It’s raining, it’s melting, the river is at the top of its banks; it must be April.
That pretty much sums up life here this past week. It’s no longer winter – we’ve somehow passed into the change of seasons and now everywhere you look there is something to discover. Melting, disappearing snow will do that to you; it will reveal many things you had forgotten about or misplaced or dropped, and before you knew it, whatever it was, was gone. Buried under a white blanket of cold, lost for awhile, and then you learned you didn’t need whatever it was as much as you thought you did before.
Like the pile of crap by the shed – I’m sure someone meant to do something grand with those black garbage bags filled with stuff – like maybe take them to the curb, perhaps? Or like that red mitten now poking its thumb out from under the ever decreasing bank of snow in the front yard. It’s not mine nor one of either of the other two who live here, but it must have been someone’s, and surely with our winter they must have missed it when it got dropped there or shoveled there and buried? No? I guess not.
Or like the grass. We spend a lot of our summer days thinking about grass – not that kind of grass – the kind you mow, and seed, and weed and tend to like it’s a prized possession, when in reality it’s a natural curse, a time thief that has become a status symbol to those who pay attention to such things, a mistress that demands your time and your money to look her best. The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence in July or August, and that might be an issue for some (if say their grass is more bare in spots or thinning or weedy) but since November none of that has mattered, because at that point we had no grass anymore, it was hidden from sight under a blanket of white, and we learned that grass isn’t as important as we once believed. No, for now it’s all brown, and sickly looking as it reemerges in the yard and those leaves you never got around to raking last October are staring at you, mocking you to return to the yard and finish them off for good, and you wonder what you ever saw in that mistress…
We’re bad that way. We lose focus quickly and are tempted by other more sexy matters instead of the things we need to do and take care of, some bigger, better payout awaits or so we hope, and we imagine the possibilities, the what-ifs, and then before we know it, we’re seduced by the newer object of our affection, and the old gets cast aside to wait for our eventual return. I’m sure that’s how those things got stuck out there under the snow, lost, forgotten, left behind and moved on from.
I helped friends install a new garbage disposer on Sunday, the White Knight of home repair that I am, transforming a normal everyday stainless steel double bowl kitchen sink into a food eating, scrap sucking, waste tasting, high efficiency, home appliance, and in the process rekindled in my friends the fires of domestic renovation, the surest sign of Spring, this side of the Big Orange Store of possibilities…
Before I arrived theirs was a typical family home, imbued with the neutral tranquility of a family set in their ways and at peace with their surroundings. Except for that gnawing temptation that has followed them since they built the house almost 10 years ago, when they declined the inclusion of the kitchen disposal with thoughts of safety for their then-toddling youngster foremost in their minds. Over time though, that gnawing grew louder, and more persistent, until finally over Christmas drinks last December the question was posed, could I, would I, and did they have what it took to make it all work?
I assured them I could, I would, and indeed they did have what it took to make it all work – and after some minor electrical reconfiguration, and some plumbing adjustments, and a few hours of an early Sunday afternoon – I left my friends with a shiny new ‘toy’ in the kitchen, and a husband who used to wash most of the dishes as a matter of domestic chore balance, now eager to throw everything he can into his much anticipated, long awaited, 1 HP mini wood chipper strapped to the underside of that sink. They won’t have nearly as much waste from the kitchen making its way to the curb on trash day, but the trade off might be the increased water bill as he continues to delight in finding things to shred and feed into the whirling hopper of vegetable death.
Of course, with that home improvement seduction behind them, and newly awed by the relative ease of the installation, their minds began to wander the house, inspired with the lust of new and exciting finishes and surfaces, dreams of bigger and brighter and better things, or upgrades and redos, and maybes, and what abouts… and then they asked about the backsplash.
Like that red mitten buried under the snow for so long in the front yard, it went unnoticed, forgotten, hidden in plain sight. But now, with the newness of Spring, and the realization that anything is indeed possible, perhaps it is time to address it. I’ll keep you posted on their progress.
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