Ah, lovely! The floors in the upstairs portion of our house are finally complete.

Now that football season is a bit less pressing in these parts, Jesse has turned his Sunday focus to renovation projects again. Of course, he's now sitting down in front of the tube, reviewing the last few minutes of the Pats vs. SD game on our DVR, but he put in a good long day of work beforehand. Days like today, I don't mind the fact that our relationship relies on largely on stereotypical gender roles. Inhaling large quantities of toxic materials isn't my cup of tea, and there were plenty of those stinking up the house today.

Today's project was bamboo flooring. Most of the floors in our house are the original boards from the 1920s construction, and these have held up rather well, though the refinisher seemed to believe that our floors couldn't be sanded down and refinished again after his job, as they were so thin. Those floors run through the house, and stained, they're a warm, inviting amber color. They were hiding under a rather repellant pelt of faded carpet when we bought the house, but they're buffed up nicely now. The trouble was with the back two rooms, which were covered in an industrial tile that my environmental geologist husband identified as 1950s asbestos tile. We hemmed and hawed about pulling up this tile to reveal the floors beneath for some time, but the intensity of the labor and the possibility of environmental hazards kept us hesitant. About two weeks ago, we decided on the bamboo and found a terrific sale at Home Depot.

My dad has been particularly helpful with these projects. Truth is, I think he's happiest tinkering. He's done home repair work quite regularly for as long as he can remember. He's owned property since he was a young adult and has held himself personally responsible for repairs the whole time. Makes sense. He's a blue collar guy, a butcher, from rural Louisiana. He should know a good bit about manual trades, and he does. And I think he really takes a shine to helping Jesse. He devotes some good long days to working here.

My mom, she's begun to bring food, and I welcomed her homemade spaghetti sauce today. Dee-licious. With the temperature finally feeling like January, warm comfy pasta felt as Sunday as an afternoon nap.