I've somehow been roped into another job that I didn't want to do. Well, that's not entirely true. It isn't that I didn't want to do it, it's just that I didn't want to start it anytime soon.

I had planned to spend most of this year working on the building, the rock bank near the house and the garden, getting everything set up and organized. I also had planned to construct a second bathroom at my house, an effort that was launched in self-defense. In a home with more women than men, it's always better to have at least two bathrooms. I was asked by a 5-year-old recently, "Daddy, can you put the toilet seat down after you use the potty?"

It's hard for me to make my "gravity favors the woman" argument with a firm-willed child of 5. I just feigned partial deafness, a ploy enjoyed by men for generations. It, along with selective hearing, are defense measures put in place to protect men from an over-abundance of descriptive sentences about topics in which we have little or no interest. If you don't really understand that, you're probably a woman.

Anyway, I was talking about my new project. When I went home for a late lunch on a recent afternoon, I received a surprise. Instead of the visions of imaginary leftovers I had dancing in my head, I saw the reality of a harsh white stripe painted across the dining room ceiling, ending with a splat near the edge of the wall. I saw this before I went into the kitchen, but I'll get to that soon enough.

As if I needed another reminder, I thought again about how women and men seem to go about things in very different ways. For instance, if I wanted to upgrade the ceiling in one room, I would focus all my energy on that project until it was my consuming passion. In that way, I would ensure that the job was finished as soon as possible and also that it was done correctly.

However, sometimes other people in my house don't think like I do. In order for me to even consider such a job, I would first remove the furniture, carefully removing the trim and all the protruding nails and spackle the holes, taping the windows and bottom edge of the walls and covering the floor with plastic. I would then start painting the ceiling until it was finished and move on to the walls. Finally, I would add the trim, which I would pre-paint, to the newly painted walls and ceiling.

However, I came in to find a paint-soiled sheet tossed over the cherry hutch and a line of paint from the wall to the middle of the room. With the blob of paint gently smeared on the edge of the wall, it resembled an exclamation point. Seeing that, I decided to include it in my first sentence after entering the house. "What are you doing!" It wasn't really a question, but it was answered nonetheless. The pictures were still on the walls and a lonely drip of paint was slowly oozing down the wall just above a picture that was needle-crafted by my late grandmother. I snatched the picture and, after railing about the haphazard way of doing things, I then walked into the kitchen and was stupefied after seeing an alcove that appeared to have been struck by vandals–the apple wallpaper border was torn down broken trim pieces littered the floor. "I've decided to re-do the kitchen," came my reply to the aforementioned rhetorical question. I still don't know how that has anything to do with painting an exclamation point in another room, but had high hopes that someone might explain it for me.

Being a brave sort, I asked about the 'work' in the dining room. "I decided to see how the ceiling beams would look painted another color, but I didn't like it," came the enigmatic answer. "So I decided to re-do the kitchen."

I don't know how painting around furniture and skunk-striping the ceiling makes sense, but maybe that isn't a requirement.

After discussing the matter for a good while, I learned that lunch was not in the equation. Being taken aback as I was, I said, "We can't start major renovation projects in two rooms!" Then I went on to give the aforementioned explanation of how to do it the 'right way.' To my surprise, it was agreed with immediately. I should have known then that I had been duped into remodeling the dining room. However, being male, it took several hours for me to understand what was going on, let alone who was duping whom.

After a bit more discussion, it was determined that work would begin in the dining room with the removal of all pictures, hangers, furniture and other items. That's when I learned that "those old windows will just have to go." My own ideas that it might be better to do such work when the sun was sunny this summer fell on deaf ears. Men aren't the only ones with selective hearing.

The room looked so bad that it suddenly became intolerable, regardless of my protests. Never-you-mind that it looked just fine for the past four years or so. A certain someone walked through and, with a peculiar glance at the black ceiling accents, discovered life wouldn't be worth living if such a room were allowed to exist for even one more day. Since its time had come, so had mine. So let it be written; so let it be done.

And that is how I found myself sucked into this endeavor for which I saw no rhyme or reason. Of course, I might secretly admit that such prompting can often lead to some of my most productive times in life. However, such production is done kicking and screaming all the way. Well, perhaps that's a bit melodramatic, but sometimes dramatic gestures and muttered complaints are all that a curmudgeon has left as he screws, hammers and staples his way through life. Later that evening, when I came home from work, I found a barren room with most of the trim torn away and two old naked windows shivering in the breeze. They did look pitiful, but they had seemed just fine with me so long as they were hidden behind the sheers and drapes that covered them right up until lunchtime.

Still baffled, I realized that somewhere between a cup of coffee and bedtime, I found myself living in a construction zone that hadn't been imagined even a few hours earlier. The tasks had not appeared on any of my plans or lists. Even so, it is, painted it into being with a skunk stripe and a bit of trickery.

However, the one thing that would bother me more than being thrust into a project is watching a project being done improperly. It's a weakness that cripples as surely as kryptonite annuls the strength of Superman. Maybe I need a motto, like "He's faster than a speeding drill bit, more powerful than a table saw, able to leap over paint buckets with a single bound." Then again, maybe I'll just stop complaining and get the room back in order. Talking doesn't paint the ceiling.