My nemesis: The garage

I have an "odd" relationship with time and an even odder sense of my own human abilities. I am often late because I always think I can squeeze in one more bill, one more errand, one more task before I need to be where I need to be. I fail to realize that I'm simply human and cannot blink and transport myself through time to my destination. I forget that the clogged expressways won't open to me like the Red Sea to Moses just because I will it so.

Time and I do not see eye to eye.

My garage is crafted from wood. Wood that's swelled way too many times from storms. Wood that's been exposed to sun and wind from behind ever-peeling paint. Wood that aches and creaks and moans. It should be razed and a sleek aluminum-sided structure placed in its wake, but the $15,000 or so to do that kinda stops me. Each year for at least four years, I've said I wanted to paint the garage. To protect it, get a little more life from it. And each year, I've watched the gaps growing wider, the paint exposing more faded-to-gray planks. The sides sagging a bit more.

I am not scrappy homeowner material, I swear.

So true to my character, I decide that I'm really gonna do it this time. I enroll Big J to help. We left my house yesterday morning about 11 a.m. and I had to run to the bank first. We bought paint, brushes, scrapers, primer, drop cloths oh, and a sander, too. I still skipped back to the car basking in the future glow of how happy I'd be when it was alllllllll done.

And then reality hit me like a Louisville slugger shucked at a great speed.

"Why are you putting the paint in the kitchen?" I asked Big J in all seriousness, "Why don't you leave it outside?"
"Do you really think we're going to paint today?" he questioned (looking at me with that are-you-totally-insane-or-are-you-just ribbing-me look).

Well, yes I did. I actually thought that we were going to be able to scrape, sand, prime and paint. In one day. Even though the time was 1:30 and it gets dark about 6. Now, it's exactly that kind of thinking that gets me started on behemoth projects that I would never have the balls to begin if I lived in reality on a consistent basis--but that kind of thinking also causes me to feel disappointed when reality hits me in the arse. Hard.

But we dug in and although it was quickly determined that this was going to be way harder than I ever thought possible (including finding out that yes, caulk can be used to hold an entire garage wall together), we scraped and sanded one whole side and secured a good start on the other. I looked back at our handiwork and although an outsider might have seen a teetering wood structure that seemed to have been dipped in acid on one side, I felt triumph.

The rest of the garage shouldn't take me that long. Two-three hours tops. Don't you think?


©L'uragana