Spring came. Cool breezes with no real bite to them softened the air. Pale green buds on trees and blinding-bright yellow forsythia adorned the streets and neighboring yards.
The mating call of home renovations sounded, manifested by crowded lanes in every hardware and home decorating store, where people filled their shopping carts with cement and pored over paint chips. And this year, I heeded the call.
Thanks to a wonderful neighbor who did 99 percent of the work (thanks, Mike!), I now have a new living room floor. Because of work hours, delays in supplies, and a host of regular daily living chores, it took three weeks. It’s a beautiful floor. I’m still gazing at it like it’s a work of art.
But that was three weeks of no writing or editing of any kind. Three weeks of falling into bed with tired muscles and aching feet and no energy. Three weeks of chomping at the bit to write a short story for an anthology and finish the formatting of my novel.
My brain was tired. This was the price I paid for that floor. And because I knew the work was for a finite period, I could endure it. But it made me aware in a way I never understood before, that sometimes, there’s no time. Sometimes there’s a period that needs to be waited out. And as long as that period doesn’t become permanent, that’s okay.
But there are paint chips on my kitchen table and I’m a little worried.
A new floor! Yaayy! How bout some pix? Would love to see the results of all that hard work.
The floor is done but there’s some painting to be done. (Yes, I have succumbed to the lure of those paint chips.) LOL
I’m also a sucker for that old home remodeling mating call. I think it’s such a great idea until I’m in the middle of it then I find myself thinking “what the heck was I thinking?” ; )
Riiiight there with ya.