Damn. Have you ever had a tooth pulled [0]? I had my wisdom teeth taken out in high school, and I vaguely remember a few days of druggy haze and TV, but nothing like I’m going through now. None of the drugs work – the after-effect of a misspent youth? – and all day I sit around in sharp pain. (Wah, wah, wah! Maybe someone should start a baby blog [0] about me.) All of which is to say, I haven’t done squat for green building [0] or energy auditing [0] since last week.

But I better get on the stick. The architect [0] came over today so we could nail down some remaining specifics for the studio remodel [0] before he pencils up the construction drawings [1] – the final Big Deal drawings that lay out every last detail, down to the bolts [2] and boards [3] and batts [4]. Or in this case, the bales [5], since we’ve decided to go with straw bale construction. More on those details from bales to beams a little later; we should have the final drawings by week’s end.

Like I said [5], I’d like to build as much of the new studio myself as I can. But what does that mean, realistically? Am I going to pour the concrete for the foundation myself? Lay the pipes for the radiant heat [6]? In college [7], I stacked boxes on the night shift at a warehouse [8] – 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.; my Symbolic Logic class started at 8. Does that qualify me to stack straw bales? Can I run the electrics myself while averting a blackened and crackling death? Tile a roof? And then there are the little details, like laying and sealing the flashing [9] around the roof line and the windows and doors, installing the gutters, and, you know, rigging up the solar hot-water system [9]. Talking with the architect this afternoon, the ugly Jabberwock [10] of self-doubt crept up, mandibles agape.

I didn’t grow up around sawhorses and hammers and scrimshaws. (See above: misspent youth.) This stuff is all brand new [10] to me. But somehow I’m expecting that I’ll be able to bang out the studio before summer’s end. On the one hand, it’s only an accessory structure – no one’s going to be sleeping in it, except maybe the occasional party guests in search of secret snog space. So if the roof leaks or the walls collapse or the ants [10] come marching back in, it won’t be a legitimate, call-the-cops disaster. But on the other hand – the hand holding my wallet – to go through the whole process and spend the whole ka-ching-ching only to have the building fail would be, shall we say, problematic. Nothing a little Valium couldn’t cure, but trouble all the same.