About six weeks ago, David and I were cleaning our TV room where we spend most of our waking hours at home, when we noticed the sofa was beginning to show signs that its end was nearing. The poor couch suffered those telltale symptoms of sadly sagging springs and flattened cushions which can no longer be plumped or coaxed back to life. I got the brilliant idea to replace it with our perfectly good living room sofa that was smaller and would give us more space in the somewhat crammed TV room and we could buy a new living room sofa. We headed to my favorite furniture store the very next day and found a wonderful one. It’s down-filled, therefore nicely pluffy and subtly striped yet not too formal. It will fit well with the eclectic potpourri I have put together in my years in New England. Driving home I decided it might be a good time to have the oriental rugs professionally cleaned too. No sense in buying a gorgeous new sofa and sitting it upon a slightly dingy rug.

Once back home, I beelined for the living room with the new sofa still imbedded in my brain as I assayed the area. I knew it would fit size-wise, but what about the color, I questioned myself as I studied the gold walls around me. Maybe I should paint them a lighter shade? Our dining room opens up to this one in a huge archway and I’ve been dying to paint it a deep, intense red, just like one of our favorite restaurants in Montreal. In mille-moments it was settled. I would be painting both rooms, taking advantage of the fact that the carpets would be gone for their cleaning. And while at it, I might as well find a furniture repair shop and get the dining chairs re-glued. Four of the six were really wobbly and the joints were opening up when dinner guests sat in them.

In a little more than twenty-four house I had committed myself to hours of labor: ladder climbing, bending, kneeling and stretching these arthritic bone – cleaning floors, brushes, rollers, paint trays and myself – while completely upsetting the entire downstairs of the tiny yet furniture-laden house so we can barely move about. And we won’t even begin to count the dollars spent on the shit you need to buy just to get the project going. Let’s just say, not counting the cost of the sofa or the junk man to remove the old one, I’m into this job for well over a grand. And although I hurt like the first day at the gym after a ten-day vacation (not that I’ve seen the inside of a gym in more years than my flabby body wants to count) it hasn’t been as bad as some DIY projects I have suffered through in my years. There were a multitude of moments when I wondered why I just didn’t purchase a new couch for the TV room. But then anybody could do that. And today the new sofa was delivered, the rugs came back and so did the repaired dining chairs. I can start putting the rooms back together this week.

So why am I sharing all this drivel? It is my written excuse for my spotty postings this month. I need lots of time and no distractions in order to write. I can play online with my Ipad from almost anywhere, sneaking a few minutes here and there during my day. I can knit while watching TV and listen to NPR while writing checks to pay my bills. I “read” books via my Ipod/Audible.com in the car while commuting to and from work. The only way I can write is to shut the world out and spend the hours I need to spend. I’ll let you know how the rooms turned out.