Disruption and Stability

For reasons I barely grasp, our upstairs (or most of it) is being remodeled.

I hate that this is occurring.

It's really hard to explain and I think that I can actually somewhat separate myself from it in the abstract, but none the less I'm not at all happy about this development, and that's the the only thing that's a bur under my saddle this year.

Coventry, 1940.  Pretty much how I view remodeling in a house.

I have an inkling of why, but I'm one of those people who tend to opt for stability over disruption.  This isn't always the case, and I've struck out on more than one thing that has been hugely disruptive in my own life from time to time.  This was particularly when I was younger, I'd note.  

I haven't done that much since I was married, however, which was at age 32.  After that, I've made pretty conservative, which is to say stable, choices on most things.  Not always, but often.  

Okay, that's note exactly on point, but who could resist.

Anyhow, now that I'm almost 55 I don't care for certain things being disrupted and I have to even fight against that in my personality, I know.  But stuff like this really bugs me.

We've been in this house since shortly after we were married and there were things about it that definitely needed to be addressed.  The upstairs carpet, for example, was likely original to the 1983 vintage house and had been through the prior owners, out two kids, and our volunteer pirate cat that showed up years ago and declared the house to be his possession.  It has needed replacement for some time, and we decided to go with hard wood floors which we all like better.  Indeed, we decided to do that over a year ago but held off as the cat was obviously headed for the last roundup and not always well in his final year.  Better to wait.

But he shuffled off his mortal coil a few months ago and so we proceeded.

I'd thought, quite frankly, that were going to limit this to the floor. But my wife has wanted to remodel the kitchen for a long time and for reasons that I don't appreciate now and frankly regret I agreed to that.  So now our upstairs is ripped to shreds and I hate it.

I don't really grasp why kitchens supposedly need to be updated.  If things work, I figure, they're good to go.  And everything was working.  I'd have left it alone.  We're even now missing a wall to "open things up" and I hate that.  I like walls in houses.

I'm enduring this, but not all that well and probably not all that gracefully.

Added to the changes is that we now have a dog.

Odo, over a month ago.  He's now a giant.

I don't really know how this happened either, or actually I do.  

My wife has always wanted a dog.  And I have wanted a dog seasonably during duck season.

I'm frankly not all that keen on dogs in general.  I like cats much better.  I'm allergic to both, but I really like cats and for some reason the late Manx did not bother me that much.  He passed away shortly after waterfowl season and during that time I'd been otherwise lamenting the lack of a hunting dog.  I listened to the arguments for acquiring one and half heatedly sort of acquiesced to one under certain conditions not really thinking that it would come to pass. Well, my wife took it and and ran with it and we ended up with a supposedly hypoallergenic sort of breed that is supposed to have hunting aspects. Frankly, he's mostly a standard poodle and looks more and more like one everyday, but standard poodles are a hunting breed actually.

I think he's dumb as a post but he does have a sweet nature.  I have no knowledge or ability to train a dog and I've found that reading a book where a guy trained a Black Labrador that obviously had the instinct in spades didn't really help that much.  I'm going to have to send him out for training but I'll be frank, this is the second, or rather the first, thing I did this year where I regret holding my tongue.

At least so far.

This isn't the only such instance where I've been struggling, really struggling, with disruption and order.  I'm really not enjoying it.

I've found that some years are really that way.  I can remember some of them very specifically.  1986, the year I graduated with my bachelor's degree, with that trailing into 1987.  The year my father died as well was one such year. They come.  They go.  Thankfully.