I’m at the kitchen table. The coffee is good. I have a lot to think about and not much of a story to tell.

It seems like I end up here more often since I retired. I’m not on the road so much meeting new people and going to new places. I don’t rub shoulders with living, breathing human beings on a daily basis. I don’t shower regularly, and I just don’t get out much.

This is hard on the creative process for writing.

This week has been different in that I’ve had the whole week to myself. No trips up to Newnan. Marion has been in Guatemala with a group from her church. I took her and two others to the airport early on Monday morning. They fly back tonight.

While there, they built two houses for two families who before today did not have much of a place they could call a home. This has been her third trip to Guatemala. The houses are small and basic, but still, it’s hard work. It’s hot. And they do it all in three days, from concrete floor to tin roof and lights.

It takes a special spirit to go someplace out of your comfort zone and work for the benefit of others. I admire them for doing this.

Thusly (I always look for opportunities to use this word), I have been left to my own devices all week. With the exception of Tuesday, I spent almost every waking hour working out in my shop. You’ve read about it. A retired fella needs something to do. He needs a place to hang his tool belt.

Slowly but surely, I am turning a basic empty metal building into some crazy workspace I’ve had in my head for years. They’re never going to film an episode of This Old House here. This is not “Ye Old Yankee Woodshop” with Bob Villa, who has every shop toy on the planet. I swear, I’ve never seen not even one spec of dust in his shop.

I love sawdust. I like walking on sawdust. The aroma of sawdust should be turned into a French-sounding cologne. La Doost de la Saw. You can probably tell, French is not my strong suit.

Most days I end up with sawdust plastered all over my clothes. Flannel shirts are like sawdust magnets. It took me a while to learn not to wear one in the shop. The shirt fibers and tiny wood chips join together like Velcro. You can’t brush them off. You can hardly blow them off with the compressor.

You put a shirt like that through the washer and dryer and you end up with wood chips in the strainer and the lint screen.

Speaking of washing. It occurred to me late Thursday that I have not done one lick of yardwork or housework this week. I just got consumed in my shop and forgot about everything else. I noticed this after my shower on Thursday evening when I had one pair of underwear left in the drawer.

“Hmm.” I thought.

Half of the bachelor species would probably just plan on wearing the last pair more than one day to get by until he might run a load through the washer. The other half might just make a run to the store to buy a “5 pack” off the shelf.

Though I might, on occasion, belong to the first half, I decided that I would stay out of the shop on Friday and get some things done around the house. When you’re on your own, you have to play many roles. Handy man. Domestic engineer. CFO. Landscape manager.

Housework is my least favorite. I confess that I didn’t do much. No vacuuming. I only washed and dried one load. I folded and put things away. I now have a few clean T shirts, jeans, and my underwear drawer is full.

In addition to my overflowing laundry basket, I’ve been neglecting my yard since the flood waters receded two weeks ago.

I built my house in the middle of a wooded slope next to a 100-year flood plain. Not the smartest location, I guess, but I love living here. The heavy rain pushed piles and piles of leaves downhill out of the woods and onto my front yard. What little grass I have is suffocating under there.

I normally keep a water hose coiled up on the ground by the spigot on the front corner of the house. The rush of water was strong enough to float it away and drag it into the woods behind the house. If it had not wrapped itself around a small trunk, it might have ended up halfway to the Chattahoochee.

The leaves cleaned up easy enough. I just had to get out there and do it.

The worst part was the mess that had floated up to within 20 feet of the back of the house and got deposited there. If it floats in, I don’t understand why it doesn’t float away with the water. It just settles.

The gods of the mighty Palmetto bring me gifts. Sludge. Sticks and logs. Plastic bottles. There’s even a bath towel from somewhere upstream. It all lays there like an ugly blanket, matted together.

I can see it from my screened porch. I have stood on the back terrace above it looking down at this mess for a couple of weeks now. I’ve been hiding in my shop far away. But today I take the shovel and rake and get to work.

All dreaded jobs seem like they will take longer than they actually do. I think we make it harder in our minds just so we can feel justified in putting off the doing of it. We start thinking, “wonder what it would cost to hire somebody to do this?” Then I feel ashamed for being weak.

Three things happened.

One. I found a dinner fork that belongs to me. “How strange,” I thought. I have no idea how it got here, but the water uncovered its loss and gave it back to me. I stuck it in my pocket.

I also learned again the falsehood of my dread. This was not back-breaking work. I was done in about an hour. I even got the sand and gravel cleaned off the driveway where it had washed in like the leaves on my grass.

Third. I woke up at 4am with my right hand numb. It took me a while to figure it out, but my tendinitis has flared up again. I guess pulling a rake and shoving a shovel is not as easy on me as it used to be. It kind of ticks me off.

I tell you all this to say that life is about the simple things. Most of our days are just ordinary days. Nothing too exciting. Nothing too demanding.

The best in us learns to be content with ordinary. We know that any day can bring wonder. Any day may turn out to be a lifelong treasure.

Maybe it is just another day. But I’ll take all of them I can get.