Hubs tends to ask me thought provoking questions.
This one had me ruminating for days.
I was preparing four, used, metal, patio chairs for seat cushion refurbishing.
The original covers were brown plastic,
that had been stretched tightly over cream fabric and thick foam that sagged badly through the wooden seat frames and made slouching, when sitting at the table, inevitable.
“Why are you taking out every single staple when you’re going to be re-covering the seat and they won’t show?” He asked me one evening as I bent over my project.
He was right of course, they were going to be hidden, I could just rip off the old fabric and cover the mess with new.
But there were a lot of staples in one chair seat,
and I had to clear the way for Hubs to do his job without hitting obstacles every which way and snarling up his rhythm, not to mention jamming his staple gun! Besides, look at this perfectly clean slate!
I’d learned all about through preparation from my parents as a young child. They had stripped decades of wallpaper, layer by layer, from the walls in our London Georgian cottage, slapped on a fresh coat of plaster and attached wood paneling and tile to the walls.
During the course of this exercise my mother became a carrier for a staph infection and passed it on to my father, brother and me where it played havoc all over the surface of our skin.
Mummy had to have penicillin shots in her rump for weeks to clear up the infection while the rest of us suffered the unwelcome emergence of livid boils erupting in the nooks and crannies of our young (and not so young) bodies.
However I did not connect these two events at the tender age of six, I thought I’d caught something awful at school along with Chicken Pox, Measles and Mumps.
“If a job is worth doing,” I was told by my meticulous parents, “it’s worth doing well.”
Consequently I believe in doing something well, or not bothering at all.
I live by the mottos,
“Start the way you mean to go on.”
And,
“Finish what you start,”
I am my own hard-task-master.
“Do you ever not go on your whole walk?” Daughts asked me the other day as she puffed beside me.
It had never occurred to me not to complete my walk…I considered her question in the light of my multi-length daily yoga classes before answering,
“If I don’t have time to do the whole walk then I don’t set out.”
“That’s a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water!” she said, “I don’t think I would ever have enough time to walk as far as you do each day, but I do what I can, which is better than just sitting around being a couch potato.”
Daughts is not the couch potato!
“It’s a mental thing,” I said, “A 30 minute yoga class is a whole class, whereas half a walk is…”
“Better than no walk at all!” she chided.
How lovely to have the essence of all the wise words I’d imparted, during the grim teen-age of my children’s lives, bounced back!
She’s right of course!
The chairs look very pretty now they are re-furbished,
and whether you can tell or not there are no extra staples in their bottoms.
I know the truth…
And I had no adverse reactions to the old fabric!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
No comments so far!
Leave a Comment