Building a house is tough work, especially when you're too cheap frugally minded, like us. Sure, we could pay the construction crew a little extra to build a greenhouse. Sexy Nerd, however, insisted there's nothing to it. A few windows and some wood and we'd be set.

It was never disclosed that building a greenhouse would require my help. My devious husband never mentioned the 84 bags of concrete (80 pounds per bag!) we would need to drag steeply uphill along the unpaved, cactus-covered, scortchingly hot, snake-infested ground. A semi truck pulled up to our empty lot with a forklift and more than two pallets of concrete. Whose idea was it anyway to build the greenhouse so far back?

(Mine? Bah!)

Oh, and lucky, lucky us. Lowes mistakenly delivered an extra 80 pound bag of concrete and said we could keep it for free. Even the bargain hunter in me (which is like 97% of who I am) wanted to cry.

So mighty? Don't be fooled.
Grumbling aside, I tried to be as helpful as possible…

We broke ground on 6/13/16, more than four months ago, and I greatly underestimated the patience required to build a house. Remember the post I shared waaay back on September 6th? The one where the concrete had finally been poured for our footings? The construction crew had smoothed and leveled the dirt and everything looked so pretty.

Well, they dug it all up again.


I do not understand construction.

This pit is much deeper than it looks here. I thought it would be fun to have my photo taken at the bottom, but Sexy Nerd refused, pointing out how impossible it would be for me to get back out.
Later, we had a little argument (when building a house, there are lots of little arguments) and he decided he'd like to take my photo at the bottom of the pit after all.
We settled for this instead:
It's really not the same, is it? 
With the concrete footings completed, it was only a few more days until the foundation was poured.
(Ha!)
It did not happen in a week. It did not even happen in…

My day isn't off to a great start. I got about ZERO hours of sleep last night. It was one of those situations where you can't sleep because you have so many other things to do, but then you end up not sleeping anyway, so you may as well have just stayed up after all.

Sexy Nerd is away on a business trip, which means making the morning coffee fell to me. He'll be home today and not a moment too soon. Grinding the beans, measuring the water, changing the filter, all before I've had any caffeine...that's what I have a husband for! I poured a packet of liquid creamer and some Torani Salted Caramel syrup into a mug, added my finally-brewed coffee, and sat down for a speedy breakfast before running off to work. I mentally checked off the things I need to take care of before Sexy Nerd gets home.

The house is still a mess, the dogs need to be fed, the tortoises need their humidifier water replaced, (oh, by the way, Sexy Nerd has an aquarium of tortoises now) today is my las…