Jul 5, 2017 3 min read

Another day, another remodeling project. My oldest daughter and I had been working together to stain some tongue and groove boards a nice, cherry color before they became a bedroom ceiling. That is the simple version of what happens. Here’s how it looks when I’m involved.

Sawhorses are set up with two-by-fours across them to make a table for the boards we’re staining. Then, each board is laid across the two-by-four planks. The stain needs only to be applied to the top side, but all edges must be evenly colored.

After the stain is applied with a brush, rags are employed to then wipe off any excess stain. Extra care must be taken to ensure the excess is removed from all of the grooves and bevels on the boards. Then, the boards must be laid out flat to dry for a while before they can be stacked – again, somewhere flat – until they are used.

This job seems fun, at first. Especially when my girls are the ones holding the brushes. They laugh and joke around while they work, and often, they end up wearing nearly as much stain as the boards do. I had volunteered to help, however, so a brush found its way into my hand.

The first few boards were slow, as I figured out how much stain to put on my brush to provide adequate coverage without using so much that I was wasting it when I wiped them off. Slowly, I picked up speed. My girl and I stained board after board. We became fluid in our system; when our boards were finished, one of us moved to take them to where they were laid out to dry while the other would replenish our workspace with new boards.

The stack of boards seemed never-ending. I began to wonder if we would ever finish. I started competing with myself to see if I could stain more boards this hour than I had in the previous one. After four hours, the final board became visible. Praise God!

When the last board was drying, I decided to lie down in the grass to allow my back muscles to relax a little. After standing, somewhat hunched over, for several hours, I had a knot in my back that felt like it was the size of a fist. I didn’t even know if I would be able to move again when it was time to clean up. I briefly considered sleeping in the yard so I didn’t have to try.

I had barely finished that thought when I felt a little wiggle under my right shoulder blade. I readjusted, figuring I was imagining things. A moment later, I felt it again, under my right kidney. This time, it was much more definitive and insistent. There was an animal beneath me.

Despite believing I couldn’t move mere seconds before, I leapt up from the ground, screaming. Everyone stopped what they were doing to stare at me as I tried to brush away the creepy crawly feeling from my back. As we all watched, a tiny mole scurried from where I had been lying into the taller grass a few feet away. A few eye rolls and giggles occurred before they went back to work.

Since I was already up, I helped put away the tools and clean up our work area. Exhausted or not, I had no intentions of lying back down in that grass. Maybe ever.

Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.