Feeling some better

 The doctor was reassuring and weirdly it was easier to talk about stuff to her over the phone than it might have been face to face. She agreed that home reno is stressful and said she could write a prescription for anxiety stuff if I needed it, but I think maybe I can tough it out (as you'll see later in this post)

She thinks I should do PT for my arthritic hip and she's probably right, there's just no money in the coffers right now but maybe once checks start coming back in this fall I work that in. Would much much much rather do PT - even if it hurts while doing it - than get the injections or surgery

She encouraged me to submit a report of my booster side effects to Pfizer; she said they might be able to advise how to make future boosters easier. (Possibly I could be given a child-sized dose? On the rare occasions I have to take Benadryl, I have to take a child sized dose)

Also it turns out the phone visits wasn't a "prevent the spread" thing - it was "Well, I have one office worker out on vacation, one who IS down with COVID, and the two remaining people are scrambling to keep up so this is easier for them." Also they lost internet connectivity yesterday and they're struggling to recover. I feel better that it was merely a confluence of bad luck than a belief that COVID is roaring back worse than before.

The guys showed up - just two guys, the GC's second-in-command and a helper. They started ripping the siding off (second-in-command guy reassured me when I worried at him: "wait and see what's under the vinyl siding, it's likely the old wood siding is in good shape")

They didn't get very far, they must be taking a break somewhere (water, coffee? Pee break? I don't know. Maybe taking regular breaks where they go to the McDonald's or somewhere to cool off helps keep them healthy) so I sneaked out and looked - they have the siding and old insulation down off part of the front of the house

and dangit? The old wood siding is pretty beautiful. It's sort of like shiplap but not exactly, it looks nicer than the vinyl that was up there, and better than the vinyl on the neighbor's house. So okay, maybe the GC was right, and I should just plan on having paint jobs done every five years or so so I can have that nice old wood siding on display. I was expecting it to be all chewed up and water damaged but it isn't. 

I hope the GC comes and sees it - the damage, to my untrained eye, looks far less than what he was predicting and I'm really hoping that that's right. (Also when I talked about the reno to my doctor and commented that the estimate was very high, she laughed and said "many contractors give you a very pessimistic estimate so they can knock costs off later and make you happy." Didn't work that way with the roof but maybe I'll get lucky here?