finally beginning to prime! 

As you can see by the pictures, the weather has been cooperating 95% of the time. We had a big rain and wind storm last night, but the tarp covering our gigantic hole in the roof managed to stay in place. While we had a little dusting of snow up on the tops of the mountains/hills about 10 days ago, we haven't had any in the valley yet. We're hoping for a few more dry days until we can get the addition enclosed. 

This is exciting, but it's also incredibly stressful. Add on top of that a 3.5 year old who misses her pappa and is mastering the art of temper tantrums, a husband who is never asleep before midnight, sometimes 2am, a dog who might have eyelid cancer and will need 3 separate procedures to diagnosis and treat said cancer, and someone who will go unnamed who has now had two automobile related incidents with Norwegian law enforcement in the last month. . . 

I just want to yell, "I want my Mamma!!!!"

Oh wait. I'm the mamma. 

Shit.*

Sept 18

Oct 6

Oct 10

Oct 11

Oct 17

Oct 18 (today)

View from our bedroom!

New stairs: Oct 14

 *I'm going to stop complaining now, because I know I have it pretty damn good. But, it's my blog, so I can bitch when I want to.