Solitary, Hard Labor and a Cold Beer

/ wvfurandroot / 8 Comments

La Cerveza Mas Fina

I’m not much of a beer drinker – never was – not even when The Ex and I were home-brewing. I do enjoy a beer now and again and I particularly enjoy a nice bock. If I’m in the mood, Guinness is good. When in London, I fell in love with dogbolter.

Tonight, it’s Corona Extra. The label tells me it is la cerveza mas fina. Perhaps. Personally, I think Negra Modelo es la cerveza mas fina. But I’m not going to quibble when Corona is the only beer in the house.

There’s nothing like hard labor to bring on the desire for a beer.

Normally, wine is my drug of choice. And tonight, while painting and planning the celebratory beer, I puzzled over why it is that collapsing in a chair, grungy and exhausted after hard labor, my first thought is to grab a beer and not a nice malbec. It’s a testament to my normal slothdom that the only beer in the house is two bottles of Corona left by a dear friend following my birthday bacchanal. I don’t collapse grungy and exhausted from hard labor nearly enough.

People don’t crawl out from underneath a car after an oil change and grab a pinot grigio. Nope. Beer is for manual labor. [If I tell the story about taking apart the carburetor, washing it in Joy dishwashing liquid and reassembling it while sipping a fine merlot, I will contradict myself so that story will have to wait.] Cleaning out the gutters doesn’t provoke a German white or a cheeky sauvignon blanc. Nor does housecleaning, dog bathing, raking, or car washing. Beer is to manual labor what champagne is to New Year’s Eve.

While embroiled in the bowels of home maintenance, the evening has also been one of comfortable solitude.

Just about this time of year, five years ago, I became the only human living in this house. Having always been one who required more than the average amounts of alone time, the specter of living alone was a friendly ghost. I craved solitude. And quiet. Dear God, I needed quiet. My life was noisy and frenzied and stressful. Solitude sounded like a wonderful thing.

I have a decent stereo system, but I don’t believe in music as background noise. If I’m going to listen to music, I’m going to sit and intently listen to music. I do, however, tend to listen to music while attending to mindless tasks – tasks like painting. Tonight, though, I wanted the quiet. I painted and listened, intently, to the quiet. I heard the roller’s slight squeak as the paint spread over the wall and I heard the squeak of the floorboards. They were nice sounds.

Even after 5 years, I enjoy the quiet and I enjoy the solitude. My life is still noisy and frenzied and stressful, but the house is as calm and quiet as I choose to make it. Right now the house is quiet and the tapping of the computer keys sounds especially loud. There’s a train off in the distance and its faint noise highlights the quiet. It’s nice. I’m a fan of quiet (and trains).

The beer is about gone and I should go to bed – I’m tired, but I’m loathe to go. I’m enjoying my thoughts and the quiet as well as feeling virtuous that I’ve finally applied a fair amount of paint to the study walls. There’s something to be said for solitary, hard labor and a cold beer.

I’m an old woman. . .

/ wvfurandroot / 14 Comments

I’m a feisty one, I am.

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I may have mentioned a time or two that I hate painting.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I’m an old woman.

When I was 30 or so, I had a sudden onset of back spasms. Doing the Granny Clampett walk, I waddled my way over to the chiropractor’s office. We’d never met before and he walked into the exam room and looked at me. Then he looked at my x-rays. Then he looked at me again. Finally, he said, “You have a lovely spine for a 70-year-old woman.”

My misspent youth was not kind to my back.

Between yoga and outright refusal to be one of those whiny-assed people who complains about their back all the time (preferring, of course, to whine about other things), I refused to accept his or the neurosurgeon’s diagnosis and have lived reasonably well without back surgery or a wheelchair.

Over the years, I’ve learned how to do things in such a way as to accommodate the limitations of my back. (I was, hands down, the strangest rock climber you’ve ever seen.) I have not found a way to minimize the physical agony of painting.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Lord’av’mercy, I hate painting.

It goes something like this:

I decide to paint.

I sit and ponder the painting.

I get up and gather a few supplies.

I repeat steps 2 and 3, sometimes for weeks.

I spackle.

Sit and rest.

(Rinse and repeat)

I sand. . .sit and rest.

I bite the bullet and get the paint out.

I repeat step 2 for hours.

I begin painting.

I paint 5 minutes, rest 40.

Eventually, 5 minutes at a time, I get the painting done. But my back curses at me the entire time and, in turn, I curse back. It’s rough having an old woman’s spine. It also sounds like a biker bar in here, what with all the cursing.

Instrument of Torture

It’s the ladder work that gets to me. That and the spots near the floor. And around windows. Let’s not forget the bits at eye level.

But ceilings. MY GODDESS I HATE PAINTING CEILINGS.

After two weekends of painting prep, I got the paint out yesterday. It took all flippin day to do about 20 minutes worth of ceiling painting. Tonight, I girded my loins, told my back to shut up, and set to. Three hours later, I have one coat of primer on the ceiling. I’m figuring on two coats of primer and two coats of color. It’ll be years before I’m done.

And since I’m now 50, I’m guessing that means my back is 90 – not too many 90-year-old women up to painting their study. I’m right proud of my progress.