The 40-Hour Lent

My wonderful landlords are painting my apartment this week. I've been here over five years, and it was due a re-freshing, certainly. George and Fred recommended it before Thanksgiving, hoping to take advantage of my holiday trips to Atlanta, but I just couldn't pull it together. Nor could I get myself up for it before my recent week with GrandBoy. Finally, though, I had to suck it up and get it done.

See, I couldn't work it out logistically. I live in a tiny one bedroom apartment, and while not crammed from floor to ceiling, the place is generously consumed with furniture, books, pictures on the wall, and closets filled to the gills. Now, the first proposal was to paint both the apartment rooms and the insides of the closets in one go. I finally had to tell George that there was no way I could move everything out of the closets and move all the furniture to the middle of the rooms and leave enough room for the painters to get to the walls.

So we struck a compromise - closets on one day, rest of the walls the next. So, here I am, in the middle of the two painting days. Took me all last evening and part of this morning to clear out three closets. The good news is that the closets are nicely painted (and dry) and the shelving reinforced. Yea! But before I can do anything else, I must put everything back into the closets. And knowing me, I'll get bogged down in reorganizing them. Sigh. Then to face pulling all the books from the shelves, removing the pictures from the walls, getting the ladder and taking down all the stuff on top of the kitchen cabinets. Oh, yeah. And pushing the furniture to the middle of the rooms, as best I can.

Discipline. It takes discipline, especially after a full day's work. All righty, I can do this. But, dear Lord, I figure I'm fulfilling this year's Lenten discipline in one fell swoop - a 40-hour Lent, if you will. No need for this 40 days/40 nights business. I'm in the middle of it right now - hoisting, shifting, shoving, boxing/unboxing, sweeping, finding stuff (oh! so that's where that went!), dragging, rearranging, sorting - requiring every ounce of physical and mental energy I've got.

So while the rest of you are eking out your six weeks of giving up/taking on, I'm halfway through mine. A 40-hour Lent. And once I get through this, I'll have a nice, freshly-painted apartment and all the chocolate I want.