Back to the Screen Porch

As I mentioned the other day (Rambling on a Winding Road), I just don't think in a linear way.  That's why a visit to the Goodwill last week inspired me to work on my screen porch.  This is something I have been meaning to do and absolutely needing to do (read this:  Getting Clean) for quite awhile.  Although I had a good plan back then, it was doomed to fail because I am just not consistent--I work on inspiration and it's almost impossible for me to follow a routine.  I want to but I just don't.

And, you know, it wasn't the Goodwill itself that got me started on this.  It was because my sciatica was bothering me.  I went to the store with my neighbor who wanted to pick up a desk lamp, and we ended up searching through crates of electronics cords.  I may be inconsistent, I may not follow my own plans, I may be unpredictable but of one thing you may be sure:  when I am doing something for someone else, I finish.  So I stood there digging through that huge storage container until I looked at every single cord in it because my neighbor wanted something specific.  We never did find it but I tried my very best.....and then I had to find a seat for a few minutes afterward because I felt very ouchy.

There was a tall table nearby--you know, one of those snack or breakfast sets with stools instead of chairs--and I made a beeline gratefully for the stool.  I mentioned that it would work well as a standing desk--standing desks being a trend just now--but my neighbor hadn't heard of such.  I'm always thinking of different ways to re-use stuff.

Then I walked away and forgot about the matter entirely until several days later when I had a sudden flash of inspiration seemingly out of the blue:  there was a tall table in my workshop building!  (Seriously, I forgotten all about it but there's a whole lot of stuff out there that I have forgotten either deliberately or otherwise).  And that table would make the perfect standing sorting space for the packing materials that have been littering my screen porch for the past couple of years.  I've longed for such a sorting and storage space for my porch.

Now there was a difficulty with my tall table that made it unusable as it was:  it's a China Cheapie that used to live on another screen porch so our very humid and rainy south Mississippi weather (including Hurricane Katrina) had rotted the particle board table top.  The bottom of the table was metal, though, and that was salvageable.  And I had a big scrap of wood from an old desk surface that eyeballed to be just about exactly the size I wanted (and I was right, too, within an inch).  So I called my neighbor and asked him to help me burn some boxes because I wanted to fix a table.  Honest-to-pete, I don't make sense to other people sometimes but he figured it out after I explained a time or two.

I had to get rid of some old weather-beaten boxes to clear space on the porch for the table and also so that I could bring out even more boxes and packing materials that are stacked in my living room.  Besides all of this, there is also now the very important consideration that my cat Daisy has decided to live her elderly days on the porch.  I wanted to clear more safe space for her.  (One of the very first things I did was to fix up an old litter box to put in a corner--she sure wasn't using the one in the house, and I was worried that she would do herself a damage holding her little bladder.)

In the meantime, of course, I fell (at my desk, of all places) and damaged my already-very-bad foot so every step is an "ow" what with my hip and my creaky knees and now my stupid foot.  It's annoying.  But the bonfire was fun.  I brought sparklers and marshmallows.  We used the former and decided against the latter.  Later, my neighbor cut and fixed the new top for the table.

Then, yesterday, hobbling rather badly and saying "ow" a lot, I managed to clear half the porch.  I won't promise to finish the rest today because I know me.  If I say I will, I won't.....unless it's a task for someone else.  Yeah, I don't make sense. And that's just perfectly fine, thank you.

Last night I sat on a little stool on the back porch with Daisy while we watched fireflies.  It was really lovely.  The stools are another leftover that I got from someone who didn't want them anymore, so don't match the table but they, like everything else around here, are Good Enough. 

I am grateful.
Life is good.