Such a Tool

I’ve been trying to decide why I can’t sit still on the weekend. I could sit by the pool and read magazines or history books. I could watch endless hours of I Love Lucy. But I don’t. I relentlessly weed the cactus garden. I touch up paint throughout the house. I reorganize the garage (as my brother says, “reorganize” is the scary word here). I scrub the ceramic tile around the pool. A friend told me I do these things, not because I have an industrious Puritan streak, but as a way to sublimate emotions. This makes sense to me. Unfortunately, I’m not particularly aware of my emotions, so I have no idea what I’m sublimating.

As I pondered this last weekend, I noticed that the tools were a mess. Some were in the garage, some were in the laundry room, and others were in the rumpus room. So I took over one of the closets in the foyer. This closet started life on the 1955 blueprints as a “powder room.” When we first moved in, the closet had a little vanity and mirror, with lambs applying lipstick wallpaper. I guess the idea was to stop in before leaving the house to check makeup application. I desperately tried to save the silence of the lambs wallpaper, but it was falling apart. I installed pegboard, hooks for extension cords, mounting to hang the ladder, and painted everything. I didn’t labor over the paint color; I simply took some extra paint from the paint cabinet. I put a rolling Metroshelf cart in there with shelves for chargers and bins of nails and screws. Now I have easy access to all the tools. No more trudging all over shouting, “Where in the hell is the mallet?”