[RiddleRose]: 298.Gold Dust - NaNoWriMo '07.Chapter twenty three

Chapter twenty three.

Wren's dreams started out very mundane. He was mowing a lawn. He recognized the lawn as the one he had grown up with, in a suburban area outside of the city he now lived near. He had never moved in his life, preferring to stay behind when his parents went to California. He was slightly relieved at this normal and boring task to do, since he had, after all, been having some pretty crazy dreams lately. 

So he kept mowing. He hummed as he mowed, making up the tune as he went along. The lawn mower made a “chunk” noise about every half a second, and this formed the down beat of his tune. It moved around from being jazzy, to being hip hoppy, to being a definite reggae melody. Wren mowed in a state of zen, and let his unconscious brain do the humming. 

After some time, he found that he had done the entire yard. However, the activity was so soothing that he went over it once again, just to be sure that the grass was evenly clipped. Then, after cleaning the blades of the lawn mower, and oiling it carefully, he put it away. He admired it as it leaned artistically against a wall of the garage. 

He liked the angle so much, that he put the rake at the same angle to the lawn mower as the lawn mower was to the wall. He stood back and admired the effect. It was very nice. On the principle that it could only get nicer, he leaned the red shovel against the wall at a slightly less steep angle than the lawn mower. The two, when viewed one in front of the other, with the rake as well, made a lovely beginning spiral pattern.

Wren leaned a two by four against the red shovel. It was at a forty five degree angle between the wall and the floor. Wren knew this because he checked it with a protractor. Then he hung the protractor from one of the tines of the rake. 

He liked this idea so much that he hunted around the garage until he found some caution tape. He then meticulously cut three inch long pieces of the caution tape, and tied them in slip knots around the thirty tines on the rake. This created an interesting fluttering effect, which he thought would greatly enhance the marketability of the garage, even though there were no plans to sell it in the near future that his dream self knew of.

On this principle of increased marketability, he arranged the entire garage. He put the fifteen hammers on a rack, which he built by cutting a two by four into a length of six feet. He then pounded long, three inch nails into the newly created rack, at appropriate intervals for a hammer to be hung on. There were thirty nails involved, and one which was bent, and therefore unusable. 

The rack created was very crude, and Wren decided that it could do with a coat of paint. So he stood on a chair to reach the can of yellow paint, on the principle that chairs are good things to stand on when reaching for something that is high up and inaccessible, and that yellow paint would brighten up the dingy atmosphere that is inherent in all garages, be they ever so well kept. The yellow paint worked remarkably well in this respect, but the chair did not do its job correctly, instead of holding Wren up, it collapsed as he was getting down. Luckily, no one was hurt in the process.

Wren painted the board carefully, making sure that the paint covered the whole thing, and that it did not neglect the nails, or pool in little hollows in the wood. When he was done, after three hundred strokes of the brush, he washed the brush very very carefully, in hot soapy water, and then in cold water to rinse the soap out of the brush. Then he waited three hours for the paint to dry completely.

While he was waiting for the paint to dry, he went back outside to the lawn that he had just mowed. He took a pair of nail clippers with him. He gathered the little lines of cut grass into three large piles, and put them in the red wheelbarrow that was waiting for them. He wheeled the wheelbarrow to the edge of the garden, and began spreading the cut grass between the flowers. 

There were hydrangeas, and tulips, and irises, and lilies of the valley, and day lilies, and daffodils, and bleeding heart plants, and lots and lots of crocuses, although none of them were blooming. There were flax plants, and sheep's ear plants, and some large grasses, and some marigolds. There were two mall rose bushes, one with white roses, and one with red roses. There were bright red poppies, and some thyme. There was a walking stick plant, which twisted like something from a magician's garden.

The cut grass was to be spread evenly among all of these plants, and Wren did this cheerfully, though in actuality he had hated such yard work as this when he was little. He spent exactly one hour doing this. Then he went back to the lawn, and picked up individually the leaves that had fallen since he had mowed. He noticed absently that all of the seasons except for winter seemed to be happening at once.

He took out the tiny nail clippers which he had brought outside from the garage, and knelt on the freshly mown grass. He inhaled happily, enjoying the smell for a moment, before beginning to carefully look for grasses that were longer or shorter than the rest. Every time he found a long one, he cut it down to size with the nail clippers. After two more hours of this, he went back into the garage.

The paint was dry, so he put the rack up on the wall with superglue, and hung all of the hammers on it. It looked absolutely wonderful. Wren smiled at his handiwork, and tied little three inch strips of caution tape to the ends of the nails, to make it more festive.

After doing this, he sorted through five hundred nails and screws, sorting them into four piles, good screws, screws that were in some way broken, or just simply not shiny enough, good nails, and nails that were in some way broken, or just simply not shiny enough. This was very satisfying, and he hummed while he worked. He let his brain take care of the humming, merely providing accompaniment as he rhythmically dropped nails and screws into one of the four boxes, according to where he thought it should go.

After finishing with the nails, Wren in the dream went back outside. The dream Wren clipped some more grass, until about half of the lawn was completely even. The lawn looked simply stunning. Wren was proud of that half of the lawn. The other half looked good, but not as good as the half where every single blade of grass was a uniform length!

However, Wren's back hurt, so he went and did some more garage work. He organized the various garden tools, which were lying around haphazardly on and ugly shelf in the back of the garage. The first thing he did was take the tools off of the shelf. Then he washed the shelf with hot soapy water, and rinsed it with cold water. Then he waited for the water to dry. 

While he was waiting for the water to dry, he sorted the garden tools into several categories. There were trowels, both large and small, there were small hand picks, and there were pots of sizes big, medium, small, very small, and unbelievably enormous. He stacked the pots of the same sizes together so that they looked nicer. Then he stacked them neatly on the now dry and clean shelf. The shelf smelled of lemons, because he had put a little lemon juice in the water so that it would smell nicer.

It did smell nicer. In fact, it smelled so much nicer that Wren immediately began giving himself a sponge bath in lemon scented water. When he was done with that, he washed the rest of the garage. He started with the stairs, and progressed his way across the floor until he reached the door. Then he went sideway, and continued until he reached the side wall. Then he carefully scrubbed out the corners. Then he got a mop, and poured cold rinsing water all over the floor, and swished the dislodged grime out onto the driveway.

After doing the floor, he progressed to the walls. This was more difficult, because he had to take things off the shelves as he was washing them. He took down hard hats, and hammers, and nails, and screws, and drills, and rakes, and shovels, and pots, and machinery of all shapes and sizes, and trowels, and old games, and lots of miscellaneous junk, and an entire box of stuffed animals left over from his childhood. 

The box contained stuffed bunnies from assorted and sundry Easters, stuffed cats, stuffed dogs, stuffed moose, stuffed cartoon creatures, stuffed bats, stuffed bears, stuffed lions, stuffed snakes, stuffed lizards, a stuffed iguana, stuffed wolves, an entire pack of them, and a very floppy Babar. There was a pig, a zebra, a deer, a horse, a duck, two more ducks, the ugly duckling, and a swan. 

Wren ruminated over the memories they brought up, and then put them carefully, one by one, back into the box of love from whence they came. He put the box back on the shelf, once it was cleaned, and then carefully arranged the games around it. He stood back and appreciated the affect with an artist's eye. It was truly a work of art. The garage would never look this good again, he just knew it. 

He yelled aloud his triumph, which brought a girl running. She had long, wavy dark hair, and she was dressed as the playboy bunny. Wren was quite pleased to see her, and together they went over the garage and the lawn. She made a lot of appreciative cooing noises, and then they went and he took pictures of her for playboy. Wren was quite pleased with his day's work.