Friday 18 May 2012

Guilt Free

There is something so totally satisfying about the act of creating pretty much anything.

I finished a project this week for Hurricane and Tornado to play with. It is a chalkboard with an oak frame about two feet by four feet. I have been planning to do it for over a year but these things take time. Sure, they don’t take that much time, but I am sure I have mentioned how lazy I am in the past. It turned out pretty good and I have hopes that it will take them a day or two before it is totally destroyed. They picked it up today on the way home and it was a big hit while they were here. I think Tornado will be especially pleased to have a new outlet for his creativity. Oh, he is definitely a “lefty”.

I built a couple of bird houses (yeah, I know, “old man hobby”) and managed to put them up this week. I call them bird houses, but more than likely they will be cat feeders. I placed them where I can look at them, but no self respecting bird would choose to live in locations like that. So, I guess I will have a couple of bird houses filled with birds with no self respect. Just so long as they keep the music turned down after 11:00 and pay the rent on time, we should get along just fine. Well, as fine as you can get with beasts whose ancestors were dinosaurs.

I hope to get some carving done this weekend, because I have promised Hurricane a carved caricature for his birthday. I hope it turns out, but women and kids are hard to please at the best of times, and making fun of how they look is never a big hit. I have also plans for some beefy saw horses that my son can use when he builds his garage. They aren’t pretty, but hopefully they will be serviceable.

I tell you this not to brag, but because I noticed that doing these creative things is much more satisfying than watching even the best show on TV. I know, it is hard to believe! I do get joy from this kind of thing, but I also avoid doing it for some reason.

I remember driving with my dad once and he stopped to look at a house being built. He told me that he sometimes wished that he worked in construction so that after the day was done he could step back and see what he had accomplished. His job involved pushing papers around for the most part and if it was anything like my job, you never seemed to get ahead. Oh, work would get done, but the next day there was another pile and the day after that had another pile, and on and on and on. He drove off after a while and he was pretty silent for the rest of the drive. I guess he was dreaming of paths not taken and wondering just where he would be if…

Either that or he was an agent of some kind keeping an eye on a spy, using me as a prop to give him and excuse to be parked on the street. Perhaps instead of dreaming about paths not taken, he was contemplating ways to end someone’s life. He was in Her Majesties service and served time behind enemy lines in WWII. He would have made a great spy, he never talked about anything and who would suspect him living in suburban Toronto. Well, I guess I did, but I don’t really count. I better go through his old papers.

No, it is nice to get some things done; now I can sit around for a couple of weeks doing nothing…guilt free!

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