How I Spent My Summer Vacation

September, 1997

Wait, let me rephrase that.

How I spent my summer without going on a vacation.

No, that's not right either.

How I nearly went nuts spending too much time in the house with my family while it was too hot to go outside.

That about captures it.

When this season started, I looked forward to a summer at home, an unbroken span of time in which to renew my garden and my spirit. The drought soon dried up hopes of the former. Yet, the latter quest proved even more difficult.

Traditionally, we manage to get away each summer for a week of sand and sunburn, which, if not exactly restful, at least has the positive benefit of making us glad to return home. This year, though, a logistic logjam developed, due to the plans, jobs and desires of our three children. So, we decided to eschew the getaway and tackle the long-delayed and much-dreaded job of painting the exterior of the house.

Sane homeowners hire professionals to do this sort of thing.

Think what fun they're missing.

Life never seems more precious than when you're bouncing gently on a suspension ladder 20 feet above the ground with a bucket of paint dangling at your elbow. Priorities become focused at this level. Especially when the wasps you have recently evicted from their cozy roof-line location buzz near with retaliation on their tiny minds, if indeed they have minds.

Long before you get to this point in the painting process, however, you must get through several critical preliminary stages, i.e., cleaning, scraping and choosing a color.

Cleaning the exterior of our house, which rests snugly against some scruffy woods, consists almost entirely of removing the various members of the insect kingdom who have staked a claim on most surfaces. We swept away the daddy long legs under the eaves, patched the holes from the carpenter bees, hosed out the mud daubers in the shutters and eliminated the yellow jackets who had chosen the trim around our front door as this year's hideaway.

I don't even want to talk about the sanding and scraping. Picture paint flakes showering down on a sweaty upturned face.

However, finally we arrived at everyone's favorite part about painting: choosing the color.

Or, as my youngest child sees it, choosing the colorless.

When we walk into the paint store my 11-year-old daughter reaches naturally for the lavenders, the aquas, the mint green and apricot shades.

I suppose at one time I might have considered such lively color schemes, but in midlife I find I'm more inclined to choose from a more subdued palette.

How about a nice quiet gray? I suggested.

My daughter tossed her pretty paint strips in disgust.

Well, maybe one day we'll paint her room lavender. For now, though, we decided to replace our sickly olive green with a cool, soothing gray.

Easy enough to find, we thought.

Until we began considering those little color sample strips which are supposed to make the job easier. Too many selections can be as frustrating as too few.

The task would be nearly impossible were it not for the imaginative efforts of the paint companies who carry the differentiation of shades of gray to its logical, albeit maddening, extreme. Thus, instead of light gray, dark gray, greenish gray, blue gray, etc., we face choices like Homburg Gray, Summit Gray, Gray Bridge and the poetic Wayfarer Gray. The majority of the gray shades, however, abandon the dreary gray tag and resort to more evocative imagery. Yet, who would paint his home Stormy Night? Wouldn't that be asking for trouble? Maybe not as bad as selecting Whitewater, but certainly not as comforting as Pussywillow.

You know you've been staring at paint strips too long when you can actually distinguish between March Wind and April Showers.

At length, we settled on Fjord, largely because we all enjoyed saying the word. Maybe it was the heat.

Anyway we're making progress. And with painting, unlike many demanding jobs that devour time without producing much in the way of tangible results, the results are clearly discernible to the naked eye. Sometimes we wish they were a little less discernible, especially that blob above the window, but all in all, we take satisfaction in reaching concrete objectives.

True, we have a long way to go and we haven't yet tackled the wall where the ivy lifts shingles off their moorings and cloaks the chimney beyond recognition.

Still, as the paint goes on, my spirits lift.

Even going gray has its rewards.