Finding Projects in Quarantine
I need projects or I go into “sloth” mode. Unfortunately, I’m not good at amusing myself, and I’m not Suzy Homemaker; I don’t bake Christmas (or any other kind) of cookies, because I’d eat them, I don’t cook, so I can’t try out new recipes, and a lot of home projects include materials and tools which require monetary outlay, which I have not.
However, sometimes serendipitous things pop up, and I get a project handed to me. Such was my birthday gift from my children: the complete, 24-volume set of the works of Agatha Christie. (My, she was prolific.) That might seem to be a strange birthday gift for some people, but I am an English major and love to read and love mysteries, so the gift was well thought out and very sweet.
Unfortunately, I had absolutely NO space on my bookshelves to put the complete, 24-volume set of Agatha Christie. They are beautifully bound and deserve a shelf or two of their own, so I had to buy a new bookshelf. There are many lovely bookshelves for sale, but when funds are low, choices are limited, so I ended up getting a bookshelf that did not just require “some” assembly. It came as boards and dowels and screws and directions. Directions are wonderful, if you are a person with a sense of direction. When I was on my own, I learned how to put things together, not always exactly right, but close enough. This bookshelf project was challenging, but somewhere I got a burst of energy and decided I could at least try. My husband was more than willing to do it for me, but I wanted to try, and he was watching football, so I started it. With several breaks, I got the basic frame put together, and I was quite proud of myself.
My husband finished it the next morning, before I got up or football started. I had put two of the boards in backwards, which kept the outer shelves from being able to be screwed and doweled on both sides — not a big problem unless we wanted to put heavy books on them. So much for Agatha. My next project is to clean off two shelves on the big bookshelves for her and put one of my other collections of paperbacks (Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plums or Mary Balogh’s many novels) on the “light books only” shelves. Then I can put my photo albums (do people still have those anymore?) in the middle, “heavy books allowed” shelves, and it looks good. We have a grocery bag full of books to be donated to somewhere when they won’t have to be sanitized first. Some day.
My big project today, because it was a beautiful, sunny warm day was to give all three dogs baths. This counts as my exercise for that day, because my dogs, who weigh 10, 20, and 25 pounds, have different attitudes towards baths. Pippa, the smallest, doesn’t mind baths, and she is content to get hosed down and scrubbed. It’s when I start to rinse her off that the trouble begins. I try to make sure the dogs are thoroughly rinsed, so they don’t get itchy from soap left on their bodies. None of the dogs, but Pippa especially, understands the importance of that step. Once the nice scratching with the scrubbing is over, they want out. Rinsing, shiminsing, they say. We’re done. I hold their collars to keep them under the water, but once I have them rinsed to my satisfaction, I reach for the towel I have right next to me and try to catch them in it as they jump out of the bathtub. I rub them down, wrap them in the towel, and head for the nearest outside door, trying to get there before they shake themselves. Sometimes I win; sometimes they win. Either way, I’m as wet as they are.
Then they run outside happily, shake all over the deck, and go find something disgusting to roll in so they can smell like dogs again. Heaven forbid they smell clean for more than a few minutes. The oldest dog, Bailey, is a West Highland terrier. West Highland terriers are supposed to be white. When we lived up North, he preferred to be brown, the color of the ground. Now we live in the Sand Hills of North Carolina. He doesn’t change color that much, but he feels pretty gritty.
So far during our confinement, we have ripped out all the carpeting in the house and replaced it with stick and peel tile; put up a fence all around the yard, which includes a wooded area with possibly poisonous snakes in it, so we did that part very carefully; and stained the decks with stain we added sparkle to, so in the sunshine or moonshine, they look like the glisten of new-fallen snow. I get the pleasure without the pain of temperatures so low I fear loss of digits.
Now the budget is maxed, and the projects will remain small, unless I get a Christmas present that requires another project. The only really free projects are cleaning, and after a few loads of laundry or vacuuming and mopping the floors, the thrill is gone. I could dust, but I have a religious problem with dusting. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” means some of the dust could be relatives, and I don’t want to disturb them. I feel the same way about raking: God put the leaves there, and I don’t want to mess with His plan.
When I was teaching, I could go from stressed to bored in ten minutes flat. Classes would end for intersession, I’d have a mountain of essays to grade and grades to run and then the fight to get the grades in on the computer. I’d finish the last section, go “Rah!” and immediately be bored, because I had nothing to do. Now every day is like that. Maybe I can wash the windows…again.
