A Dent To Perfectionism

It’s my first day off in months and months, and what do I choose to do with it?  I am attempting to re-caulk my bathroom shower.

I know that I do not possess the strengths or skills that will help me on this task. 

I am not the handy type.

I’m a left-hander in a world where tools are made for right-handers.

I am impatient and persistent.

Yet — knowing all this — I am going to take my first day off in months to re-caulk my bathroom shower…

I go to the store to purchase the tools.  I purchase the scraper thing-a-ma-jig, which is, of course, set up for a right-hander.

I grab and buy one white tube of the “easy and quick” caulking paste.

I get home and read the instructions, with the help of a magnifying glass.  I scrape, sweep, clean, and Clorox the shower stall the night before, and so I have a clean and dry surface to work with…

I place a new sponge, an old hand towel, and an old toothbrush (just in case) by the shower, to remind me of my task in the morning.

I spend a sleepless night, wondering if I will stand victorious tomorrow... or fall in defeat.

At morning’s light, I start my adventure.  I find an almost-used-up tube of white caulking and begin with that.  Things start out fine, until the old tube starts sputtering caulking all over the place, like an old tube of toothpaste does.

So, I have to stop and clean that mess up…

Then, I grab the new tube of caulking, cut that one open, and start on a new spot.

To my dismay, almond-colored caulking comes pouring out of the white tube.  What the #$@$!!!

I look at the tube… then at the stuff that’s spewing out of it… then at the wall… then back at the tube… then at the letters on the tube that spelled A-L-M-O-N-D… then at the cap of the tube that’s the color of the crap that’s spewing out of the tube… then back at the wall.

I take a couple of deep breaths… look at my hands, now colored in almond caulking… look back at the shower wall… and decide that the almond caulking doesn’t look too bad mixed in with the white already sprayed all over the place.

So, I continue on my mission and get to the smaller tiles.  I try to cover only the groves, but miss miserable, and every time I try to wipe away my errors, I also wipe away the new caulking in the process, which causes me to re-caulk, and re-wipe and re-caulk and re-wipe the same space over and over again.

I decide to stop this cycle of mine and let what caulking managed to move in between the tiles (and on the tiles) stay where it lay.  Maybe, after it all dries, I could scrape the excess off…and if not… well…

I look at what I've done.  If I keep the lights off and squint my eyes a bit, the dusty-looking almond swirls all over the tiles give the floor a mystic look…

And I reason, in a couple of months… or years…  I’ll have to do this all over again, and I’ll do better then…

And… if it becomes an issue, I can always get someone to help me the next time…

And… my guest bathroom still looks presentable, so no one else has to know about this bathroom…

Yep!  This little home-improvement adventure has, definitely, made a dent to Perfectionism, and I’m OK with that. 

P.S.  After all is said and done, a gentleman, online, lets me know that I shouldn't have been caulking... but grouting.  

I'm sitting here, now... silently shaking my head... thinking... What a great punchline to this joke... if only it was a joke...

Oh, well...<shrug>

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?!

 

I ask myself this question almost daily now…  

What have I gotten myself into?!

Katherine and I made lunch plans to work on — what I had hoped would be — the finishing touches of the final version of our book. 

Yes, I’m still trying to encourage Katherine — short of chaining her to a chair — to sit still long enough for us to put this first project to bed.  She still needs to read the book through — cover to cover — and give the OK for us to move on.  We can’t move forward until she does that.

You see, Katherine — lovely person that she is — suffers from two common, modern-day diseases. 

#1:    She’s a master “multitasker” — She doesn’t focus on one thing for any length of time.  She’s involved in three or four things at a time.  She’s late for most things because she over-commits.  She tends to cancel things at the last minute... because she over-promises from the start… 

#2:    She’s also a perfectionist — She’s never satisfied with what she has accomplished.  She always wants more… always striving for more.  Projects are never “completed” because they can always be better.

How does all this affect the progress of our book?  Well, the fact that she can’t devote 30 minutes at a time, to sit down and read the book, makes it difficult for her to get through the entire book…

And when she does sit down for a couple of minutes at a time, she thinks of all the things we don’t have in the book, instead of focusing on what we have tackled in the book.  I swear that she wants this first book to capture all the answers to every question uttered by every man and woman who lived on Planet Earth… starting with Adam and Eve.

Now, mix in my impatience with her tendencies toward multitasking and perfectionism — well, let’s just say that we’re getting nowhere fast on completing the final draft of our book together.

I was really hoping that our lunch meeting would move us leaps and bounds ahead; and I was encouraged when she pulled out her laptop and started booting it up. 

But those hopes were squashed when she mentioned that, in her haste to meet me, she forgot to bring the printed manuscript that contained all her notes.  Without that printed manuscript, we couldn’t discuss her changes…but she knew she wanted to add yet another section to the book, so it would encompass even more….

As I choked down my disappointment, I agreed to work on a new section with her, because it would add to the book… but she had to promise me that this was going to be the last time!!  This adding more and more stuff had to stop at some point!!  We can’t publish the book if we never finish writing it!!

Yes, yes… she agreed.

I asked when we could get together again to pull together that new section.

Katherine:  “Well, let me think.  It’ll have to wait for a couple of weeks, because I’ve got all this other stuff to do...”


Me:  “Katherine, I don’t want another two months to go by…”


Katherine:  “I know, I know… but… I don’t have any free time…. unless…OH!  unless…”

When she outlined her plan to me, all I could think of was….

Now what have I gotten myself into?!

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Trying to Chillax

I’m taking today off and am doing nothing…well, almost nothing.

The phone has stopped ringing; the laundry is done; the vacuuming and dusting can wait for another day.

The last two weeks have been full of ups and downs: counseling friends and confessing to friends; covering for vacations at work and dealing with unreasonable deadlines; contracting and coordinating contractors to help with home maintenance issues; trying to keep my head firmly planted in reality regarding our writing projects, etc.

Yes, it’s a great feeling to be (somewhat) successful in juggling the different facets of your life… but it is also draining.  If we don’t take time out for ourselves to rejuvenate, we’ll start to lose our balance and focus. We’ll start dropping things all over the place — which isn’t a good thing to do if you’re a master juggler…

So, I’m taking a day off and just chillaxing…

At first, I’d thought I’d go to the movies, but my legs and arms have a different plan.  They’re pulling me back to bed… for an early afternoon nap and a lazy day with the TV remote.

I won’t argue with such a luxurious and guilty pleasure.

I’ll be back juggling in the morning.  See you then.

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