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Ruralite Cafe: Published 4/06/00By Lisa Majors-DuffWorking under deadline pressure |
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The egg timer I borrowed from the cafe is ticking the seconds down in the room next door. I'm only able to sneak away and write for six minutes at a time in between dings.
Those of us in the journalism business know about deadlines. They are so harsh a reality in this line of work that I rarely find myself thinking about what might happen if I miss one. Having a deadline come and go without producing the goods could only result in something horrible. The guilty parties, I imagine, would be made to stand in a line and be shot dead. That, of course, is where the word comes from, right? The possibility of being offered a blind fold is more acceptable to me tonight than missing the deadline I set for myself at home. This particular deadline requires Greg and I to completely transform our child's bedroom from a baby's boudoir of cute forest creatures enjoying a never-ending day in the park to a more adventurous motif of killer whales and sea otters swimming below a glow-in-the-dark Milky Way. The work is being done this week - spring break - while Niki is in Florida with her grandparents. The idea for the killer whales and otters came from her fascination with her Aunt Jennifer's job at SeaWorld in Orlando. In fact, as most of us in Western North Carolina watched in amazement Tuesday as snow fell from the sky, my child was probably standing on a man-made beach hand-feeding a school of dolphins. "If we don't get done, she can sleep on the couch," was Greg's opinion on the subject as 10 p.m. came and went. I didn't see it that way. I remember being about Niki's age when my parents packed me and my sister off to Grandma's house for a couple of days. When we returned, what had been our messy toddler room had been made over, almost if by magic, into a school-aged child's paradise with a chalkboard and desk for playing school. I remember the excitment as I opened the closet door and had no need to jump back for fear of some large toy falling on my head. This is what I want for my daughter when she returns later this week. The promise we made to our daughter to redo her room was really a promise we made to ourselves when Niki, the 2-year-old, began pulling the old paper off the walls to amuse herself in the mornings as we tried to steal a extra couple minutes of sleep. We purchased tall pieces of furniture in an attempt to hide the damage, but the shredded remains only became more tattered over the years. For her sixth birthday, we said, let the transformation begin. Greg and I spent nearly four months last summer redoing our kitchen and dining room. Exactly what made me think we could clean out Niki's room, remove old wallpaper, apply three different colors of paint, put up new wallpaper and border, and replace her toys so nothing appears to be missing, all in six days, escapes me. I guess I was reliving what it must have been like for my parents to remodel a room for two in about the same time frame. But with or without day-light saving time, 11:30 p.m. is still late, and 5:45 a.m. is meer minutes away. With two nights to go, all that remains is the border and the reassembly process. |
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