Pretty Little Rough Patches: pegboard

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Inside and Outside

Temperatures reached 88°F here yesterday, and since I had started my walk too late in the afternoon, I managed just three miles in the blazing sun before feeling too sick and shivery to continue. (I passed at least three women pushing babies in strollers and more than a few runners, though, so I have to wonder--as I always do when the tempeatures are this high--if I'm just not sturdy stock. Babies! Runners! In what felt like 90+° heat! Goodness.) After returning here for a rest in the air conditioning with an iced tea, I felt good enough to head out for The Walk: Part II , but by then, it was almost time for Mike to get home from work and I still had to run out for groceries for our supper, so three miles my tally remained. The days have been glorious this past week, and the nights have been windy with rumbling thunder and lightning like flashbulbs that we see even with closed eyes while we try to fall asleep. (I just remembered Eddie Rabbitt's 1980s hit "I Love a Rainy Night" and looked it up online only to learn that he died on my birthday back in 1998. I don't remember hearing about that at all. Cheers on yet another stormy night this week to Mr. Rabbitt.) One of this week's walks included the seeking and finding of one of the country's only remaining wood-bricked streets. If one of the sweet old brick homes on this little cul-de-sac were available and I had the means to make it happen, I'd be packing moving boxes right now, let me tell you. It's a charming spot in the city, and examining the wooden blocks that make up its street has been one of the quiet pleasures of this week.

I have been deliberately and most-obviously cutting back on the time I spend online--you all are in my thoughts and prayers even if I'm not in your comment boxes and email inboxes lately ♥--and recalibrating how I spend my days so that there is a better balance of fresh air and miles walked and quiet time (reading, napping, writing, puttering around the apartment, etc.) and social time. Both my personality and my paid work always find me somehow taking care of others, and I am feeling healthier and more content now that I've made taking care of myself more of a priority this spring. Laundry-doing, email-and-comment-sending, and letter-writing have temporarily fallen by the wayside as I get into new routines and better habits in other areas. As I've said before, this self-nurturing bit seems to be one of my most-revisited life lessons, and although it's now taken me almost my entire first forty years to figure it out, at least I'm figuring it out. :) I had the sweetest dream a few weeks ago that I decided to drive down to my grandparents' house for a surprise visit. Grandma and I greeted and hugged each other so joyfully, it still makes me smile. "Oh! I should do this more often!" I squealed when I realized how happy this impromptu visit was making us. "I should have been doing this all along!" While she and I were catching up with each other in the kitchen, I looked out the window and saw Papa building a giant bee box in their side yard. (He was a beekeeper [in real life].) That was really all there was to the dream, but the feeling of it and my gratitude for it have remained with me almost a month later, both because it was a rare happy dream of my grandparents and because it gave me a taste of the peace and nurturing I've been cultivating here, one steamy mile and one steamy bowl of oatmeal at a time.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

The Pink Pegboard Project

Like Mike and I now, my grandparents had little kitchen storage space. The pegboard they kept above their kitchen sink was the first I'd ever seen, and I was always fascinated by it as a kid. They keep their bottle opener and spatula on their wall?! When we're done washing and drying these big spoons, we're just going to hang them on the wall?! Decades--and more than a few small apartments--later, I agree with Papa and Grandma that vertical storage is the way to go. Until I finished this project Friday afternoon, Mike and I had to paw through two green bins on top of our fridge every time we needed a utensil, so this is one more step toward a happier Mike and Val--well, I care way more than he does, but how could it not make him happier!--and a more organized apartment. This turned out exactly as I'd envisioned.

I wish, as I often do after finishing projects like this, that I'd taken a true "before" picture. The pegboard is a small piece of the pegboard from my parents' garage-wall, and the frame is actually a picture frame I found at Goodwill years ago that used to hold a piece of canvas artwork. When Mike and I made the trip to my parents' house for our first anniversary last year, I dug the frame out of my former bedroom's closet and brought it back with us, figuring I could use the frame for something. At some point, it occured to me that the "something" I needed most was more storage space, so the pegboard idea for it was born.

I cut away the canvas artwork last winter, ripped out all the many staples with pliers some time later, and asked my dad for a piece of 19.5"-square pegboard for my birthday. (My wish lists are usually this simple, yes. "What do you want for Christmas?" my parents and brothers will ask me and then quickly add, "And don't say 'Postage stamps and glue!'") My dad gave me the pegboard and a few starter-hooks when we came home for a visit in April. I used a birthday gift card from my younger brother to buy a few more hooks.

Soap and water, wood glue, Super Glue, hammer and nails, and who-knows-how-many coats of green and (first paler pink and then bolder) bubblegum pink acrylic paint and protective gloss varnish later, I finished getting the pegboard together on Friday.

And now for us, as it was for Papa and Grandma, finding what we need in our little kitchen is as easy as reaching for its spot on the wall. "Life is too complicated not to be orderly," as Martha Stewart says, and I agree. Every time I walk into our kitchen now, I feel a wave of contentment come over me. ♥