Tag Archives: Home improvement

Seized by Spring

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Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay.

Have spring longings germinated in you?

Delicate green tendrils, they remind us: “You’re still alive and kicking!”

One pops up, then another. Before we know it, we’re caught in their delightful grasp.

Perhaps for you, these comprise seed catalogs. Your spouse may hide them and block websites, but all in vain. You fill your basement/garage/bedroom with seedlings, hovering as if they bear your name. When you install old baby monitors, your spouse finally gives up.

Wayward gravel peppers our flower beds.

Spring has seized you. There is no cure.

Other victims are captured by home improvement. They not only remodel their houses, but also demolish walls in those of strangers.

Hubby’s big spring thing, however, is adding gravel to the driveway. When winds soften and buds swell, his wistful look sprouts. “Let’s call the gravel pit guy.”

“We have gravel,” I say. “Don’t you remember? During the last snowstorm, we shoveled it all into the flower beds.”

Image by Insa Osterhagen from Pixabay.

Others live for their lawns. Years ago, our neighbor, instead of renewing marriage vows, pledged eternal love to his John Deere riding mower.

Similar spring madness victimizes women with a compulsion to wash windows. If denied, they are found in alleys, foraging for empty Windex® bottles to sniff. If you are a lawn lover or Windex® sniffer, please come see us.

When spring debuts, I join Steve for exercise and sightseeing on our tandem bicycle.

Instead, my husband and I can’t wait to ride our bicycle built for two. Baseball gloves’ leathery smell sends fanatics, aged four through 84, to soggy backyards to play. Golf devotees, forbidden to swing clubs inside after window incidents, now drive with abandon matched only by platoons of skateboarding kids. College students dance amid showers of Frisbees while music thunders from open dorm windows.

Age doesn’t matter when spring’s call, potent as a tornado siren, issues from the nearest ice cream place or drive-in. Customers shiver through hot fudge sundaes and root beer floats. Or we fire up grills and torment neighborhoods with cravings for that first juicy burger.

Image by moerschy from Pixabay.

I drive with windows open wide, The Beach Boys harmonizing approval on the radio. Passing college dormitories, students’ Top 40 echo back. Zooming near wetlands, I hear hundreds of spring peepers spout crazy love songs.

Spring seizes us all. And we’re loving it.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What tells you it’s really spring?

Classic Post: Playing Hooky in October

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This post first appeared on October 4, 2017.

Is there anything more fun than sneaking a walk when you should be hard at work?

Perhaps balancing the national budget, achieving world peace and losing four dress sizes rank above it. None of these, however, appear imminent. So, I pilfer little thrills, like kernels of candy corn, when I can.

Autumn’s tawny, sun-freckled face grins from every yard and field, a mischievous TP-er who messes with trees solely so we have to clean up many-hued clutter. Scraggly flowers, survivors with colorful personalities, mix well with show-off mums. Ragged, brown corn and soybeans look weathered and friendly as smiling scarecrows that guard small-town yards and grocery store produce sections.

All mellow and unhurried. Autumn urges me to enjoy its relaxed aura while I can.

Apple trees, however, awaken my laid-back senses. Loaded with plump fruit, they tempt me to borrow just a few.

However, calling my husband to spring me from jail isn’t the best way to celebrate fall. Forcing my steps past, I promise myself a trip to an orchard.

Squirrels, sociopathic larcenists, don’t worry about raising bail. They freely steal fruit, walnuts and acorns, which they hide in my flower pots — their personal storage units. Fall squirrels are like spring dandelions, fluffy and cute. I love both . . . in other people’s yards.

All paths lead to the elementary school, easily evidenced by a trail of kid stuff: a flattened baseball hat; a pink bicycle abandoned near a stop sign; a plain strawberry Pop-Tart®, no doubt rejected because someone wanted frosted chocolate with sprinkles. Scholarly endeavors are verified by broken pencils and crinkled homework. How long has this rain-faded permission slip lain here?

Rows of cars at the school speak of the commitment of teachers, administrators and staff. I pray for them, as the place — even when recess is not in session — emits energy unmatched by Hoover Dam turbines.

Ditto for Taylor University. A substantial portion of its science building’s energy needs are supplied by geothermal, solar and wind power. However, the pulsating between-class rhythm of skateboarders, scooter-riders, cyclists and joggers who don’t even notice they’re jogging prompts another energy question: Couldn’t the remainder be supplied by students, who regard midnight as the start of prime time?

I seek quieter streets, where I can saunter, unmolested by the vigorous and motivated.

Instead, yards teem with home improvement projects and, on the town’s outskirts, farmers driving giant combines lumber into fields, braving clouds of chaff. All strive to complete their tasks before cold weather.

In the face of so much diligence, goofing off is downright tough. I head for home.

But that doesn’t mean autumn and I won’t try to play hooky tomorrow. …

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your favorite goof-off season, and why?

Mad Makeover; or Where Did You Put the —?

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When we moved 11 years ago, we agreed, “These room colors are temporary.” With straight faces, even.

Temporary threatened to stretch into forever. For years, I dreamed of painting our living space. Paint chip displays tempted me as if made of chocolate.

Finally, we lined up a painter. This time, when we visited the paint chip display, my dreams would come true!

The paint names reinforced my fantasies, especially pink hues. Noble Blush, for example, sounded like the color of a drawing room in a Jane Austen novel. Peach Indulgence matched its luscious, ice-creamy name. I will not discuss Romantic Smoke because this is a family-friendly blog.

Still, after 11 years, I was having the time of my life.

“Quit sticking those things in your purse.” My husband tugged on me. “They’ll arrest you for shoplifting.”

“It’s impossible to shoplift paint chips. They’re free,” I said.

What was his problem? I left some for other customers.

Five.

At home, I held up paint chips to walls. Appliances. Toothbrushes.

“What do you think of this?” I asked Hubby for the 3,973rd time.

He clammed up, so I asked the guys who collected our trash. Both were all about Noble Blush.

“Brings a distinctively neutral, yet warm ambiance to a room,” they agreed.

As our makeover date approached, Hubby and I wondered if we would survive the actual painting.

“This wasn’t my idea, remember?” he said.

Give my husband credit. With my writing deadline looming, he removed all our earthly possessions from six rooms, finding space elsewhere. Unfortunately, Hubby’s digging through cabinets and closets uncovered numerous artifacts, including macaroni the same age as the pyramids.

Also, while we expected upheaval, we didn’t anticipate scavenger hunts for each and every possession.

When I griped, Hubby said, “This wasn’t my idea, remember?”

Well, if he’d kept me away from the paint chips …

Halfway through the painting process, I tried to concoct a vaguely nutritious meal. “Where’d you put the bananas?” I called to Hubby.

“In the Ford’s front seat, of course.”

“Of course,” I muttered.

“Or maybe by the second row of boots in my shower.”

Maybe all this was getting to him.

Our pleasant painters worked efficiently and well. Yet, the process seemed endless. Finally, though, my dreams came true.

We thanked the painters who had blessed us with their expertise. I handed out fresh bouquets of gratitude to my helpful husband. “We never could have accomplished this if you hadn’t stepped in.”

He smiled. He preened.

I gave him a big hug. “Okay, start moving everything out again. The carpet guys are coming tomorrow.”

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: How did you survive your last home makeover?

Painting Procrastinator

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With a rare gap in my writing schedule, home improvement projects I nobly postponed in the name of literary accomplishment circle like grinning dragons.

Take, for example, my living room upgrade. Unless I wanted to endure yet another year of the red print chair jousting with peeling, green, flowery wallpaper, I had to don my HGTV armor and sally forth.

New wallpaper? No, the last time Hubby and I attempted that option, we required a Middle East negotiator. Paint presented a simpler alternative.

Right.

Before the Information Age, I limited color research to two minutes in the hardware store, three kids dangling from me as I grabbed fistfuls of paint chips. Then came scrutinizing them against walls for three-second intervals between sibling wars, hamster chases and Sunday shoes flushed down the toilet.

Not a perfect decision-making process, but an oddly efficient one.

However, modern technology blew my system. Viewing 5.43 gazillion websites, I could postpone painting until an archaeologist found the red chair in the flowery green living room 6,000 years hence.

Besides, Hubby delayed progress. Perhaps it is the physician in him who prefers boring, neutral walls, like a hospital’s. Eventually, though, he uttered my favorite words: “Fine. Do what you want.”

Renewing my Internet color search, I discovered Dog’s Ear Pink. Perhaps this presented a bedroom hue with which a pink-loving woman could placate her macho husband? I objected to the delicate pink called Baby’s Bottom. Fresh from caring for my newborn grandson, I knew the person who conceived that name had never changed a diaper in his life. …

But why was I looking at pink? Abandoning the Internet’s “efficiency,” I returned to the hardware store. I would hold real paint chips in my hand, chips I would force my husband at gunpoint to hold up to the wall until I made my decision.

But paint namers struck again. Our living room’s ambience had to feel stylish, yet cozy, the backdrop for family to gather around the piano and the Christmas tree. I didn’t think a shade called Totally Scientific would accomplish that. I liked Blue Dust, but already found sufficient dust in my living room, thank you very much. Water Fountain was the nice pale blue I desired, but the name resurrected grade school images of yellow-stained porcelain and anonymous bubble gum with tooth marks.

Somewhere, a paint namer exists with a simple, yet profound gift for calling the colors as he — and I — see them. Maybe even Light Blue.

But then, I would have to quit procrastinating … and paint.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Does the prospect of home improvement projects exhaust or excite you?