Last week when I came home from Dallas, my kitchen was torn apart and my decrepit cupboards were tossed out onto the lawn. I knew the construction workers were coming the day I was arriving home. Still, I was numb to see the area where I had been cooking, doing dishes and serving meals the last 23 years gone.

My son, Timmy, had spent two nights at a friend's house while I was away and he went into a deep fog when he saw the house so torn up. He couldn't find his hat, didn't know where dishes were and he had no clean socks. The zipper on his winter coat had broken so he had to wear an old parka of his dad's to school. The parka had been hanging in the basement and was dusty and Timmy started to sneeze when he put it on. The hood is made of rabbit fur and Timmy said the fur shed all over him. My neighbor, Carol, put a new zipper on his coat, as she has an industrial sewing machine. Timmy was feeling better emotionally on Friday when he had his own coat to wear, but we still have not found his hat. On top of all this, he has had a constant cough all week.

It

hasn't been fun to hear him hacking away day and night.

One good thing about having part of my kitchen torn up is the house is now warmer with the drafty addition gone. Our house was built in the 1890s and the part of the kitchen we tore up was added on 50 years ago when the indoor plumbing was installed. Whoever installed the additions for the kitchen sink and the bathroom did the job as cheaply as possible. The roofs above the kitchen sink and the bathroom are flat and this has caused water leakage in the house. The house was so full of holes that when the construction workers removed the walls, we saw why we always had wasps in the house every summer. My kitchen supplies are in boxes and I am doing the dishes in a plastic kitchen sink. I can still cook on my gas stove.

My daughter, Theresa is having a hard time being around here with all the construction going on. Her sister, Molly, came home from college last week and promptly left to stay with a friend, as staying here is no vacation.

There is so much junk in this house. I have to start purging and cleansing this house with the new energy and space that the construction workers will be creating. I am having a hard time knowing where to start to have order in this chaos. I am not very organized anyway, so it is doubly hard for me with everything in boxes. I can see why my parents never did any remodeling on

their old farmhouse. People had warned us that once we began to tear things up we would find out how badly the house needed work. We sure have.

My sister, Joann hired my brother, Steve, to repair a porch on her house a

couple years back. Steve tore apart the porch and called her at work and told Joann, "You know when a doctor goes in for exploratory surgery to find out how bad the symptoms are? Well, your diagnosis is that your porch has cancer and I have to remove the cancer. I will have to do reconstructive surgery and then the porch will be free of the cancer."

That pretty much sums up my kitchen. We are removing the cancer.

Now if only I can find Timmy's hat.

Sheila Donnelly can be reached at 434-2233 or by e-mail at :maitlo:newsroom@austindailyherald.com