Let's rip up the deck!

It happened innocently enough. I was having a good day that suddenly turned worse when I had a conversation with someone that just put me in a sour mood. Frustrated and wanting some time off before coming back to work for a meeting, I went home and immediately changed into sweatpants to curl up in bed for a quick nap before Jonathan got home.

While I was changing, I looked out the bedroom windows, as I often do, to admire our beautiful backyard. Studying it a little more closely, I decided that a year was long enough to go without raking, and perhaps Jonathan and I could spend some of our day off on Saturday doing just that.

Then, as casually as that I thought:

"And while we're at it, we should rip up the ground level deck and see how much of that wood can be used again when we finally do the upper level deck we've been talking about doing. We could clear away that part of the yard, and have a sense of what it will look like with the new design."

After that I was even a little proud of myself, thinking about how environmentally savvy my new plan was and how much money we'd save using the wood that was already there instead of using new wood. All we'd have to buy now (in 2011 of course) would be some posts and cement and hardware. It would be great!

Jonathan came home after my nap and I informed him of my plan and lamented about my day (though maybe not in that order). He was telling me about his day when all of a sudden it hit me like a ton of bricks.

"Oh my goodness!" I interrupted, "I can't believe I'm that obvious!"

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I am totally predictable. I have a bad day and I want to rip up something in the house. Jonathan and I can convince ourselves all we want that we're improving the value of our home, but as I painfully discovered the other day it is about far more than that. My deck is something I can control, when I can't necessarily control a conversation at work. I can work on a project on the deck so intensely that I won't need to eat, or sleep, or feel. I'll be so engrossed, and so satisfied with the final outcome, that there will be no room in my head for anything difficult that may have happened in the week before. Ripping up the deck would (temporarily) solve all of my problems.

I can't say for sure if I would have noticed this connection prior to the Stuff Stand-off. I had to pause because I knew that we couldn't buy anything at Lowes, and so whatever we accomplished would only be the breaking down part of things and not the building up. And what would I do? Keep a pile of deck wood sitting around in the backyard for ELEVEN MONTHS until we were finally able to rebuild? And then what - magically in the cold of January we'd want to finish up an outdoor project? I wasn't even trying to see through the end of my home improvement fantasy. I wanted only the instant gratification of change I could control.

It was the pause I think that helped me to realize what a direct correlation my bad day had to my desire to tear up something new. I was quickly hanging my head and laughing at myself, totally pegged with no one to blame. I think I'm so hard to figure out sometimes, but it seems that I just need to take a breath long enough to really see what I'm up to.

I'm not sure what we'll be doing this weekend. We might be snowed in (which would have made for a really great day ripping up the deck!). We might read books. We might watch movies. We might have to reflect a little bit on the week at work, and work through those things that were hard for us. But there will be NO home improvement projects happening at this address this weekend. No matter how hard I might try to convince myself it's a good idea...