Painting is hard work, even on the ground
I am a nervous wreck. For about a week now, my brain has been swooning and my knees have been knocking – all because of the scaffolding that’s caging the side of the house.
A nervous wreck, even though I’m the one on the ground.
The long-awaited and long-needed house painting is under way. After considering what it would cost to have others come and do the work (a sum that would buy us one excellent new car or three crappy used ones), we decided that the farmer would do an excellent job. I went along with this before the scaffolding went up.
Ours is a very tall, three-story frame Victorian with all manner of gingerbready swirls and flourishes for trim. Most of it is high on the left side of the house, and so that’s where the painting began, on a labyrinth of planks and poles that reach a good 35 feet into the air, six levels worth. Erecting the scaffolding took the better part of a week, and as I watched him carry another board to the next-higher level, I paced below, shouting warnings and asking questions. All that week, I looked like a beheaded chicken, strutting back and forth while asking for reassurances that this was actually safe.
“Are you sure that’s sturdy enough? Why does it look like it’s swaying at the top? What if you happen upon a wasp nest and they attack you while you’re balanced up there? If you harness yourself to the scaffold, what’s the scaffold harnessed to? Do you think we should bring the air mattresses we used for camping and put them underneath you?”
The questions were asked and answered frequently enough that, once the scaffold was in place and it was time for the farmer to climb aboard and begin to work, he finally put his large, booted foot down.
“You have to stop with the questions and worries.” Aka: nagging.
He said that my constant squawking was breaking his concentration.
I’m reminded of what a therapist told me when I sat on her couch and whined about how nervous I was sending my son off to college. You know what she said?
“The nerves are about you, not him.”
I can’t say it helped much with my jitters, but I did quit texting him at school.
And now, I have a Wallenda doing a high-wire act right outside the bedroom window. He wears two harnesses, which he attaches to the scaffold, which is bolted to the house. Unless a tornado carries the house off to Oz, I think I’ll be OK. No, I mean he’ll be OK.
Today, he told me he’s finished with the very highest point of the painting, and he won’t have to be all the way up there any more. For him, it means he has to scale only five platforms. He said things will be easier from now on.
I still have some grueling weeks ahead of me, staying on terra firma while keeping my mouth shut. This painting stuff is hard work.