Six More Weeks of Insanity

I suppose we are all guilty of biting off more than we can chew once in a while. This is the spot I find myself at the moment.

We are just a couple of months shy of being under construction for one full year. There were two small projects I wanted to finish before I considered this house officially done but I can hardly bear the thought of starting anything new.

My son says when I finish a house he knows we will be moving soon. I keep telling him I’m not moving out of this house. He says, “Then you should accept the fact that you will never be finished with that house.” He may be right.

Naively, I thought the trees that fell would only take a week to cut up, split and stack. Then we decided a new wood shed was in order, which I naïvely thought would take about a day to construct. “Four posts and a tin roof” is how Joe described it. After almost two days of construction (and I don’t see the roof anywhere yet) I’m about ready to throw him and the four posts out. Thank goodness he’s a nice guy.

Some weeks you just need a little serenity.

When I thought I couldn’t bear the sound of the saw or the nail gun for one more minute, I called my husband to warn him of my looming insanity. He very wisely told me we didn’t have to begin any more projects, but we should finish the ones we’ve already started. And, he says, “If you take a break, you have to be prepared that Joe may not be available when you’re ready to start again.”

I swore all day that if I could get through the shed being built and the wood getting split and stacked, I would not take on any new projects.

This sounds like the conversation I had with myself during the last 5k race I ran. By the end of the first mile I had almost quit 3 times. I finally coerced myself a little further, and a little further – swearing that if I could finish that race I would never run another 5k.

I went out and suggested to Joe that I might not want to tackle another something right away. Sure enough, someone had called him to build them a new house. So, in fact, if I want a break it is going to be a very long break.

He suggested we work for another six weeks and finish everything we can in that time. Six more weeks.

Six weeks from now, the New York Jets will be playing the New England Patriots. The first day of fall is only 7 weeks away. In six weeks, I will be approaching my second 20-mile run and the marathon will be six weeks away from then.

The decision was made this morning. I will survive six more weeks of insanity and then we will be done….almost.