Sally Breslin: My Life: I'M STILL HANGING IN THERE...THANKS TO HOME DEPOT!

I actually forgot to write my blog until this very moment because life lately has become well…a bit overwhelming. I’ve never been one to have a week where everything went smoothly, but this past one has been unusually crazy, even for me!

First of all, I’ve feverishly been working on a novel for a very prestigious publisher, but was given only three months to pen 85,000 words according to their editors’ specific guidelines. It’s challenging enough to write a novel using all of my own ideas, but when I have to follow someone else’s, well, that’s a real brain-buster. And believe me, I have very little brain left to bust.

Anyway, I managed to write the 85,000 words, but after reading back what I wrote, I’d have to classify the genre under, “Quick Cures for Insomnia,” so I’ve been editing and rewriting endlessly, trying to make the October 1^st deadline. That means my fingers and toes and everything else I can cross currently are crossed that I will finish it in time. I do realize I could have spent 12 hours a day for the past three months typing my already arthritic fingers to the bone only to end up being rejected…and dejected...but that's the risk we dreamers have to take.

Anyway, there have been disruptions during my penning of the Great American Novel. The first was the back deck, which has been in a rapid stage of deterioration ever since the day it was built. I paid the contractor for Trex – an expensive alternative to wood that looks and feels like wood but isn’t, and can withstand a party of elephants dancing on it.

But the contractor, like most of the contractors I’ve hired in my life, turned out to be less than trustworthy, and built the deck out of regular lumber – raw, untreated lumber, and then left town with the rest of my money.

I had the deck stained and sealed twice – or should I say, I paid to have it stained and sealed twice. The first guy I hired took a $250 deposit and I never saw him again (so much for trusting the great reviews on Angie’s List). The second did a nice job, but it didn’t last long, and the deck then proceeded to strive to beat the Guinness Book’s current record for the world’s fastest case of total wood rot.

So last week, as I was working on my novel, my thought process was disturbed when I heard a crash out back. I rushed to the door and discovered one of my dogs, the rottweiler, had fallen through the deck. She limped away from it, and long story short, had a knee-ligament injury.

And as I was rushing to her rescue, I tripped, fell, and banged up my knee and elbow. So let’s just say it wasn’t a great day for knees.

Anyway, I knew I had to repair the deck ASAP before my other dog also injured herself, so I called a few contractors for estimates. Had I asked them to spray the deck with real diamond dust, it would have been cheaper. So I got mad, and determined not to get gypped ever again, I measured the deck, calculated the lumber I’d need, and headed to Home Depot. For roughly $20, I not only bought the pressure-treated lumber my repair-project required, I also asked an employee to cut it into the appropriate lengths for me, which he gladly did. I was relieved because the only saw I own is an old-fashioned saw-toothed one, and my weak, flabby arms weren’t made for all that sawing.

I set to work that very afternoon. The first thing I had to do was remove the broken wood from the old deck. Unfortunately, the broken wood was screwed on with about 500 (or so it seemed) long, totally rusted screws, so owning not even one power tool presented a challenge. I, using my trusty Phillips-head screwdriver, and the aforementioned arthritic fingers, then spent the next two hours unscrewing. For that reason, when I added the new wood, I decided to use long nails instead of long screws.

Hammering nails, however, never has been my forte, mainly because for every aim of the hammer, I’m lucky if I actually hit the nail one out of five tries. And when I do hit it, it inevitably bends in half. So about 3,500 aims later, I actually managed to attach the new lumber to the deck. Then I gave it a light coating of stain and stood back and admired my work.

To my surprise, it didn’t look half-bad. And even better, it was sturdy. For my first attempt at deck-building, I deemed it a success. Here are the before and after photos of my handiwork.

Anyway, a few nights later, as I still was working endlessly on editing my novel, the dogs went to the door because they wanted to go out. It actually was about 3:00 AM, so it was technically morning by then, but pitch dark out. My yard is fenced in with five-foot chain-link fencing, so I opened the door and let them out, as usual.

Almost immediately, I heard a ruckus in the yard – in the form of growling and barking followed by yelps of pain. The barking and growling were pretty normal, but the yelps of pain weren’t. I rushed to the door and the two dogs came racing into the house as if they were being chased by Satan himself…and looking like this:

Well, I’m scheduled to have cataract surgery soon, but until then, I can’t drive in the dark, mainly because I can’t see a darned thing. So at 3:00 AM, I found myself wondering how I was going to get my two dogs to the emergency animal hospital, mainly because I could see a quill sticking out of Eden’s eye, and Wynter, whose mouth was stuffed with quills, was having trouble breathing. Meanwhile, the porcupine, wounded by the dogs, was staggering around out in the fenced-in yard.

If I’m still here and in one piece, I’ll tell you the rest of the story in my next blog-post. Meanwhile, I have to get back to editing my novel…if I still can concentrate long enough to remember what it’s about.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.