The driver

This guy, the guy with the pencils and the hots for the dremel tool, tried to draw me out about myself for a few minutes while I was getting to work taping, so I just gave a couple of brief answers ("Yep," "Moved away and came back,") and turned back to my work, without adding, "I'm really a writer," which is the first thing I wanted to say but was immediately glad I'd hadn't. I was wearing a film festival tshirt over dungarees and let him reach his own conclusions. I was just there to work. (And then go home and blog about it after, apparently, hahahahahaha!)

On day two of my adventure, I learned to grout, which at first felt like the activity from hell, until I figured out how to get the stuff to stick. I thought it was pretty fun after all. I got the idea of putting enough grout on there, really mashing it in (which is hard labor -- I'm taking credit on the little workout counter I update online) and making sure there's enough to fill in all the spaces and fill little curves that meet doorframes and a million other details. It's good work. And I have been getting fitter lately, figuring that it was for a good reason. Last time I worked up to painting our house. This time I want to do some decorating inside. It's time for an update.

I enjoy work I can do that is hard, too. Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a brain surgeon or something equally absorbing. Novel writing feels complex in a similar way. Like my brain was made to take all of those possibilities in and keep them running for a while all together. For some reason I'm a sucker for endurance when the outcome matters, too. I have never been able to get that up for racing, running or biking or anything like that, but if it's to do a task or a job (paint a house, get x miles down a river), I'm all over it. I have been pleasantly surprised to notice a tendency in myself I find I like and admire when I'm skiing: I am more and more willing to just go all out down some slope, no matter what it looks like, even off cornices and down little gullies and in trees. (The only exception: those steep volkswagen-sized mogul hills -- those are still scary to me, yet not as scary now that I ski better and am more fit than I have been for a couple of ski seasons.)

Deadlines help, too. I need a deadline for this novel. And for our bathroom project.