Showing posts with label refinishing wood floors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label refinishing wood floors. Show all posts

Monday, September 19, 2011

My grade 7 journal: "My favourite class is shop."



There is nothing like getting down and dirty with some power tools.  I literally hear my adolescent self rejoice.  I spent a few weeks this summer stripping the baseboards and refinishing the oak wood floor in the smallest room of my circa 1930 Toronto house.

And now, each and everytime I walk by the room with the 'new floor' I feel such pride in my accomplishment I expect the goddess herself to smite me for indulging so regularly in one of the seven deadlies.

But,what you don't see in the above photo collage is the sweat.  In Toronto, in August, there was quite a bit of it poured onto the floorboards.  And the tears.  

The tears came as proficiently as the sweat some days.

Tears for a life not lived.  Tears for a body caged by a disease that forbids a full time switch to physical labour of any kind.  Tears for lovers lost.  Childhood endings.  Misguided choices.  Abandoned and neglected friendships.

When rubbing in the oil on the floor after nearly 3 weeks of developing a very intimate relationship with it I felt I was anointing it, for in a peculiar way, the old floor has become my sacrificial lamb.  An offering to the universe of myself.  Stripped raw and then polished and buffed.  

So take me as I am universe.  I am ready, willing, and able for service.