For the love of projects

What is this incessant desire to have a project going? It is so much more than a need to be busy. I have assumed that all women have an innate desire to be creative, be it crafting, home decorating, cooking or gardening. But maybe that’s not true. All I know is, amidst the ever-present need to clean and staighten up a house lived in by five people, I am bored if I am not “in” a project.

People asked me over the holidays if I were really busy with Housemade and I told them that is my slow time, as folks are decorating their homes for Christmas and not focusing on a kitchen island just then.

So as much as I love the preparation for the holidays and anticipation of all my chicks in the nest, my innate need to be working on some project worms its way to the surface. On December 20 I began cleaning my living room walls to prep them for painting. The same living room where we gathered Christmas morning. Who does that?

But the 1980s lime green has to go. It has had to go for the last 25 years. With having babies, running out the door to dance rehearsals, wrestling matches, little league practice, dive meets and youth group, I looked right past the lime.

Once I land on the illusive shade of gray I will be filled with both elation and melancholy. On the one hand, it will signal my entrance into the 2000s (!). It will also mean I leave the 1990s, my toddlers and school-aged children behind. Do other people put this much importance or nostalgia into changing a paint color?

In any case, now that normal life has resumed, I’m onto the projects; this living room being Job #1. I can’t start the new year without a project underway!

My adult children have walked out the front door and will take the lime green with them.