Work Done, Work Undone, So Much Work Left to Do

And so the pendulum swings ...

After my "high as a kite" day on Saturday, I could barely sleep that night. Perhaps that large cup of coffee after supper wasn't the wisest idea but I kind of liked the idea of prolonging my wakefulness after a such a good day.

My mind was busy all night, thinking of all that needed to be done to "undo" what has been done by my team of worker bees.

A month ago, my Handyman Guy fixed the screen door so it actually latched all by itself. Last week, my Fridge Mover Guys (yes, our new/used fridge had to be replaced, which meant moving the broken fridge upstairs and out the back door and moving the new (much larger) fridge through the same door and back downstairs) did something to the door-closing mechanism and it stopped closing by itself again.

Our Back Alley Workers backed into our fence a few months ago and after it was repaired, the gate would only open wide enough for a person to walk through it. So, Saturday morning, I had that fixed so it now fully opens. Only now, the gap under the gate is now large enough for our cats to crawl out under it.

We had window cut into our downstairs bedroom and they had to displace an extraordinary amount of dirt to dig the window well and they messed up our perfectly good, freshly laid landscape fabric and rocks which my son did for me only a month ago.

Not to mention the ice sled full of dirt which was left on the lawn. I thought I would just slide it onto the driveway and see if I could give the dirt away to someone who wanted it. Not only did the sled full of dirt start to kill the lawn where it sat but I couldn't even begin to budge it by myself.

I went outside and was thwarted at every turn.

I did come up with a "solution" to the gap under the gate:

Then my son helped me move the ice sled full of dirt off the grass and at least onto the rocks, to give the grass a fair shot at survival:

                                 

I googled "screen door won't latch" and figured out how to fix the hydraulic door closing mechanism on the screen door (but it still isn't as good as it was):

I thought I could fix up the landscaping rock by our new basement window but I got back there and realized I really didn't know what to do, needed to wait for the surrounding dirt to settle first anyway, nor did I have the tools I needed to do the job. So this is the before and after picture of our newly fixed "dog run" area:

 

When I came back into the house, all I could think of, was all which was just new and improved already in need of adjustments and repair,

One step forward, two steps back.

This whole domino effect of home renovations is taking the wind out of my sails. I know now, that we should have installed the new basement window first and then fixed up the dog run area. But it was the new and improved dog run which was the catalyst to everything that followed.

One small home improvement which I could not have done myself led me to a list of things I could accomplish.

One small action sparked more drive and ambition within me than I have seen in the past five years.

One domino tipped over created a whole raft of other dominoes to fall.

I don't regret it for a moment.

But is it too much to ask for one action not to cause the undoing of that-which-has-just-been-fixed? It's bad enough to have to do things once. But twice?

Good day, bad day. Work done, work undone.

It's kind of like making your bed in the morning. Is it really worth it when you know you will just be messing it up again?

Doing laundry, buying groceries, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, filling up the gas tank, haircuts, pedicures and washing one's hair. Life is full of things which are in a constant loop of needing to be done over and over and over again.

That's life. It's the "high cost of living". The alternative is not a good one.

What if we couldn't replenish our groceries, our gas tanks or didn't have a closet full of clothes to create laundry in the first place?

Yes, I am blessed to have a home in need of some TLC. I know this.

It's just harder to manage when the dominoes create such a flurry of spending. I need to put a cap on that and it isn't easy when that which has just been done creates a whole new raft of things to do.

I just want my "worker bees" to leave things in the same working order in which they found them. I want them to clean up their messes and not leave a bunch of "broken toys" in their wake.

Is that really too much to ask?