The honeymoon is over.
Construction continues - chaos reigns... between the power and water outages, drywall dust and Home Hardware deliveries, gravel trucks and wheelbarrow loads of tools, the meals keep hitting the table with heartbeat regularity. Three weeks into the project, and with twenty-some pounds of beef under our belts, we all keep chugging along at our respective tasks. Some with more chugging, some with more respect.

When I served grilled T-bone steaks last night, I think I heard my last "ooohs". Gone are the heavy sighs of satisfaction, the lip smackings and tummy pattings and "oh wow that was soooo awesome"s. The crew has seen my repertoire of hearty fare; they're putting in long hours at tedious chores and the food-thusiasm is gone. I still hear the murmured thank-yous as they put on their boots and head for the door, but there will be no more surprises, no more amazement at what's set before them. And I can deal with that - I expected that. I still thrive on that meal-time silence punctuated by the clinking and scraping of cutlery on well-cleaned plates.

Of course, all of this might change tomorrow morning. My "assistant cook" arrives tonight. She's a Real Chef. Who actually went to school to be a chef. And I've seen her in action - it's a thing of beauty. She cooks "mise en place" - everything in place. Little bowls of all her ingredients neatly diced and ready to be tossed in at just the right moment. Me, I time the right moment by how long it takes me to chop the onion - as in: the butter is sufficiently browned by the time this onion is chopped. She's going to turn out restaraunt-quality meals in record time and expose me for the ego-centric interloper that I fear I am. And worst of all, she's going to do it IN MY KITCHEN.

You see, she was supposed to arrive last week for her first shift, but we were nowhere near ready to resume cooking in the big commercial dining hall, so I called the whole thing off. But now, I'm tired, I want a break, and the crews are on a split-shift and are, in essence, working an eight day week - with both shifts overlapping mid-week. So she is enroute as I type... but the dining hall floor still needs sealing and the cooler still needs tiling then grouting then sealing... and thus she will be using my house, my kitchen, my tools and she will paw my drawers.
While I'm not keen on it, I can and do function in chaos; I know that the bag of quick oats is buried in the back of the rolling trolley behind the jug of vanilla and beneath the mini marshmallows and icing sugar. Makes perfect sense. I know that the cup of margarine in the fridge is to feed the men, and the half-used foil-wrapped butter is mineallmine. The whipping cream with MA 02 due date is mine - MA 08 is camp's. Three out of four of those loaves of french bread in the deep freeze belong to me. Peaches and Cream corn, me - mixed veg, camp. But how do I explain all this to my keen WonderChef? Wherever will she set her multiple bowls of julienned root veggies? My already-inadequate countertops currently house the coffee urn, a vase of flowers, hubby's coffee flavorings, a bamboo box of tea, my recipe box, baskets of spices and bottles of oil....
Not to mention - what will she say of my wooden cutting board?! It's highly debateable. I know perfectly well that it's far better than plastic due to its natural enzymes which kill bacteria, but did she learn that in her new-fangled school? Hmm? Did she?
She'll likely load my dishwasher all wrong too. People do. YOU know.
Will she play with the cat while she wipes the table, or think it's horrifically unsanitary? My cat rushes up from the basement when she hears the tap running after mealtimes - she loves to try to snag the cloth as I whisk it along the tabletop.
The longer I sit here the more comes to mind... will she drink my good coffee in the morning? Will I share it with her on purpose? Should I leave the food processor on the cupboard for her to use, or will she think it really is broken just because I melted one attachment chopping up alder for smoking a turkey one time so it's all crazy-glued together. It still works pretty good. Just sometimes the glue gets hot and you have to leave it stuck together 'til it cools off again. When is the last time I emptied the crumb catcher on the toaster? Considering I can't remember how to open the crumb catcher, I'm thinking it's been a while. And is keeping the five-gallon pail of sugar next to the garbage can entirely FoodSafe?

All these questions. Mostly, will she cook way better than me. Will I be put to shame. Will the first-shift guys be disappointed that I cook for them, and not her.

I will listen to melancholy music while my dishes cool in their soapy water. My pepper grinder is empty. And I wait.