Now What Do I Do?

Well, I finished the last of my "end of summer" chores yesterday. I have tried to create a low maintenance, low impact lifestyle for my self, these last few years. As a result, I haven't stopped working since I retired.

I wrote a blog last spring about all of the spring time chores required to "open up" our tiki themed deck; the deck staining, the yard work, and various maintenance items. Throughout the summer, when I should have been lazing around the pool, I worked on a variety of "tinker" projects. Now, well into the fall season, I believe I have finally exhausted my list.

The deck furniture is safely stored away in the garage, I rebuilt a section of my tiki bar that was warped by the summer heat and rains, polyurethaned the tiki bar prior to winter storage, replaced a cracked o-ring in the hot tub, maintenanced and covered the golf cart and the ATV, re-painted the trim on the garage, and remodeled our living room, bedrooms and my garage office.

At one point, the list of things to do became so long I bought two white boards to keep track of things. In other words, I had to organize my list.

I have mentioned on these pages that I believe retirement is a myth. I have one of my favorite comic strips framed in my office. It is from The Neighborhood by Jerry Van Amerongen. It depicts a guy standing on his front porch, looking expansively at his yard and house, both hands planted firmly on the front rail, and the caption says, "Ahh, Saturday morning and not a chore in sight!" The next panel shows him just after the rail collapses and he is face down in the dirt, surrounded by splinter railing and a sagging porch roof.

Things aren't quite that bad around here but it does seem like it never ends. There will always be a list. Which reminds me of another of my soon-to-be-famous quotes:

"If we can't laugh at ourselves . . . that still leaves a pretty long list."

Medicine Man

Have you ever put off a project -- basically forever? Well, the forever part is an exaggeration but I am talking for a long time. Some projects automatically fit in this category. Like clearing the treeline behind the garage of poison ivy. Or raking out the gravel in the parking area. Jobs that are unpleasant or way bigger than you'd like to tackle.

At the other end of the spectrum are projects that are so piddling small they are almost not worth getting the tools out for. Like oiling a squeaky hinge or tacking down a piece of wood trim that only needs one finishing nail but keeps moving when you bump it so you push it back into place and tell yourself, the next time you are in the workshop, you have to get a hammer and nail and actually fix it.

Some projects are obvious. Like the painted trim on the office door is peeling and flaking and needs to be stripped, sanded, primed and repainted. And you walk through the door every day and every day one of the more reasoning voices in your head tells you it must be done.

Have you ever put off a project for a really, really long time and it has been so long that the length of time you haven't done it is suddenly a factor in whether to do it today or not? As in, "Well, I've waited this long. What's a couple of more days . . . or weeks?"

Or has it been put off so long that it has become a running joke around the house? And now you don't want to do it because, Lord knows, you could use all the humour you can get.

Well, I have several of these overdue projects that I have been putting off for an embarrassingly long time and this is the week for them. I have a medicine cabinet for the master bath that I have been putting off hanging for over two years, now. It has been so long that I have to check the date on the back to make sure the oak hasn't passed its "best if used by date." But today is the day. I am going to hang the medicine cabinet!

I also have that office door frame to repaint. I have some wainscoting trim that needs tacked down. I have a wooden door frame for the sliding door onto the deck that needs stained and polyurethaned. I have a bedroom closet that needs reorganized. And this is the week!

All of the excuses are gone. All I have left to do is to pick up the tools and begin . . . the time has come and the mood is right . . . all of the planets have aligned . . . I am ready . . . . . . I wonder what's on Turner Classic Movies today . . .

The MEMORY Boxes

Now that we are deep into the fall season, the varicolored leaves emblazoning the trees and beginning to swirl around underfoot, I am doing some spring cleaning. I know, I know, you are asking yourself, "How can a busy guy like him be working on next year's projects already?" Actually, I'm doing this one 31 months late (give or take).

I am currently working on cleaning out the attic. You know, the room that looks like the final scene in that Indiana Jones movie? You would think that after thirteen moves we would have our portable junk whittled down to a manageable size but we spent thirteen years in the last place and raised our boys there. When we moved here we weren't sure how much room we would have, which junk to hang on to and which to jettison.

And as anyone who has ever moved will tell you, the things that seemed invaluable in the old house (that perfect nik-nak, a piece of furniture, a wall hanging, the kids) sometimes just don't work in the new place. You just can't bear to let it go when you are packing and it never fits in when you are unpacking. But you still have fond memories of it from before. So it goes to the attic. The place where hard decisions are made later.

One of the rules of attic cleaning is that it is not a team effort. I will never have her sentimental feelings for a cracked teapot and she will never understand that the next time I buy a '66 Malibu I am going to need those hubcaps. So we have a division of labor.

We each have our own group of boxes that are verboten for the other to mess with. Everything else is fair game. Among the detritus of our lives are two boxes marked MEMORIES. These would fall into the hyper-verboten category. These boxes are, apparently, so sacred that neither one of us remembers what is in them. They are triple sealed and have the single word "MEMORIES" neatly marked on either end of the box.

I have studied the handwriting and I can't honestly say whether she or I wrote it. The boxes are moderately heavy like they contain papers or photos or books rather than dolls or clothing. And every time I talk about getting rid of the old junk that we no longer need or use, one of us always adds, "except for the MEMORIES boxes."

I have to be honest here. I have no memory of what is in the MEMORY boxes. I don't remember when they first joined our little traveling road show and I don't remember having any experiences that were so memorable that we need two boxes full of stuff to commemorate them.

I never look inside of them for several reasons. (a) I am usually too busy moving other crap around when I come across these boxes to stop and deal with them. (3) They have achieved the coveted hyper-verboten status which means I can never do anything about them, anyway. And (d) I'm afraid to look in case the junk inside is as useless as the junk in all of the other boxes I keep shuffling around.

I'd like to think that we really did make some memories that were so special that they can only be properly honored by sealing them up in boxes never to be seen again. . . . if I could only remember what they were.