It may be "a long, long time from May to December" when you sing "September Song," but the time from May to September has been a blur for me this year.

The reason? My husband, Grit, and I have been building a house.

The decisions that must be made one after the other on things that we will look at every day — or at least until we sell the house — and they have sometimes come in rapid-fire succession.

The result has caused me, once a willing shopper, to balk at even picking up toothpaste at the grocery store.

It is just one too many decisions.

Family and friends warned us that this was not an endeavor for sissies, especially sissies who had only been involved in remodeling.

Now before I go further, let me say that I am well aware of how fortunate we are to have an opportunity to build a new house. I grouse not about the opportunity but the daunting building process.

As I look back at the beginning — when we first started working with our architect — I laugh at my naivete.

I purchased a few of those house-plan books and searched through them.

What a waste.

Those homes are designed to fit on an evenly shaped lot; ours is shaped like a kite.

But ya gotta start somewhere, because eventually you'll be responsible for choosing every detail.

Friends and family advised hiring a designer.

I didn't.

And that caused family and friends to avoid my house, because I would feed them or visit for a while and then make them look at my house stuff.

I must thank two of those long suffering friends, Anne Marie Barton and Heidi Skidmore, both of whom are designers who kindly offered advice whenever I asked.

Another plus is our builder, Tom Schmitt, who shows up daily to oversee the details. Was it providence — or luck — in finding someone so diligent?

Doesn't matter, I'll take either.

What Grit and I have learned from the process is no matter what answer was needed, the buck really did stop with us.

In that way it has been a good experience working together because, up to this point, we have led parallel lives.

He made the business decisions and I made the house decisions — very Cleaver-like.

During this project, Grit has patiently gone from model house to model house looking for ideas when it was the next to last thing he wanted to do. (The last is clothes shopping.)

Watching the house being framed was such a rush.

The crane operator would lift the already assembled rafters and place them like a puzzle on top of the walls to form the roof. The framers would jump from wall to wall, swinging the pieces around to fit in the proper place.