Ahh…Saturday morning. Time to start up on the master bedroom again after a two week hiatus. One of the weekends we were busy visiting family for the holidays. The second, we were working on our friend’s condo. I mixed some stains and tested them on the back of a wood trim. Tig was cleaning and stripping the paint off the base trim with his newly built Infrared Paint Remover.

Several hours later, we were not satisfied with the wood stains. The trim in the bedroom was not of high quality. The grain was wildly different from one piece to the next. The stains only magnified it. Noon rolled around, I looked out the window. Sunshine, clear skies, temperatures of 70 degrees.

“Let’s go to Walden Pond,” Tig said. I threw in the towel (actually, it was the respirator). We had some thinking to do anyways. Forty five minutes later, we were at Walden Pond. Our first stop was Thoreau’s replica cabin.
Thoreaus house

Inside was a simple bed, a cooking/heating stove in the chimney, a table, desk and three chairs, “…one for solitude, two for friendship and three for society.” (from Walden).

We walked around the pond, thinking and talking, but mostly thinking. I had forgotten how soothing and restorative nature can be. Seeing the cabin stirred up memories of our young, poor and happy days living in an Oakland studio. I had come-to-Jesus-moment. A house is but a shell. At the end of the day, it does not matter that the trim is painted or stained. At the end of the day, I want our home to be one filled with warmth and laughter, with family and friends for company, music playing, food and flowers on the table. And I want us to have time together. Time to go on day hikes, browse bookstores, travel foreign lands and dine with friends. None of this could happen if we spent the next few years holed up in our house, scraping paint.

All of this I knew, but I needed some quiet time to reflect, to remind myself what is truly important. To us, life is not about achievement, success or overcoming obstacles. Instead, there is one and only one struggle: to live each and every day according to our values. That is all we neeed to live a life that matters, but it is the hardest thing to do.

We decided a coat of white paint on the trim and a neutral color on the walls will be just fine. In fact, I have no problems living in a “manila envelope”. I was spending too much time agonizing over paint chips and swatches while time marched on relentlessly.

After our walk, I called up a friend whom I had not seen in a while; we all went out to dinner. We laughed and reminisced over food and wine. Then he came over to our house and Tig brought up a box of records from the basement. We sat around, played records and mp3s and talked until it was time to call it a night. Going to Walden Pond was the best thing we did on Saturday.