Productivity... Or, When We Were Six

Saturday was a work day for D and me. Of the many jobs we have still to do, repainting the windows in the living room and dining room was one. Here is a close-up of them before the paint job. I realize that that's only one spot, but trust me - they looked like that pretty much everywhere. We're replacing most of them, but the big picture window is too expensive to fix right now. Something else had to be done.

Saturday morning was beautiful, and I woke up feeling ambitious. The Terminix guy was coming to do a free termite inspection on our house (which no, we hadn't had done, and which, to my surprise, turned into a sales pitch and wasted a good hour of our morning), but after that, we were free. I knew D would probably want to disappear into his music room in the basement, so I decided it was time to tackle those windows. So I donned my painting jeans, grabbed a paint brush, and got to work.

But not really. First I ran to the hardware store to get more sandpaper. Then I sanded the windows down again. Then they had to be cleaned. After that I realized I hadn't pulled out the drop cloths, so I got those. Then I taped up the windows (one million little panes inside that picture window.... arrrgh). Then I began to paint.

During this time D ran out to borrow a drill from our friend J. He came home with an Atari and eight "new" video games.

After proudly displaying his treasures, he went down to work in his music room, and I kept painting.

D was downstairs for a long time. I heard lots of hammering from the basement which, although curious, I took as a good sign. And I (very uncharacteristically) was extremely organized and methodical as I painted. In fact, there was one moment when I was standing at the front window, paintbrush in hand, that was particularly sweet. The sun was shining in, I was listening to Phish's Waste, and standing there covered in paint, painstakingly brushing over one of the crossbeams in a pane of glass, I was absolutely, utterly content. I was exactly where I wanted to be.

Just as I was finishing up the last bits of the trim on the dining room window, D burst upstairs. "Hey hey hey hey hey, guess what?"

"What?" I replied.

"I built a fort! Come see!" I put the last touches on the window and followed him down the stairs. "Ta-dah!" he sang as I walked in. And there it was.

"Will you suffocate in there? Can you see?" I asked. "Don't burn the house down if you put in a light." Such loving support I give!

All right. So I didn't immediately show the appropriate level of excitement at D's accomplishment. But really, it's brilliant. The "fort" as it has officially been coined, is really sturdy. And it blocks sounds. Which means we don't have to spend hundreds of dollars buying insulation or soundproofing material, and it means D can get back to work on music stuff, which is good, because his guitarist/producer, S, seems to be kicking things into high gear.

So now he's got his computer, his CDs, Space Invaders, and a fort in that basement. If he goes downstairs today I might never see him again.