![\"deckflasha.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/archives\/home\/maine\/www\/mt\/archives\/deckflasha.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI don’t know that I’ll know how to just BE in the room, if and when it is judged to be done (which will have to be by more objective observers). It has become so much The Project for me, such that its needing doing now seems sufficient reason just for its being.<\/p>\n
I’m not averse to being finished, mind you, but there is a perverse sense of jealousy about sharing it incomplete, when a sense of done finally seems a tangible possibility. On our recent 10th anniversary, Tricia suggested inviting Mike and Diane over for a quick impromptu drink to help celebrate. Now, Mike has been there since the room’s birth, right through its Terrible Twos, gradeschool eagerness, highschool daze, and young adult flightiness. But Diane has only seen pictures thus far, and I found myself not ready to share it with someone thus removed until the room was in its wedding dress and poised on the aisle. Especially not someone about whose reaction I care.<\/p>\n
My thought process might be somewhat informed by my subsequent reaction to Tricia talking me into installing the stereo this weekend. I had long imagined the first bars of Tori Amos’ most excellent “Scarlett’s Walk” CD wafting into the finished room — a major carrot. But here I was being asked to eat that carrot before journey’s end. With lighting installed and cabinetry all but finished, there are few enough such carrots left that I am loathe to relinquish their distance. They drive me to finish the more mundane details. And unveiling the room to close friends is perhaps the juiciest of them left.<\/p>\n
This last weekend Mike volunteered a few hours time helping me work on the deck, the old familiar friends-with-toolbelts relationship at least temporarily supplanting the employer\/contractor one. Not much was said, but we whiled away quite productively, our shoulders against separate wheels, but driving the same wagon. Much progress was made. Having arrived about 1:00, Mike finally cleaned up, packed up, and shoved off about 6:00. I continued putting stuff away awhile longer, and then, rather than try slopping sealer on in the dark, I chose to erect some tarps against forecast precipitation. And Isabel but days away…………….<\/p>\n
Tarps……………. While many fond associations linger — our annual Maine camping trip is less than a month away, after all — I was not happy to see them back on site. It had been many months since they were last required. But after showering and having dinner, I looked out at the deck and had a thought:<\/p>\n
Mike has grumbled and tried to cajole a blog entry out of me for some time. Perhaps he wanted other than a room update (I’m sure others would have), but I thought to try. But what to say? What to show? The room’s in its lacy underwear, putting on makeup, the smell of perfume in the air. An indecent time to publish voyeuristic peeks into the chamber. But I realized I could show the day’s progress and not show anything of the interior, with a night flash shot and the right angle. And given the tarps, I could even be somewhat coy about the deck itself…………… So perverse or not, I offer the above text and the following photo as sacrifice at the altar of Mike’s blog:<\/p>\n
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The World’s Smallest Deck awaiting railings and sealer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t know that I’ll know how to just BE in the room, if and when it is judged to be done (which will have to be by more objective observers). It has become so much The Project for me, … Continue reading