Kimberlee K.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been doing a lot of remodeling projects at my work—patching, sanding, painting, repainting—and today we started our biggest project yet: repainting the exterior of the building. It’s sure to be quite a task, in fact, with the influx of hell fire heat (it was 105° today!) we might be lucky to come out of it alive. If you don’t hear from me for a few weeks, just assume I’ve melted into a puddle on the asphalt and I’m in a much better (colder) place now.

After we set up our makeshift shade canopies (you know, to slow the melting process) I started to collect all of the materials we would need: brushes, rollers, exterior tape, paint trays, paint liners, and our newly purchased, 5 gallon bucket of Timberwolf Grey paint (Fierce, we know.) As I laid out them all out, trying to situate them in a somewhat logical way, I noticed a trail of weeds lining the base of our first wall. I thought for a minute, looking from the paint to the weeds, groaned, and walked back into the shop to grab some gloves. I then squatted down in front of the wall and started pulling the weeds up one by one, feeling the afternoon sun beating through the canopy onto my neck.

“I should have just waited until later to pull these,” I thought.

It was all worth it however, once they were gone and we were able to put our first few strokes of paint on the wall, without having to maneuver around them. If I’d waited, who knows how long I would have put it off. Pulling weeds was never going to sound fun or appealing, but it would always be something that needed to be done, and waiting would’ve only given the weeds time to grow taller, thicker and more problematic.

When we take the time to pull up the weeds, we make room to see the beautiful things growing beyond them. Sure, these weeds were just blocking a wall to paint, but who knows what will lay behind the next patch I find. Whatever it is, I’m not going to let a little sweat and dirt keep me from getting to it.