Let's see... we had the walls in the basement repaired in September.  You know how these old houses are; the concrete walls were all crumbly and yucky.  So we had them re plastered, or whatever it is you do to basement walls.  The stuff had to cure for two weeks before they could be painted so that project isn't really finished yet.  Meanwhile, all the stuff that we store in the back room in the basement has been all over the house  for the better part of three weeks.  There's a big pile of winter coats by the tv down there, a set of golf clubs upstairs next to my bedroom door...it's a mess.

Since the place is a mess anyway, might as well rip off a few ceilings while we're at it, right?  Right!

Both Zack's bedroom and the back hall have those disgusting acoustic tile ceilings.  As if they weren't ugly enough in their own right, both suffered water damage.  Zack's bedroom ceiling got wrecked about seven years ago, while the room was still my office.  The bathroom above it had a leak in the tub.  We ripped that bathroom out years ago and replaced it with is now arguably the prettiest room in the house. 

The upstairs bathroom is very feminine and old fashioned.  We bought an antique claw foot tub for up there, a sink and toilet that were new but looked Victorian and did the room in mostly white tile. The tile is accented by these beautiful sapphire blue trim tiles.  Our friend Ron hung the blue and white toile wallpaper for us.  Ron is a paper hanging genius.  The sad part about that bathroom is that Josie uses it the most and she's not very good at keeping it clean.  My office is up there, so I use it a lot too.  I suppose I could clean it...

Like I don't have enough to do.

Back to my point; Zack's ceiling never got fixed.  Then this spring we had a leak in the back hall.  We got that fixed (I hope it's fixed.  Nothing came in the last few rain storms, and they were seriously wet storms.) But the ceiling was all discolored.

So, about two weeks ago, Jay and Zack ripped out the ceilings.  Jay had hired a young man to put in new ceilings.

Which meant, of course, removing all the furniture from Zack's room and all the stuff from the back hall.  There's nowhere to put it.

In addition to all the stuff that should be stored in the basement, now all the stuff from those two rooms is all over the house.

The carpenter we'd hired never came back.  Apparently he was abducted by aliens, or kidnapped by the Chinese, I don't know.

All I know is that there's been a bed in my living room for almost three weeks now.

Zack has had to sleep downstairs since we took all the furniture out of his room, so in addition to the upheaval already in the basement, all his stuff is down there now, too.  Oh, and I can't watch movies on the tv down there because Zack goes to bed at nine.

What would you do under these circumstances?

Why, what anyone would do! Schedule a dinner party!

We've been meaning to have some of Jay's friends from work over for awhile.  They had us to their house  a few months back, had an absulutely marvelous time and we've looked forward to returning the hospitality, so Jay invited them over this weekend.

He told me last night. 

I thought "Okay.  Not much I can do about the state of things around here. I guess I can vacuum around that bed in the living room.  We'll have to eat in the kitchen since the dining room table has a rolled up carpet on it.  Maybe we'll just pretend not to notice that we have no ceilings...whatever."

These are people who have never seen our house before and probably already think we're crazy.

This morning Jay said "in view of the construction we have going on around here, I think I'll reschedule the dinner." 

Oh, good. 

This place is going to look fabulous when we get the new ceilings up!

I may even clean that bathroom upstairs.