Turning the Corner
The deck, the deck, my kingdom for a deck. It has been eleven weeks since the work started on this damnable deck renovation. I had originally estimated (I thought conservatively) that it would take eight weeks. It now looks like I will be lucky if it is finished in thirteen weeks. That is a full quarter of a year, in this case the months of December, January and February. That’s a long time for any kind of renovation and seems especially long for a deck, but there it is. I recognize that the project went from a repair to a renovation to a replacement exercise, but that is only scant excuse since I had pros in construction, architecture and structural engineering opine that it was no more than a repair and then renovation, and they are all aligned now in the thinking that a replacement was always the way to go. I can’t tell how much of that outcome I forced by wanting it to be less of a job than it was versus all the balls bouncing in the wrong direction on us.
But at this point the cement board is almost all down and the low voltage wiring is going in on the palapa posts and under the joists. That leaves prep mud, waterproofing, tile, fascia siding, underneath gypsum and the glass rail to go. I would say we definitely have turned the corner on this deck. I will not jinx myself by suggesting that it is a downhill coast into home from here because that would belittle the craftsmanship Handy Brad needs to bring to the table on the prep mud and tiling. Watching Brad trying to figure the angles on the corner cuts today caused me to run out to Home Depot and buy several “Contour Gauges” to help him cut the corner pieces with less brain damage.
It also feels like we are turning the corner on this pandemic. There is a far greater risk of jinxing myself with that sort of statement, but I am still inclined to make it. Two of the four of us in this household have had our first vaccination and the other two are scheduled for theirs later this week. When I heard several of my motorcycle buddies express some concern about whether they would get their vaccinations by May, I shrugged and told them it was a piece of cake that they would get theirs soon. I know I felt that I was unlikely to get mine before June and here I got my first dose in the end of January. That optimism seems rooted in some reality since we are vacclimating 1.5 million or so people per day in this country and I have to believe that whatever backlog there is in NYC will get cleared up shortly.
What I also believe is occurring is that we are turning a corner in our risk assessments about travel and protection. This might be too soon for that and bear some degree of added risk, but we have had my sister and brother-in-law and my brother-in-law and his wife over (separately so as to keep total attendees to six at a time) and in both cases we determined that we were safe enough not to use masks. I don’t really know who made that determination, but in one group we had 4 of 6 vaccinated and in the other we had 3 of six vaccinated. I suspect that this vaccination situation combined with California lifting some of its outdoor dining restrictions has made us all a little less concerned than we were about infectious ness. Gary and Oswaldo have declared that they might head home on the weekend and feel that LA may be ready to welcome them back without undue risk. We have assured them that the guest suite is available should the situation make another reversal.
We have also planned our first trip in a long, long time. This is the May motorcycle trip to Utah. It will be about thirty people staying in one lodge and spending most of each day out on the road in the solitude of our respective helmets. But life at the Lodge feels more like a gathering than not even though it is less so than a sporting event or theatrical performance where we would all be sitting cheek to jowl. This is our Silver Anniversary ride of the American Flyers Motorcycle Club. We are a diverse group with equel numbers of Red and Blue minded members, but we have ridden together for a long time and want to get back out on the road together. Any way you slice it, planning a trip for four months from now is a form of turning a corner in travel planning.
I also heard Oswaldo declare that he is ready to start booking travel for the two of them again. We discussed the calculus and it really does get more complicated the older you are. On the one hand you are more vulnerable statistically. On the other hand, you have the time and the budget to travel. On the one hand you have only so many more years when you are likely to be able and willing to travel. On the other hand, for most of us, we have done a lot of traveling in our day and it wouldn’t be the end of the world to beg off. It’s a tough equation and a very personal one at that. But the travel industry should take heart that people like us are starting to crawl out of our socially distanced holes and have started to turn the travel corner.
There is a lot to be said on both sides of the ledger about talking about turning the corner on anything. People in the performing arts are still out there breaking a leg rather than being wished success in their performances. Staying on your toes for all the things that might still go wrong makes lots of sense, especially when it comes to something like a global pandemic, but then we all need to live confidently and optimistically as well so perhaps grabbing the gusto and seizing the day is the better way to go given that we all have only limited time on this earth to enjoy ourselves. It’s quite a delicate balance to strike and there are as many opinions on the proper and prudent balance as there are people. We can all think of extreme examples of people who take too much risk for our taste and we can probably also think of people who hold back and do not get from life all that it could offer them. Where is the righteous fulcrum? Wherever you feel it should be. Its harder when you are part of a couple and like all things in couple life, that requires some degree of compromise. When it comes to social groups there is no room for compromise and there is no room for berating anyone about risks they choose to take or choose to avoid. So long as the risks are apparent and they are properly weighed, the only job for the other members is to accept and move on.
Corners are meant to be turned and since we cannot, by definition, see around an approaching corner, we must have confidence and faith that turning the corner is a wise and important thing to do. Hopefully it is done with prudence and caution, and not with rash or reckless action. The definitions of all of those characteristics are the issue at hand and will continue to be as long as life has an ounce of risk in it. Good luck to all in turning your corners.