Something I wrote in July, before this site was ready
Getting married, having a child, and buying a house has done something strange to my stamina. Whereas I used to be able to work long hours at physical tasks, I no longer can. I used to be able to spend as much time as I needed on home improvements for my parents, but now that I’m a homeowner and the mother of a two-year-old, I’m grateful to keep up on the everyday tasks.
Today, my husband and I decided we really wanted to get the garage painted. He had worked hard to get the drywall up, and we both felt stressed out by the heap of junk in the center of the floor. With a two-year-old around, we normally can’t both work at outdoor projects. Wolfie is just too prone to wandering off, picking up stinging insects, eating rocks, and other bizarre baby behavior. So, we called up my parents and found that one of my siblings was eager to come over and babysit.
While Libby was watching Wolfie, Fierce and I tackled the garage. We realized that we didn’t have all the supplies that we thought we had, or they were buried someplace. So we ended up splitting the labor in odd ways. He rolled the walls with primer, while I scooted around the floor and edged the walls. Because we only had one paint tray, I made many trips around the heap in the center of the garage to get another swipe of paint.
Eventually, when I had exhausted the edging possibilities, I ran to the store and bought more brushes, paint trays, another can of primer and brushes. Since we still have to paint three bedrooms, two bathrooms, the kitchen, and a hallway, I had no doubt these would be used.
After a long break, during the time when Wolfie was supposed to be napping but was instead running around the bedroom with a miniature statue of the Infant of Prague, saying “Baby, Baby!”, we put Wolfie down for a late nap and headed out to the backyard for a powwow.
Fierce had been trying to put up a free swingset, but it was close to impossible to figure out what went where, and to remember how many beams he had left in the ground the previous October when he dismantled it from the donor’s house. We had decided that because the set was not coming together well, because it was so huge and our yard so small, and because we live one block from a good park and five blocks from a great park, that we would find other uses for the wood. After taking a trip to Growing Power in Milwaukee, an urban garden that makes soil from 100,000 pounds of donated compost materials a week, we decided to build a compost bin. After listening to “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” on CD, and watching the movie Fresh, we decided to build some raised beds.
While Fierce pulled apart the wood and laid out the beds, I painted the garage a light blue. I know that garages are almost always painted white, but Fierce bought one gallon too many of the blue paint needed in our living room, and rather than wasting it, or using it reluctantly on one of the bedrooms, we decided to paint the garage. We didn’t love the shade in our living room as much as we thought we would, but for the garage, it’s fine. Plus, compared to the stained brown drywall that we were used to looking at, it’s a treat. It’s a semi-gloss with primer, so the high quality paint is finally covering up some deep greasy stains that had surfaced through seven spot-applications of primer.
Fierce finished his work about 20 minutes before I finished mine. He woke up Wolfie and made dinner. When I came into the house, I was exhausted and my blood sugar was low. My hands were aching from the roller and looking down, I realized that I had blisters on my palms.
Wolfie was not happy about the paint on my hands. Fierce, the neat freak, has taught Wolfie to say “Ewww,” and “Yick yick yick” in the face of dirt. Wolfie kept pointing to my paint stained shirt and letting me know how offensive it was. “Ewwww!”
After Wolfie went back to sleep and I had showered, Fierce and I hung out. I felt closer to him than I had in a long time, and I realized that because my tasks include tutoring outside of the home and doing a lot of highly-repetitive, highly-redoable tasks inside the home, like making bread and folding laundry, Fierce is often left with little support for the huge projects he has to undertake. Admittedly, I can be a little bit of a drill sergeant. I want my raised beds, my compost bin, my painted and organized garage, my flower beds, etc. and I want them yesterday! Because I had worked alongside Fierce for the first few hours, and then finished our manual labor and freed him up to hit another one of his goals, he was in a generous mood and I felt really capable.
It isn’t that I think my cooking and cleaning aren’t as important as his renovating and gardening. I know that what I do is really important and because we need to eat, fairly urgent. However, having a child has made it a lot harder for me to do anything that doesn’t allow me to keep my son in sight at all times. Getting a little help this afternoon made a big difference, because it allowed two of us to work diligently for three hours, and helped me feel up to the task of finishing the garage.
I realized a few things today. One, I really do ask too much of Fierce. He already sets high goals for himself, and I often feel like “It would only take an hour or two to install those shelves, and then my life would be awesome.” He ends up feeling that he has to tackle all 42 household renovations at once, by himself. Two, I need to set up regular family babysitting so that I can work alongside Fierce more. Our spheres are too separated, and it’s hard on both of us. Working together was refreshing after such a long stretch of doing most things separate. Three, many hands really do make light work. Fierce and I finished painting the garage today, and he did a considerable amount of yard work and planning. Even if I can only arrange one afternoon a week to tackle projects with him, we should be able to get most of the big, cheap projects completed by the start of the new school year. Having me on board means that he can power through some of the drudgery, or have a second set of hands and eyes helping with something tricky, or finish a project that takes a lot longer alone.
Because I want so badly for my house to be a sanctuary, and for my family to eat wholesome, fresh foods, I am highly motivated to get everything done immediately. However, because I spend my mornings tutoring and my afternoons watching after Wolfie, I end up placing a lot on my husband with little regard to how much I’m really asking. Working alongside him today reminded me of how exhausting manual labor is. My body is tired and sore, my hands are blistered, and I know tomorrow will be even worse once the aches set in. But this is what I expect my husband to do every afternoon, by himself. This is what he has been doing, even during the school year, after getting home from work.
I’ve rarely found it this enlightening, productive, fulfilling, and romantic to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
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