hijack

You know how sometimes a project you’ve been thinking about for weeks will suddenly percolate to the top of your mind and you’ll suddenly be seized with a compelling need to complete it? Please tell me you know exactly what I’m talking about. I need to know I wasn’t possessed by demons.

I was thinking about two projects while I was walking trough the aisles at Menard’s this afternoon. One of the projects was an almost complete plan to put up a pair of book cases in the spare bedroom, and the other project was a half-baked idea to wire a couple of electrical outlets so I could hang a couple fluorescent lamps in the basement. The book cases have priority because we still have big cardboard boxes filled with books that really have to be uncrated and stacked on shelves before they decompose where they’re sitting, so naturally I spent the afternoon with my arm stuck up to the elbow in a freshly-cut hole in the basement trying to fish electrical wire between the floor joists.

I couldn’t understand why I was doing that, even while I was doing it. I kept asking myself, Why am I even doing this right now? I was even saying it out loud. It was a project that was so back-burner, it wasn’t even on the stove. It was in the freezer, still wrapped up in heavy butcher’s paper, solid as a rock. I thought maybe I’d get around to it later in the winter when all the other projects had been bumped down the list and I was looking for something to do. But no. Some weird need boiled to the surface and I found myself drilling holes in the ceiling, talking to myself.

Well, it’s done now. The subterranean vaults of Our Humble O’Bode are no longer dark and forbidding, and that project won’t be hijacking my afternoon ever again. I feel so used.