Do you ever feel like the universe (or at least a thing or two in it) is working against you as you try to accomplish your goals? Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about real problems like hunger or serious illness, I'm talking about the speed bumps that everyone seems to experience from time to time. In our house this sure seems to be how we're feeling lately, whether it be ridiculously long hours at work that bleeds significantly into our Saturday and Sundays, general lack of time to fit everything in, insufficient wood supplies at the local home improvement store, or any of the common pitfalls that measuring twice and cutting once are supposed to avoid but is sometimes unable to completely eliminate.
This last weekend in particular I felt like there was nothing we could do right. As I gazed up at the flexible dryer vent duct taped to our house, I shook my head in disgust. The once "temporary" solution to our stolen copper downspouts has now braved nearly a full winter, a hurricane, and the less than impressive Snowquester storm of last week.
Now torn and looking more pathetic than ever, I'm embarrassed that we're "that house" in the neighborhood (You know, the one with a dryer vent instead of a downspout. You don't have one of those in your neighborhood? Weird). We really need to tackle this project so our house can go back to having more permanent gutters. It's not like it's particularly hard, but we just need the time to do it.
Another little blip on our DIY radar occurred this weekend when the water company came out to do a little unannounced work. It seems they made a mid-Saturday morning unscheduled replacement of our water meter out front, which resulted in what can be described as "sludge vomit" shooting from our pipes. Without any warning or announcement, the water supply was cut to our home and restored a few minutes later, all while we were getting ready for the day and doing laundry in the basement. Picture the water pressure after you've turned back on the water to your home after it's been off for a bit. The hiccuping, spurting mess was capped off by a shot of black, sludgy water. Awesome. Needless to say, we ran that load of laundry through the wash again.
If that wasn't bad enough, the gentlemen that performed the repair traipsed and trampled through our front garden, carelessly tossing mulch aside to expose the water meter cover.
What was a stale, bleak, winterized version of our flower bed, now was a hot mess.
One of our plants suffered what is sure to be a fatal blow. We picked our fallen soldier out of the gutter and bid him a fond farewell, thanking him for his months of service and apologizing for his rather unceremonious exit.
I figured the space couldn't look any worse, and knew we had a lot of work to do before this garden is spring ready. So I seized the opportunity to trim out some of the dead portions of the remaining plants and clean things up just a bit.
I lopped off the tops of the three tall grasses that had begun to look like they belonged in a vast prairie instead of our modest urban sidewalk garden.
Alex decided this was a good time to get creative and wire tie the base of these grasses in a few bunches so we could bring them inside as a dried arrangement. We just snipped a small piece of wire and pinched the whole thing together.
It was a novel idea, but one that was better in his mind than in reality. It made a mess shedding all over the place, didn't look great, and was probably covered in a certain amount of dog pee that we can't just opt to ignore. Oh well, good effort.
After the trimming, I swept up the front to clean up the errant stones, cigarette butts, and loose mulch, and was left with something not quite presentable, but at least more of a clean slate for our spring planting.
It sure feels like ages ago that this same space looked like this.
<sigh> I guess some days just feel like you're moving in reverse. Despite our best attempts, it feels at times as though nature, meter men, and neighborhood thieves are in cahoots to thwart our efforts of beautification and progress. I want to create and give you all Pinterest worthy displays of creativity and awesomely executed projects, but all we can seem to muster is the addition of items to our already lengthy project list, without the ability to check any off along the way. Frustrating to say the least. I need to dig deep, find a little renovation mojo, and show them that even a one-two punch can't keep us down.
Have you been battling the DIY doldrums lately? What is holding you back or keeping you renovation work down? And how have you been coping with your major or minor speed bumps? Perhaps this can be a therapeutic blog post where we can all commiserate and realize "hey, it's not so bad!" Well, either that or "hey, it's worse than you think, just wait."
