If you look around our house, it’s chaos. We literally have 600 square feet of hardwood flooring stacked by size in our dining room. Because the upstairs flooring has taken over the dining room, the dining room table is in the corner of the fireplace room and dining room chairs have been scattered all over the house. The project – installing said flooring upstairs – is stalled as we need to tie the flooring into the stair nosing that was already installed. The problem? We need to create a groove into the stair nosing to insert a spline which will allow us to securely attach the start of the flooring to the nosing. We just can’t get the router down low enough to have it cut the groove squarely in the middle of the stair nosing. First world problems, I know. But it’s seriously messing up my clean house.
Now, it’s not that I don’t see the long game here. I do. We finish the upstairs floors and our big projects are done inside. Let me say that again: our big projects are done inside. We will still have small projects to go but no other project will result in tearing up my house again. I’m telling you, folks, the finish line is just about here. We are literally one groove away from getting our groove back.
On the professional front, I’m also starting to get my groove back. It’s slowly coming, but I can catch a glimpse of the person I want to be in the shadows of the mirror these days. After a tumultuous October and November and then a not-so-restful December, January has been a slog. Still, after weeks of wrestling, it feels like I’m slowly getting my calendar back under control. Once the calendar is under control, well then, I’m under control.
Still, all over my life, I do feel like I’m back at square two. Now, we all know about square one. Square one is at the very beginning. Everything has to be done and going back to square one always feels like a colossal failure. Square two? It’s somewhere in-between square one and done. Square two is where you’ve still made progress but there’s still a long way to go.
Take the floors. We will – eventually – rock and roll on those suckers when we can start laying floors. But until that groove is successfully cut? Well, the floors are just collecting dust and cat hair in my dining room, leading to an overwhelming sense of chaos in the house. Definitely a square two situation. Professionally? I’m still in the “gift of a year” to figure out what my next life is going to look like. I’m not certain about anything right now. But at least I know I’ve still got over 350 days to figure it out.
Here’s the other thing I’ve learned about square two: it’s better than square one but it’s not a place I want to linger. So, I need to do some serious thinking and planning. First up? A full weekend – starting at 4 p.m. tomorrow – without my job. This weekend is about family, home, maybe a little football and passing my Global Entry interview. Time away is going to provide the perspective that dwelling on next steps can never provide.
And as for home? I can’t fix the groove issue – my husband is our engineer and carpenter here – but I can fix the rest. There’s no good reason why I can’t have a clean-ish house and 600 square feet of flooring laying around. I’ll figure it out and when I do? No, it’s not going to feel like square three. It’s going to feel like square two but just more clean. That’s all I’ve got for now. I am firmly at square two.
The Yuppie Homesteader 