"Don't even think about it…"

“Don’t even think about it,” said my son, about thirty minutes ago, as I, armed with paintbrush and paintcan, turned toward his bedroom.

He is tired of the touching up. Of mom painting doors and windows and advising him to be careful while he’s running about.

And it’s true that I have been going about touching up where I’ve touched up. Because it’s an old apartment and there’s always something else. And because H.o.p. is eight years old and, for instance, a couple of days after I’d painted my desk, I looked and saw fingerprints on the side of it.

“What happened here? I asked.

“Nothing,” H.o.p. said.

“Looks like fingers,” I said.

“I wanted to see if it was dry,” H.o.p. said.

I don’t know if I’m lucky or not that the landlord wasn’t around today. After realizing that the back room used to be the kitchen and that ventilation could be had through where the stove pipe (I guess) used to be, and seeing that there was a capped off water pipe (I believe), I went around measuring walls and decided with several more new, taller bookcases we could move the storage area into where the kitchen is now if I could convince the landlord to move the kitchen back to where it used to be. “What’s the big deal of moving an electric oven and the sink?” I thought, which is what the kitchen amounts to, and recollected he had once mentioned a previous tenant having a washer in the back room, perhaps where the capped off pipe is? So I occupied myself with that fantasy for several hours, reconsolidating things mentally and deciding that my old jewelry making supplies would fit in the bedroom if I got yet another bookshelf. Yes, I could make things possibly fit and have finally a workable kitchen with ventilation.

Then I heard that finally the computer has at last been diagnosed. Bad hard drive. Data is being imaged and I will probably (cross fingers) have the computer back tomorrow, which is good because some people have webwork that has to be done. Has got to be done. So I must have my computer and its programs and data.

H.o.p. will be glad when I get it back, as evidenced by the “Don’t even think about it!” Though his windowsill does need to be repainted. He sighed as I brushed up a few spots on the back of his door then I put up the paintbrush and went in and oiled the floor around his desk, then noticing that some nails were sticking out a bit from the kitchen threshold I fetched a hammer and pounded them back in.

Why doesn’t it feel like I have accomplished anything much the past ten days?

Now, if I moved the kitchen, then I would feel like I’d accomplished something. I’d be back there moving it tonight if I knew it could be done and how to do it.

Except I’m not sure we should move it. The storage area is nice to have and it would be effectively cut 2/3rds. But it would be nice to not have to move the dish drainer every time I need a work area.

“Don’t even think about it,” is probably what the landlord would say.