The garage is a museum of projects I started in 2019

Here's the thing about my garage. It is not a garage. It is a shrine to the man I thought I was going to be in the spring of 2019. There is a half-built workbench in the corner. There is a box of tile for a backsplash we abandoned. There is, I am not kidding, a kayak. I have never kayaked. I do not know how the kayak got here. Lisa says I bought it. I have no memory of this transaction.

Last weekend I tried to reclaim one square foot of floor space. Just one. I moved a bin of Christmas lights and found behind it a bin of Halloween lights and behind that a bin of lights of unknown origin and purpose. My father-in-law walked in, surveyed the scene, said you got a lotta lights, and walked back out. That is the most he has ever said to me about my home.

The promises I make to myself every spring:

• This is the year I hang the pegboard. I have owned this pegboard since Obama's second term.
• The kayak goes on Facebook Marketplace. It does not. It never does.
• One shelf a weekend. I will build one shelf. By July. Then I will stop.

Anyway. I closed the garage door. Problem solved. See you next April.