Making Progress, One Project At A Time

Why is it so difficult to make progress on projects around the house?

We've been talking for the last couple of years about replacing the 21-year-old, original, contractor-grade windows in the house.  So this year we finally did it; today the workmen installed 22 new windows, and tomorrow they'll install the new back porch door and finish the trim work.

It took awhile to save the money to do this, of course, and that's part of the delay.  We believe in spending cash on large things like this; if we didn't have it saved, we weren't going to do it.  But so many other things around the house aren't nearly as cash-intensive, but still I don't manage to get to them.

Take the new Dad Tree on the front lawn.  I'd been talking for the last two years about putting a sugar maple on the lawn, to replace the twin Bradford pear trees that came down earlier in the decade.  But nope, I never got further than calling around for estimates.  Of course, God works in mysterious ways; I was glad that when the idea hit for having a permanent memorial with Dad's ashes here at the house, why, I now had the perfect vehicle to do it.

But don't ask me about the On3 train set downstairs, the one Adam and Mike helped me bring out of Uncle Albert's basement, what, three years ago?  The one that still doesn't run, where the wiring  isn't made, where track sections still gape apart.  Don't ask me about the north side garden, that traditionally has been a jumble of weeds and that I had planned to turn into something the O'Maras won't cringe on seeing.  And don't ask me about the grand vision for the back yard, with the patios, "man-pad" for the "mammock" and the Cabernet grape vines up the trellis...I'll just get depressed.

How much of this is emblematic of our society today?  The rush rush rush life we lead doesn't leave much time for hobbies, or anything but the most essential home maintenance.  And when so many others around us--all the "Joneses"--seem to have such nice new patios and can find the time to play golf and tennis and etc., well, it's possible for some societal envy to creep in.

That's when I have to fight to remind myself to take it one day at a time.  That a life isn't made of completed projects around the house, or the number of things we can accumulate, or even what others may see when they look at us.  It's made of moments of cheering at soccer games, or holding snap after snap after snap in football practice, or just the conversations from the back seat of the car to and from.  That's what I have to hold onto, and when something like new windows happens to fall into the "completed" column, well, that's just a bonus of life in Northern Virginia today.