44 days, 20

We've got the day labourers to come back. Which means that, before doing the simplest thing, we need to stop and measure it ten times and then talk it to death. Eventually they get to work. This in turn means that I stop working and spend my time getting the stuff they need, tools, tape, plastic sheeting, measuring tape, trowel. Paradoxically, this is preferable to them finding the stuff themselves: when they do, it follows that I can't ever find it again (I'm not saying they spirit it away, they just store it in unfathomable places. And it's a known fact: this building site swallows stuff!) At some point I see them take my new bucket (bought in the days of the drought ) and make it old in an instant, by filling it with lime and sand and scratching at it with nameless tools! Argh.

On the other hand How glad am I NOT to have to put up scaffolding and plaster the upper walls of the kitchen? Immeasurably. Am I enjoying the fact that I don't have to move all the garbage away (well, further away)? Words fail me. Is it cool that I'm typing this – in the middle of the day, sitting in the sun, on our veranda – instead of painting ceilings?

It's not only cool: it's life- saving! I was beginning to think that all this was a terrifying groundhog day purgatory (well, it is but I'm taking five!); one day, one day it'll all be done: I'll get up in the morning and do all those things I keep dreaming about. I can't see that day right now, from where I stand (up on a ladder, painting another wall) but I have to trust it's there.