The last two days have been days of building. Yesterday Rick and I spent most of the day at Denmark building the vanity for our Florida main bathroom. The glory of being married to a technical education teacher is that if we purchase the wood, we can go into the shop on the weekends and build whatever we want with a wonderful wood shop at our disposal. Rick took dimensions for the new vanity when we were down in Florida in April, and he was able to draw the plans in CAD. We purchased cherry wood for the face frame, drawers, and doors, and maple plywood for the rest. We chose cherry because it is easy to work with even though we plan on painting the main vanity white. Writing those words pains me since we are both opposed to painting any wood that has a good grain pattern, but in this case we think that cherry would look out of place against the floors if we chose to stain it. I want this house to be bright, clean, and filled with light.
We had already done the exterior and interior walls of the vanity and the drawer boxes. Yesterday we finished the face frame, toe kick, drawer fronts, and simple flat-panel doors. We brought the component parts home because we are not going to assemble the vanity or have it painted until we get to Florida. Building the vanity gives us two advantages: we can have exactly what we want (six full-extension drawers with double doors in the middle), and we can have it for a fraction of the cost. We priced a similar vanity at an area cabinet shop for almost $3000, and even with expensive drawer slides, good wood, and pricey hardware, we will have a beautiful vanity for less than $1000.
We both would rather assemble the vanity here, but we are trying to move a household of essentials in a 12 foot trailer, so that particular piece will travel better flat, as will the beautiful cherry tables that Rick is in the process of making. Our southern household is going to be decorated in "early American attic," -- a mixture of camp chairs, old lamps, ancient dressers, and blow up mattresses for now. One set of tables will be resurrected from the basement since they were the first furniture we bought right after our marriage 35 years ago, and the other set of tables will be the ones we are building, circa 2011.
Today I tried to build a little organization into the stacks of files and office decorations that came home with me last Friday. My goal was to get the paperwork filed so that I could have access in my upstairs office to the folders I think I may use in the fall. The rest of the folders would be "inactive" files, stored in the basement, that I will have as backup if I ever am desperate enough to teach a one-credit vocational diploma class or a writing class again. If that urge ever does come, I will have to call good friends so they can talk me out of such foolishness.
As usual, my goals were greater than the time I had to fulfill them. Other needs like laundry, baking bread to use up over-ripe bananas, trips to the grocery store, and calls to make appointments for later in the week all took up time. I had a delightful lunch with my friend Bonnie whom I had neglected in trying to finish this last semester; however, that put me further behind in the paperwork.
Late afternoon found me building more toward the future. An appointment at the bank to close on our loan for the Florida house helped us step closer to that dream. After dinner, I found a message from Cengage regarding my forthcoming contract with them -- once again building toward the future. In the midst of all that activity, the paperwork got little of my attention.
But I guess that is what retirement is all about. If goals exceed time, I will always have tomorrow. My life for the past 29 years has revolved around paperwork-- either creating it, reading it, or grading it. Now I have to deal with the consequences of those actions, and I will... but not until tomorrow.
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