matching tracksuits

We still have pictures a hang, a television to buy, and a few final touches, but the living room, by and large, is done.

0.8, f/4.5, 60 mm, flash on slow sync

Projects have a way of growing on me. I imagine a particular project taking a given amount of time, effort, and resources, and it never turns out that way.

“I’m going to use the orbital brush cleaner to get the kitchen floor sparkling and then put a couple of coats of protective finish on it,” I say before a day off. “It shouldn’t take me more than three hours.” In reality, I’m off by 66%: it takes me five hours.

“I’m going to replace the front sillcock. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, maximum.” Lunch time comes and I’m still wrestling with it.

I look into the future at projects K and I hope to complete: remodel rebuild the kitchen; remodel the master bathroom; landscape the back yard. These are not minor endeavors. These are things that I anticipate taking weeks, which means they will take months.

The problem is, once I get started, I don’t want to cut corners. At least that’s what I tell myself: I end up doing that anyway, but it makes me grit my teeth to think about it, and I know there’s more to the extended projects than my perfectionism.

It all comes down to inexperience. Except for plumbing, no project intimidates me, but I know my lack of experience will make the job three times as long as it should require. Experience has taught me that, for I used to think my home improvement inexperience would double the time.

Our living room is turning into one such project. “We’ll just pull out the furniture, repaint the walls, polish the floor, and put the new furniture back in.” If only it were that simple.

Another Saturday completed: we repainted the living room in preparation for a complete redecoration.

First and second coats and we’re pretty much done. I admit I’ll miss the yellow.

K felt it was too bright; I loved the way it made the room open.

Between coats, I mowed and raked some leaves. It was not warm enough to break a sweat, and so it almost didn’t even feel like work. But by most definitions, it was.

In another life, twenty-five to thirty years ago, my Saturdays were supposed to be days of reverence and quiet rest. Saturday is, of course, the seventh day; Jews and a few groups of Christians believe it is the sabbath, a time of rest. There’s something appealing about that to me, even today.

Still, in the intervening years, my associations with and expectations of a good Saturday have literally turned 180 degrees. Just as I couldn’t imagine mowing then, I can’t imagine not spending Saturdays working now.

It makes me wonder what else might flip-flop in my life, and what else has changed without me yet truly noticing.

Four Saturdays of work. A couple of pros would have the backs and arms to get it all done in one day. We took somewhat longer.

Part of it was inexperience. Having never dug up and recreated a planter, we had no idea how long it would take; we certainly didn’t know how much effort it would require.

Although the vision was very amorphous, we somehow knew what it would look like, though.

Now, instead of five boxwoods we have:

• two Loropetalum chinense,
• two Gardenia brighamii,
• three Rhaphiolepis indica,
• three Rhynchospermum jasminoides,
• a line of alternating Tradescantia pallida and Senecio cineraria,
• a small patch of Viola tricolor hortensis.

Who am I kidding? I can barely remember the plants’ common names, let alone the Latin.

The Perpetual Motion machine does exist: it is mischievously named “the house”.

When we moved in, the front looked like this:

June 30, 2007

Grass that was fried; shrubs that were ignored.

June 30, 2007

A general feeling of neglect.

A clogged sewer line a year ago finally prompted us to pull out the dying boxwoods; embarrassment at having the worst-looking lawn in the neighborhood prompted us to emergency measures with our yard.

Now, our yard is well on its way to becoming the envy of all who drive by.

The boxwoods are gone, roots and all.

As is my back.

The replacement bushes are still sitting in a nursery somewhere: that’s Wednesday afternoon’s project. In the meantime, the bed sits empty.

The upshot of all of this: the cat has a new place to nap.

Though not in in Blackburn, Lancashire. Rather, they’re in our yard, now.

Weeding, aeration, leveling, seeding, fertilizing — it’s been a long day.

L and Bida, our cat, have an uneasy relationship. Or maybe it’s a love-hate relationship: L loves, Bida hates.

That might be taking it a bit too far. When Bida is in the mood, a scratch under the neck will bring a quiet purr no matter who’s doing the scratching. Yet sensing that mood is difficult for adults; it’s all but impossible for L. And so, in the name of love, L simply tortures the cat most of the time.

“I’m helping Bida. She’s sick.”

The trouble is, her “love” often is not affectionate; her “help” doesn’t assist in anyway whatsoever. L’s simply trying out language and ideas she hears and sees all around her without fully understanding what it means (in the case of “help”) or how to show it (in the case of “love”). The result: a frustrated cat and a scratched little Girl.

At the same time, it’s incredible the patience Bida can sometimes show our budding veterinarian. She has figured out, I think, that if she waits just a moment, K or I will come and rescue her. And if push comes to shove (and L, in her rambunctiousness, can push and shove sometime), Bida knows how to use her claws. And one would think that two or three painful, deep scratches would teach L to keep her distance, but to date, it hasn’t.

So K and I try to save the two smallest members of our household from each other on a regular basis.

I’m not sure why cats feel they must lovingly share their kill with their owners, but I should focus on the “lovingly share” part and appreciate the generosity. When that sharing involves bringing the kill through the cat door, it’s a little more difficult to focus on the “lovingly share” part. But when that “kill” is not yet dead and scampers away as soon as it’s limp, dangling paws hit the floor, the apprecation is only a vague, theoretical possibility.

We had chipmunks in the basement on a regular basis for a couple of weeks. The big question: where do they live while they’re stuck down there?

During the workshop-redesign-and-rebuild-preparatory cleanup yesterday, the answer was made manifest: in the carpet padding we’d stored under the work bench.

We have a large hunter that moves through the forested area behind our house with increasing regularity. Actually, there are a couple of them — certainly mates. I’ve tried several times to get pictures of our guests, but to no avail. Yesterday, I finally got a shot.

These birds sail among the trees almost effortlessly, and their cry immediately confirms the identity: hawks. But they never came close enough or stayed long enough to get a good picture.

Until today.

She (I think it’s a she — but my ornithology skills are not what they used to be) landed on our neighbors’ fence and I managed to creep close enough to get a decent shot. Soon enough, she flew away,

but only to another part of the fence. Nearer and nearer — shocked at how close I was getting. The other day, we saw one of them land in our back yard; it appeared to have a limp. “Maybe that is the hurt one,” K said as I moved ever close.

To be able to get a shot like this of a wild bird — quite a rush.

She flew away just as I began to wax philosophical with my silly thoughts,

gliding only a few feet above the ground, telling me the session was over.

But what kind of bird?

A quick check in our National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds–Eastern Region gives some hints, but it’s not until we ask the Internet that we get any kind of confirmation: a Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis), and I’m fairly sure it’s a a juvenile.

Yet we’re not convinced. Any ideas?