We recently spent three months in Texas visiting my siblings and my mom. This was an exciting time for us as we have not lived near family our entire married life. Depending on your family, this could be either a good or a bad thing. But I was very excited to have time, simple time, to visit, reminisce and yes, get a few projects done. Gene and I spent the first month remodeling the laundry room in our house. Then we built a small herb garden so I could have fresh herbs. But the house we purchased was nearly new and we quickly ran out of projects.
My sister asked if we could come out to her new house and help them build a bench and shoe storage in their garage. We were happy to help. We spent a day working together to design and assemble a corner bench in their garage. Once we were done, we started looking around for other projects. By the time we left, I had left them with a shopping list a mile long, and a “To Do” list that took them a week to accomplish. I’m not sure we will be invited back in the near future.
We then turned our attention to helping my Mom with a few things that were on her honey do list. She had her back door replaced and we offered to paint the trim and touch up the wall color. By “we”, I mean that Mom supervised and kept me entertained while I painted. I loved the time to just chat with here while I worked. Gene, my capable assistant, knows his place when I’m painting and is in charge of making sure I don’t fall off the ladder, and he hands me stuff and sympathizes with me when I complain that the ladder is killing my knees.
As I used a bench scraper and small, artist’s brush to get a precise line between the trim and the wall, Mom mentioned that not everyone would be that detailed and how much she appreciated my help. I proceeded to tell her a story about why I will never be an artist. It goes like this:
When I was in second grade, our teach asked our class to draw a picture of our garden. I decided to draw our home vegetable garden. Shortly after starting my masterpiece, I went up to the teacher and asked for a ruler. My teacher asked my why I needed a ruler, and I explained that I needed it to draw the ground. She walked me to the window and pointed out and said, “Is the ground perfectly straight out there?” I looked out the window and said, “Well the ground in MY garden would certainly be straight!” She handed me the ruler with a shake of here head.
My mom laughed at the story and said she now understood why I used the tools that I did. And now you know why I’m banned from doing projects at my sister’s house!
