The baseboard and trim project continues at the farmhouse. A 12’ x 12’ room takes 48 feet of baseboard. A door requires 15 or 16 feet of trim. Windows vary by the size of the window. After our successes in the kitchen, we measured and made an estimate of how much more trim we would need to mill in order to complete the job. I made a trip to the lumber yard and came home with 130 feet of 4C 1 x 4 pine. The cost wasn’t bad, around $100, but having the lumber is just the start of the project. Each board has three grooves in it. We are using a table-mounted router to make the grooves, so that is three trips through the router for each board. Because we are being picky about our choice of boards, we ended up with 8’, 10’, and 12’ boards. We have no actual 12’ runs anywhere in the farmhouse, but it was the way to get the total length we needed. 8’ boards aren’t too hard to handle, but the 12’ boards take a bit of care to get them started and push them through the router. I have feather boards to keep the stock against the fence, but keeping the grooves even requires a bit of down pressure at the same time as the boards need to be fed through the machine. The direction of spin of the router means that the down pressure is held with the left hand and the board is fed with the right. I have roller stands to support the boards, but it still is quite a bit of work. I was able to set up the machine and mill all 130 feet of boards yesterday by about noon.

Of course, the job isn’t finished with the milling. Next we will do some hand sanding of the grooves, use a random obit sander to put the final smooth in them. Then they have to be stained and varnished, cut to length with all of the miters in the right places to fit, and nailed into place. It should keep us occupied for a while.

I was pleased with myself as I looked over the stacks of neatly piled boards on sawhorses while I ate my sandwich yesterday. Sitting there, I also noticed that my neck, shoulder and hand were fairly tender. I have a touch of arthritis in my hands, nothing serious, but they do hurt from time to time when I ask them to do jobs that didn’t use to bother me at all. Gripping those boards and holding them straight while feeding them through the machine made my hand tired and a bit sore. My shoulder and neck were also a bit stiff from standing at an angle and stretching to keep everything lined up.

It is a normal part of aging, but I don’t like to admit that I’m aging, especially to myself.

I’ve been reading “the Boys in the boat” by Daniel James Brown, the carefully-researched story of the University of Washington rowing team that surprised the world and came home with the gold medal from the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Brown delves deeply into the stories of the coaches and members of the team, telling of the hardships they faced and the tremendous preparation and hard work that led up to the victory. Competitive rowing is one of the most demanding whole body events in sport. There are no “time outs” or breaks. Rowers simply work at peak capacity for the entire race. The entire team has to breathe in rhythm to coordinate their action. The team the US sent to the 1936 Olympics was composed of young men who had felt the sting of the Great Depression and who were used to hard work, enduring discomfort, and feeling pain. Like all great athletes, they learned to work through the pain in pursuit of their goal.

I’m sure that a stiff hand, shoulder and neck, are nothing compared to the aches that those rowers experienced.

There are lots of things in life that are worth a little discomfort. Given the amount of pain that people experience, it is surprising that we don’t dwell on the pain more. We’ve just gone through another Advent and Christmas and told the story of the birth of Jesus over and over again. But we rarely think of the pain and fear that Mary must have experienced. It is hard work to deliver a baby and there is pain involved. A mother can’t avoid that pain and it can’t be stopped. When the baby is born the mother is usually completely exhausted. And then her work load increases with the little one to feed and clean and love.

We know that not all pain is to be avoided. We speak of growing pains and we know that a certain amount of pain is necessary for learning to take place. But we also live in a society that is pretty pain adverse. You don’t have to look hard in a drug store to find shelves full of medicines that claim to dull pain. The medicines work, too. Dentists and doctors speak of staying ahead of pain and write prescriptions for medicines that limit the amount of pain their patients experience. The crisis of opioid addiction in our country has its genesis not in thrill-seeking individuals in search of a “high,” but rather in actual pain and the effort to control it. In my years of working with people, I learned that every addiction has a direct relationship to pain. Before the addiction can be treated we must first face the pain.

It won’t be long before the minor discomfort I felt as I crawled into bed last night will be long forgotten. The approval of our family and their admiration of our work is enough incentive to keep me going. Others will visit the house and not even notice the trim work, but will notice the feel of the place and what a good home it is for children. Having rooms that feel finished is part of that feeling.

It is a good thing that when I am tempted to complain a bit about my pain, I have good stories about others who endured much more to read and to inspire me to work through the pain.