Tuesday, October 13, 2015

De/Construction

As (I believe) I've mentioned on here before, my writing and publishing schedule is a little odd. It is this way by design. Between home, work, and racing season the fall is a really rough time for me. As such I laid out 25 or so posts to fill the time between September and December during August and September of this year. So, going forward as I write I have to keep in mind that you will be seeing these things quite a bit after the events I'm writing about have happened. 

I'm interjecting this post into the publishing schedule. I wanted to have some information here on the nursery.

There isn't a huge reason for me to explain all that. Writing and publishing this blog has a fairly immersive feel to me, though, so I'd like to bring you along. If any of that nonsense feels like filler to you, however, feel free to skip my useless explanations in the future.

This weekend was Columbus Day weekend. We had set a goal of finishing up the nursery by this time, so it meant really buckling down and doing it. Thursday of this week we went and bought the flooring materials and paint, and then Friday handled all of the moving of things. Saturday I removed the carpet, carpet tacks and the rest with the help of some friends. I was stunned to find the sub floor in impressive condition! Elsewhere in our house this was never the case. I will talk about that later.

With the sub-floor cleaned up we decided to prime and paint the walls before laying down the new floor. So, the first coat of primer and then paint went up Saturday. Sunday saw us finishing the second coat and laying down the new laminate flooring with the help of two very good friends. We decided to have the bedrooms be one type of laminate, and the living room/kitchen another type. It looks pretty sharp.

Then we put together the crib and moved the glider and ottoman in there. Tomorrow we'll be putting the bureau together (which I'm told is a really big job.) Then some decorations. It is odd. Since we've moved into our house this room has been mostly filled with stuff. We always intended for it to be the nursery, but we never really needed a third bedroom during the time we were renting so I think we were at a loss for what to do with it in the interim. Now it feels a bit more real, seeing the crib and the glider, the beautiful youthful green and robin's egg blue walls. Something big is coming.

I feel like the house is more complete now. It belongs to us more, somehow. It looks quite different than it did a year ago, and we've become different people just by the act of working on it. I never imagined I would know how to lay new flooring. I never figured I'd run a water line to the frige before, either.

This coming weekend is the Baystate Marathon up in Lowell, Mass. My wife and I will be heading up on Saturday to stay overnight, and I'll be running the next day. From the info I've seen in the emails things are different than when I last ran this marathon (my very first marathon) in 2013. Shuttles now from the hotels, and no more pasta dinner. Oh well. Should still be a lovely run, on a course that is still the definitive race I think of when I hear people talk about the distance of the marathon.

Will I run a PR? I don't know. I feel like I'm in pretty good shape and I've had an uneventful taper. I've gotten in some easy miles these couple of weeks with friends, running for the fun social benefits the sport can bring. I've also hit a stretch where I now have to consider seriously altering my race schedule as we get closer to the due date. That was expected, but it is making this all feel more real to me.

I've been tossing around the idea of running a local marathon on my birthday. It is two weeks after Baystate. I certainly wouldn't expect to PR that one at all. I'd expect to take it easy, give it to myself as a gift of motion to start my third decade on the planet. But we'll see how I feel. I've never run that distance so close together before.

Here's to the unpredictability of life, and the roads that take us to a more complete space.

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