Garage Doors, Woodchucks & Life Lessons

My husband and I have been attempting to install a garage door these last two days. I am quite proud of the fact that so far it is going quite well and we hope to have it accomplished by tomorrow night. (I realize that a professional would be laughing their backsides off right now over the fact that it is taking us this long.)

These are probably “vintage” garage doors. We purchased two of them over 5 years ago and they have both been neatly stored in the machine shed, waiting for the day we got brave enough to try install them. This week IS the week when we are learning garage door installation as we are putting one of them in. Thank heaven for google and the instructions you can find there.  They do give you an instruction booklet with your garage door kit; but there are not nearly enough pictures and diagrams…..

Getting the doors on the garage, is one of the milestones in our home improvement project. Another milestone, in the garage construction, was laying a cement floor a few years back.  Before that it was a very powdery, uneven dirt floor. It is unreal how dusty your back hallway can get from all that fine powdery dirt when it is hauled in on the bottom of your shoes.

While we were still in the dirt floor phase we had a resident
groundhog/woodchuck make our garage his home. We aptly named him “Chuck”. (It could be we also lacked imagination in the name game.)
Chuck had holes dug everywhere in our garage and they all led to his underground home. During that
particular winter he was probably the warmest,hibernating groundhog ever.

He lived in our garage during a previous presidential election season. I found it kind of funny that he decided to line his home with the plastic from the candidate signs that were stored in our garage after that election. I wonder what Chuck would do with the signs from this years’ candidates? I think underground might be the best place for these particular candidates’ signs! He was probably a woodchuck who was way ahead of his time when it comes to discernment during election season.

There are times I think it would be handy to be like Chuck. When it gets below zero in the wintertime I think hibernating would be a fine thing to do. Below zero weather is so over-rated and to sleep through the coldest, snowiest months would not be all bad. I don’t think I would like missing the holidays though; so…… maybe not such a great time to be asleep? Hmmmmmm, I will have to think on that one a bit more.

I do know I will enjoy the garage doors once they are on and operational. The wild critters that have used our garage as a home through the years might not like it; but I will not miss all the chicken feathers (and other chicken “stuff”), the bits of twigs from birds nesting in the rafters, wild critters roaming in and out, and other bits and pieces from the outdoors blowing around in our garage.

I have the feeling that once those doors are on we are going to sit back and wonder why we waited so long. Sometimes life, things and projects can look so intimidating until you actually get started on them. Sometimes I think we just need to open the box, take out the parts, read the manual and get to it.

I am pretty sure Chuck never gave a thought to failure when he decided, those many years ago, to make our garage his winter home. He did not worry about being chased out or if he was welcome. He just came on in and did what he needed to do.

I may have to re-read this post the next time an intimidating project lays too long in the back of the shed. I may have to think like Chuck and just come on in.  I may have to remind myself to “just get to it” the next time life seems overwhelming or just to hard to even get started. I wonder if I am the only one who ever feels this way……I suspect I am not.

 

“We must be willing to fall flat on our faces. Fearlessly putting ourselves out there is simply a required part of the process. At the very least, it results in the gift of humility and, at best, the triumph of our human spirit.”
― Jill Badonsky