Age and kidney dialysis have finally caught up with my husband, Val, who always took care of all manner of projects that needed doing around the house. Our oldest son, Michael, who lives in New York city, has decided to try to fill the gap and serve as a weekend "project manager" for some of our more pressing needs.
The only problem is that Mike's ambition sometimes exceeds his talents. However, true to his red-headed temperamental, but determined, nature, nothing stands in the way when he has decided to do something. He favors the "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" philosophy.
As readers of this column may recall, a little over a year ago, two kittens, a Siamese female and a lilac lynx male, arrived to "own us" and share our home. They have grown, and along with their healthy growth, we now have a problem of an increasing amount of litter debris.
Currently, their litter pans, (no thing of beauty to see or sniff) are ensconced in our powder room. I had hoped to have their litter located on the landing leading to the basement; nicely out of the way of both sight and smell, but Kintaro, the male cat, is as inquisitive as he is handsome and would surely find all manner of interesting but potentially hazardous items to investigate in our basement.
Michael had the solution! He would simply fashion a door at the bottom of the stairs so the cats could not enter the basement. Additionally, in the small window on the landing (soon to be the cat's powder room), a fan would conduct any odors to the outside. "Brilliant," I thought, readily agreeing.
But what was originally conceived as a one-day job has, so far, lengthened into three weekends with numerous trips to Home Depot to buy Sheetrock, wood to frame the door, the accordion folding door itself and many tools of all shapes and sizes.
I now understand why the Egyptian pharaohs who planned the pyramids where they would spend the afterlife started construction about the same time as they cut their 6-year molars. Additionally, workers must be fed, and Michael is certainly no exception.
His tastes while he is in the creative process tend toward expensive, exotic foods like artichokes, out-of-season raspberries and an endless supply of chocolate chip cookies.
My daughter-in-law, Ronnie, did try to signal me a warning of sorts when Mike first suggested this project. I now recall that she mentioned something about hoping I wasn't in a hurry while shaking her head at Michael and looking heavenward, but I was too caught up in Mike's enthusiasm to notice.
This past weekend, my husband finally hissed, "Wouldn't it have been cheaper to hire a handyman who knew what he was doing?"
"But this makes Michael feel he is helping us in our senior years," I explained, "and he assures me, it will look great when it is finished."
"There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start ... and so on." — Robert Byrne
Jean Cherni
is founder of Senior Living Solutions, a retirement advisory
service. Contact her at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or
15 The Ponds, Branford 06405.
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