Inspirations and Thanksgiving

I've been adding a bathtub to our main bathroom (which entailed moving a toilet and removing a shower stall) and will post some details about that soon.

Since Joanne and I have been together, she has inspired me to:

• add a wall into our first house's basement
• finish the basement in our second house (5th home)
• renovate the kitchen in that same house
• add a wall to convert a loft into a bedroom in that same house
• enlarge the kitchen in our 3rd house
• remove a granite floor and brick wall in that same house

Here we are in our 4th house (7th home), and the inspirations keep coming!

Joanne has this incredible faith in what I am able to do, and somehow (not without frustrations, mistakes and changes of plans) I've been able to keep up. Both of these traits, Joanne's belief that anything is possible, and my ability to rise to the occasion, I directly attribute to her father, Ray Meyrick.

This is the time of year where I remember him most. He passed away shortly after Thanksgiving (the Canadian one) three years ago, and I think it was fitting that I was working on yet another of Joanne's inspirations, the aforementioned new bedroom (for M, due a few months later) in the second house.

Joanne grew up with a mother (aka June, aka Nanna) who was an equally (if not greater) source of inspirations. Ray was always working on them, able to keep up with an attention to detail and a skill level I'd only previously read about. (Dad, if you're reading this, please forgive my candour, but you must already know that, as intelligent and capable as your are, "handy" is not one of your characteristics.) So naturally, Joanne now expects this.

What I'm most grateful for is that Ray didn't leave me to my own devices, to learn from my own mistakes. Though he enjoyed the odd mistake I did make, and used them as vehicles for his lessons, he was a ready and willing instructor. He taught me how to keep up to a Meyrick woman's inspirations.

So, as I was wrestling the plumbing underneath our house in the crawlspace, I could hear him chuckling at some of my goofs. I told him, that weekend three years ago, when he apologized for not being able to help with the new wall, that he was already helping me, and that every step I took was under his guidance, and always would be. He laughed and said "don't choke the hammer."

I thanked you then, Ray, as I do now. I think you'd enjoy Joanne's latest list of inspirations.