If you know me, you know that during the winter months, I dive in and invest the lion’s share of my time and energy in teaching. My wife and I have discovered that you simply can’t achieve optimal student outcomes unless you approach their education with a sense of urgency.
That means time has been pinched for performing projects on our new home. I haven’t done as much as I wanted to do in my first year here, but there are a few months left. Here are a few odd tasks already checked off the list.
When we first moved into our new space, we prioritized a few areas of furniture needs. As economically as possible, we chose a few quality pieces. Economically may be translated as “assembly required.” After many hours of slow, deliberate work, we have a couple of nice desks and a highboy.
One thing that I hate to do is put holes in the walls, and one thing that girls want is lots of stuff on the walls. So, after finding out where she wanted things (actually that was not difficult, I just listened to her showing the house to visitors and telling them where everything will go), I surprised her by hanging some stuff, including her picture calendar, a kitchen towel holder, her ship’s wheel clock (one of the first presents I got for her when we were dating), and the lighthouse key holder.
What a winter to be initiated into the Society of Driveway Shovelers! Three major snows are one thing, but when the sky dumps over 22 inches that I have to remove in strata like an archeological site, that’s what I call a “baptism by fire.” I got everything off in plenty of time to go back to school after the snow days.
Flash forward to Spring, and I’m mounting a “Topsy Turvy” tomato growing contraption on my deck, along with a rain gauge. Getting a working mower was a different problem, as I invested many days working on two candidates with no luck. For my first mowing of the lawn, I had to borrow a mower from a friend.
Most psychologists agree that mowing your lawn is excellent therapy for the troubled mind. Okay, I’m not sure if that’s a universally true statement, but it sure fits for me (my apologies to Linus VanPelt). It’s hot now, 90 degree days, so I don’t mow the whole yard, front, back, and sides in one sitting, but I still find a certain catharsis in the activity.