I am very saddened to share the news that Daisy has passed away. After her health and energy began rapidly declining over the last week or so, Liz and I made the difficult decision to bring her to the vet – and to have her put to sleep.
Over the last few days, Liz and I had some hard conversations about Daisy’s health. She’s been more listless lately, and has seemingly spent a lot more time sleeping/napping in the corner.
While her mobility has limited her somewhat, she still managed to get around previously. But this week, it feels like things took a turn for the worse. And after a lot of difficult considerations, we set up a time to take her in to the vet and have her put to sleep.
There was some work to get some custom drywall pieces, sitting on top and going into the joists. The wall is a bit angled, so we did some fancy work with a laser level.
We had an 8×4 piece of plywood, that we wanted to use in this space. We tried a few different approaches (one involved folding a large piece of paper)… but ended up going with multiple pieces of cardboard.
Tonight, Liz had a solo evening in the office. She suited up after work, and was up and down the stairs a lot (refining a piece of wood on the chop saw, in the basement).
During her demo of the space in front of the fireplace, she put in a lot of supporting pieces (to bring the area flush with the floor joists). During this time, she realized that there was a gap in the far corner, behind the fireplace.
Poor Daisy. We’re doing the best we can, but we’re mostly trying to keep things at bay. Even after our baths, she’s not quite clean per se. Cleaner perhaps, for a little while.
This was a tender moment afterwards, with Liz giving Daisy some pets. As much as I recognize I’m capturing her decline, I’m also wanting to capture some of these moments as well.
Things got a little challenging, as we’ve been filling up the floor here. See the piece of plywood near the bottom there, with the black X inside a rectangle? That space is 49″ wide. Which is 1″ wider than your standard 8’x4′ plywood board. A little maddening.
Today, we added some more drywall along the North window. But Liz also made a pretty custom piece, to fit the gap that we left. A shame gap, if you will.
Happy to report, it fit quite well. At least, well enough – since this whole thing is going to get covered in another 1/4″ layer of drywall.
Now let’s never speak of this again.
It always goes like this: it’s hard for us to work on the house. At the end of a work day, we’re both tired from our jobs… and the last thing we want to do is suit up for a few hours. On the weekends, all we want to do is lounge and relax, and it’s difficult to suit up and spend the day getting dirty.
But once we do – we get into a good rhythm. We get energized, and we get some momentum. And it makes suiting up the next time just a little easier.
With that other piece installed, we tried to shake off the ugliness of it. And Liz focused on yet another custom cut, to go near the top.
Daisy has… not been doing well, lately. She continues to struggle moving around, and the back half of her legs are losing strength. Unfortunately, a side effect of this is that she has difficulty going to the bathroom, and isn’t really able to relieve herself properly.
And in a remarkable Goofus and Gallant moment, we spotted this guy nearby. Sculpted, formed, almost an art installation.
You can almost hear him asking: “Why am I here? Why am I out here in the cold?”
You said it, buddy. You said it.
I wasn’t able to work on the house tonight. But Liz was undeterred, suited up, and started doing demo near the fireplace.
Liz, holding up one of the boards while I went running to get some screws.
For a late Christmas get-together, Liz and I headed over to Merrillville, for a lovely evening/dinner at Katie and Tim’s house.