You Made Yer Bed, Now Lay In It
I know you’re probably sick unto death of hearing me ramble on about my little projects. Home improvement, self-improvement, who out there cares and why should they? The stuff I do, everybody used to. At least before TV and computers made my world boring and anachronistic. Sure it’s nice to pretend I live up some holler a stone’s throw from the 19th Century or that someday they’ll name my crappy pond Walden Too. Truth is, that pond will maybe hold a footprint of mine in its mud, a future fossil drying up and of interest only to archeologists back to explore the planet. Hominid South Endosaur, bipedal, semi-upright, omnivorous, small brain, tool user from the Menopausal Era before the global warming extinctions.
They won’t find much of us, I’m betting. They’ll make bad guesses from my middens before the mizzus made dump runs mandatory when she arrived on the scene. I don’t even want to tell you what I buried back then, but let’s just say you piece together as much of my civilization as the folks who dig through the Jamestown dumps in the Virginia colonies. I find artifacts myself from prior pioneers. Hell, my shack is an artifact, built over 100 years ago. Up the ravine we’ve found 17 brass beds, an old Studebaker, empty liquor bottles, a copper washing machine tub, assorted glassware, coffee pots, zinc canning jar lids, you name it, it’s out there. I buried a cast iron wood/electric Monarch stove too heavy for me to lift, but okay to roll into a hastily dug grave.
So I was gonna tell you about making a bed this week. I planed rough cut madrona, designed a headboard and a footboard, ripped the wood but saved the ones with bark, assembled them, finished it and hauled it up to the house we just bought next door. You’re thinking, Big Deal, so what, shut up already. You can buy a bed in Goodwill. Or get a job and go buy a nice bedstead downtown at the furniture store. Who in holy hell makes a damn bed anyway?
My father-in-law, visiting a couple months before I finished the new house I’d spent one and three quarter years building already, found me making homemade doors. I was on Door #2 or so with 9 total to build. He said I could buy those at the hardware store and maybe move into the new house before me and his daughter died of old age waiting to finish building it. He had a good point, I guess.
But I’m not much for advice, especially when I’m knee deep already in a project. I finished 7 more doors, hung them and moved on to artsy fartsy floor tiling, stained glass transoms, maple floors, window casements and slate in the entryways and the hallways downstairs. Tedious work a lot of it. We did manage to move in before our demise, I’m happy to report. Course now I’m building an oak bed to replace our brass one. I guess it’s always going to be a race to the finish, one I’ll eventually lose. Like they say, you made your bed, now lay in it. I’m trying…..
Hits: 138
Ain’t it the truth?
It seems as soon as one project is completed, two more have managed to slip on to the list.
I myself have whittled away for a solution to this seemingly endless situation within the all to finite human condition. But no matter how you carve it, chisel it, or slice it, the needless worry only gets a man closer to six feet under.
When that time does arrive however, and if I have a plot with a headstone, somewhere down the page on my to do list I’ve penciled in my epitaph;
“Thank God. I’ve finally finished something.”