Life has been busy at Casa Poolman. Our house is still in total disarray, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We actually slept in our own bed last night, for the first time in about three weeks. First, let’s back up a little.
Our Baptism demonstration did not come off last week in my CCD class. Our family with a newborn baby has agreed to allow his Baptism to be the subject of the program. They will bring the baby, god-parents, etc to the Wednesday night CCD session on January 27. They couldn’t get it together in time for last Wednesday’s class, which is understandable.
Apparently, this project is becoming quite the event. Apparently both our priests greeted the idea with a profound, “Huh!”, but they eventually went along with the idea. I imagine all my fellow teachers will bring their classes to the church that night. Hey, it means the pressure is off them to teach a class that night. Meanwhile, the young child will have roughly 120 honorary god-parents. I told the dad, “Think of all the future baby sitters!”
Since he was already scheduled to be available for the Baptism that didn’t come off, Father M stopped by our class and answered some questions for the kids. He did a good job with some of the questions the students have asked me, but I had postponed until we had one of the priests visit, like…
- What’s the deal with original sin?
- What happens to a baby who dies without being baptized?
- Why don’t priests get married?
I’m looking forward to the “big event” on the 27th. Should be interesting.
* * * *
Work on our house continues. We had a three-day weekend and Mrs. Poolman and I used every minute of it, or at least it felt like it.
Earlier in the week, Mrs. P and daughter, Writer Princess, went to that large home improvement store and bought ten, 16-foot lengths of quarter-round. From what they say, it was quite an adventure to get home with about half the length sticking out the back of Mrs P’s Honda CRV, and Writer Princess laying across the inside end of the pile to keep it all from dropping out onto the roadway. By Sunday morning, it was stained and finished and ready to be installed. A few hours work, right? No such luck. A professional crew might have handled it that quickly, but as I have confessed in the past, professional home improvement workers and I have very little in common. I spent all day Sunday and Monday on my hands and knees (I am so fortunate to still have some old knee pads from volleyball days.) measuring, cutting (measuring again, cutting again) and installing quarter-round. When I ran out of steam Monday evening, I was out of material and about half done.
I did get the bedroom completed, so Mrs. P and I were able to get our bed set up and some of our furniture back in.
The family room still has boxes and bedroom-type furniture stacked to the ceiling, but things are slowly starting to return to normal.
Maybe one more Saturday, and I’ll have the job complete.
Another Beautiful Day in Paradise! 
Before I got into construction as heavy as I am now…I knew that doing things like this would always go better the “next time” I tried them…so I moved.