Pack My Bags in medias res

PACK MY BAGS in medias resTuesday, October 2, 2012 - Tacoma, Wash. - Just when birdloft was getting comfortable in the new shop - surprised in the drowzy afternoons, catching myself moving easily across the floor from material to tool - it's time to shift gears temporarily, head for a few weeks to a lakeside jobsite.My wife and I, the four arms of insitu design|build, are beginning the framing of a garage-loft we designed a couple of years ago now. (Anything worth doing takes a little time.) It is going to be wicked exciting of course. We will be testing ourselves - and the clients no doubt. This thing we designed on laptops is finally going to emerge from the digital, from the ground, take shape among Douglas firs and cedars.So the workshop will be quiet.The chickadees, who demand seed as soon as I swing open the door, will have to tend to other humans and other feeders.The neighbor across the alley, who works nights, who has been sleeping in the basement during the hotter weather, will be undisturbed by my midmorning whining planer, the dry, loud grind of the belt sander. He’ll be able to sleep through lunch.And the cats, who have patrolled the back yard longer than any of us, will have it again to themselves, to yowl in, and fight over - the Oreo and Stubtail daily pre-dawn rematch.But the jointer will stay. The planer. The bar clamps, the router. Not every tool will leave the shop. And I’ll be back soon enough. I'll sneak back on breaks. I’m in the middle of making a bookcase. Have a killer diagram from the client - all wood slab in the horizontal, all steel rod for the verticals. Is going to be a beauty. I haven’t seen it anywhere else. New form yet again from salvaged, repurposed material. Super light.Yes, pack the tool bags, pack the truck. Right when I was getting into the middle of things (in medias res). But the shop will wait. The air there will keep. Like an inland sea will tend to itself in the interim.