Real Life

Ever since everybody went back to college, I've been spending the dedicated portions of my free time doing "real life" stuff, which has become the distinguishing mark of this period of time. I was originally planning on buckling down with music stuff after the summer and putting an album out there for people to listen to, but Dad had some home projects, and it was absolutely the right thing to do to help.

Coming out of summer, after my long and glorious tour of Akron, Cleveland and Grove City, Dad started tearing apart the upstairs bathroom to replace the floor tiles, and I replaced the kitchen sink. Once the new floor was in, I took up the job of painting the bathroom walls. Which got extended to include the ceiling, and lengthened by the difficulty of fully covering the original light blue color (not so "light" after all). In the midst of this, Dad was socked with buying a new van after ours got totalled by somebody tearing up the hill and smashing into it. He was also dealing with insurance people to look at the damage to our property: torn up driveway, demolished mailbox, and two mashed up tree trunks. He and Mom went down to West Virginia overnight to pick up our new minivan (White Dodge Grand Caravan, sunroof, 3.8 V6, leather seats, DVD player... pretty nice!), and despite taking an entire week off of work, he barely touched the house plans, which was his original goal for that week.

Now I'm starting on the trim for the bathroom (which looks nice, btw), the pressure's on for finishing the house drawings, and the water filter for the kitchen sink is messed up. Oh, and the sunroof on the new van is busted too. And for me, the software for my recording interfaces is shot to hell, and after a night of intense misery, I have nothing but an indeterminite period of difficulty awaiting me when I try again to fix it.

Although at this moment we're all feeling pressed down by all this stuff that keeps breaking, in general this has been a good time for me of doing real things. Something just clicked when Dad started laying out all these projects, and my mindset has been that this is what I'll do, and I'll get things done. It's satisfying to get experience and learn how to do house stuff, but above everything else, it is very gratifying to be able to help Dad in a way that's meaningful to him. To take these things off his back so he doesn't have to worry about them is a valuable contribution, and it makes me happy that I'm able to do that. It's something a 24-year-old son living at home ought to do for his father. So I'll do everything I can, and I'll come out a little more prepared for taking care of my own home, and Dad will come out with more things fixed than he would have been able to do himself.

Tomorrow I head to Lowes to scope out options for the bathroom trim. Hopefully they have good wood in stock.

Hm... there's a Chick-Fil-A at the Waterfront too... :-)

--JPB