The victory of the new service panel was short-lived, eclipsed by the mountain of work that followed. The "grind," as Adrian had called it, was not a metaphor. It was a physical, mental, and financial reality that settled over them like the fine layer of dust that now seemed permanently embedded under Amelia's fingernails.
Her sawhorse desk became a war room. The initial, neatly penned lists in the ledger were now a chaotic forest of sticky notes, revised calculations, and frantic, coffee-stained reminders. Permits were a Byzantine nightmare of delays and contradictory requirements. A shipment of steel tubing arrived bent, triggering a week-long battle with the supplier. The budget, once a theoretical framework, was now a grim daily reckoning.
One Tuesday evening, Amelia was hunched over an invoice for industrial-grade epoxy, her head throbbing in rhythm with the flickering fluorescent light Adrian had yet to replace. The number on the page was staggering.
