REDUCED « Robin Writes

We were getting ready to go to our first client’s home for the day. The TV was on and our youngest was playing on the bedroom floor. The older kids were at school.

My husband called out, “Hey, what’s going on? Looks like a plane just hit a building in New York!”

I came out of the bathroom just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

We stood there, staring, trying to make sense of it. For almost an hour.

We wondered if we should pick up the kids from school; we wondered if we should go to work.

I called our client and asked if we should come—she said sure, why not? I couldn’t tell her.

We managed to gather our supplies and the three-year-old and left the house. By the time we arrived at the client’s house, she was glued to the TV.

Halfway through the job, we left. We couldn’t stay. She barely noticed.

We spent the next week, probably, watching TV and wondering what to do, if anything. We wondered what it all meant. What would happen next. We called friends who flew, making sure they were safe.

My mother was stuck in France. No flights.

Every year on this date, things are tense. Here, I mean. At home. Not just across the USA. It’s an overall feeling of doom, a sense of waiting and watching. And remembering.

Even fourteen years later.

Okay, let me clarify: a LOT of painting sucks. That’s what I did last weekend. A LOT.

The plan (there’s that word again!) was to finish the living room side of the house so we could “move” into it for the time being, and then work on the bedroom side.

Good plan. As always, taking longer than expected . . .

Since we picked up the paint for the bedroom side and the doors—same color, one interior, one exterior—it was that time. And, since the bedroom side wasn’t ready, the doors were on the list.

Four doors. One solid day of painting.

Three of the doors apparently were, at one time, yellow. At least the trim around the glass was yellow; you could still sort of see that. A little.

The fourth door was gunmetal gray, except for the trim. And filthy, in the stained kind of way.

Now, normally, painting dark over light is relatively easy; the dark covers really well. Not this time.

I’d brush it on, I’d see yellow; I’d add more paint, I’d see yellow.

I thought my eyes were going kaput.

Yellow, yellow, yellow.

It took three coats on each door, plus some more touch-ups. And I’m betting that when I go back down to the farm and take a look, there will be MORE SPOTS TO PAINT.

And lest you think that being “in good shape” means you’ll be fine after a full day of painting, allow me to correct you with two words:

Different muscles.

My right arm fared the best, since I use it the most anyway, but I thought the left one was going to fall off the next day. Yes, I paint with both. I’m ambidextrous, to a point. And while, yes, I’m pretty sloppy, there’s no real difference as to which hand I’m using.

No, I don’t tape. It takes extra time and I’ve discovered that it never seems to work the way the commercials show—my brush will inevitably slip under that tape. Tarps? Oh, please! They don’t stay put and, if I’m going to dribble, it’s NEVER where the tarp is lying. NEVER.

So I’d much rather take time afterwards to wipe up the mess. Or scrub. Or paint over it.

My husband, bless his heart, spent his weekend putting up drywall on the new walls.

So I’d have more to paint.

Anyway, this coming weekend is Labor Day Weekend—ha, “labor,” get it? But we won’t be doing much in the way of construction. We plan to go to the river, canoe in the pond, barbeque, go to the rodeo, and have some target practice.

And maybe put up a zip line. Maybe.