I have completely rediscovered my home. The end result of being home so much is that I have fallen in love with the house—managing it, caring for it, and being in it. And since I am stuck here so much I’ve decided to make an art form out of being here. Everything that I do, whether it is cleaning or working or being with my family, I am going to do with as much grace, skill, attentiveness, spirit and playfulness as I can muster.
It is more than just deciding to make the best of things. And you could argue that I don’t have much choice. But I do. I have two choices: be constantly stressed out with the unending search, self-promotion, and all-too frequent rejection that goes with job hunting (and the associated worry that goes with it), or make it a process that is in some way gratifying, fulfilling, and evolving in and of itself. I chose door #2. Learning about and appreciating my house was a side benefit. It has happened slowly, and it started with painting.
Three years ago it was clear that our house needed a new coat of paint. What made that clear was not so much that the old paint was peeling, although it definitely was in some places. It was more about finding that the wood was rotting as a result of moisture getting behind the siding. The house is 40 years old, and still has the original rough-cut wood siding. It looks great, but hides a nasty secret: once it gets wet behind there, it disintegrates.
We have a little deck outside of what is now an enclosed porch, and it was completely rotten when we bought the house 5 years ago. After another two years of pretending that the deck was fine and hoping to God that no old person would try to use the railing that was hanging on by a single nail, we had it re-built. In the process, the workmen found that the wall on that side of the porch was completely rotten. One guy pulled huge sections off that crumbled in his hand.
He thought it was funny. Imagining the entire house was rotting just behind those walls, I did not. I immediately decided I would paint the house. Well, it was actually after we got two quotes that were in the neighborhood of $5000. Our house isn’t that big, and we would pay less than a fifth of that for the paint and materials needed. So I got all the supplies, did all the priming’ and prepping’, and started in.
It was May, and it’s absolutely beautiful at that time of year here in Minnesota. While the task seemed daunting, once I got started I found that I liked it more and more. This is where I got to know the house a little better each day, and began to appreciate all its nooks and crannies, where it was well-built, where they had cut corners, and just how important this structure is to our family, or any family. I began to fall in love with it, starting at the top…
There was a phase of the painting that required me to go on the roof, either because I had reached a place that was too high for my ladder, or just because it was simpler and quicker to do it from there. The painting that needed to be done from the roof took about two weeks, and I got really good at lying down, hanging over the edge, grabbing on with one arm, and working with the other arm to paint the soffits or a part of the house that extended in such a way that it demanded that I be in this position.
Overlooking the fact that this position was ridiculously dangerous, I started to really enjoy it up there. The view, the breeze that was almost always present and just working so much higher in the air than I would normally be all created this wonderful sensation that I started to look forward to. Now, some parts were definitely hard to paint, and it’s not like I was just sitting comfortably and admiring the view all the time.
But I did do that at several points. And then I got my daughter to join me. Alex was about 8 years old, and one day she asked if she could come up with me. I’m sure she noticed how much fun I was having and wanted to be as cool as me. (That phase lasted about a week.) And so, much to her mother’s chagrin, I brought her carefully up the ladder and showed her how to step around it at the top.
I always used the garage to get onto the main part of the roof because it was the lowest part of the house, and it was only about 10 feet from the ground at the gutter. We would then walk across the garage and climb up onto the house’s roof, and walk to the very peak.
Sitting down in the shade near the chimney we would just talk, and look around, and yell at people, and watch them while they were thinking no one was looking at them. And it was really, really fun. I still remember it very fondly, because this unique kind of quality time with my daughter was a bonus that I never expected. Plus, it was beautiful up there!
It reminded me of being in a tree house as a kid, and I think that was some of the attraction for Alex, too. Seeing what the trees were like much higher up than normal… being close to nests and surprised birds… it was all wonderful. She came up with me at least 5 times. Even now, if I have to clean the gutters or something, she’ll still go up with me.
Excerpted from the book Laid Off and Crazy Happy.
This excerpt has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Download this book on Boostlane:
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