Pro tip. Going from a dark to light paint will cause coverage problems. The dark paint like’s being seen. My gate was black. Now it’s battleship gray. I have lots of touch up to do. Also, because I got carried away in my coverage efforts, I have runs. They will need to be smoothed. More work. Oh, well. I think it looks nice, people will only see it when they drive through, and I have time to fix the blemishes. Today, I will paint the support poles, then I will move on to my fence, that one that came with the property when we bought it in 2007. It looks bad.

Back to the gate. As I painted, I realized I should have made a habit of checking the gate and its paint. There are rust spots that will eventually need repair and I was remiss in letting them go so long. At the moment I will concentrate on getting the new paint job in place, then start working on the spots when the rust reappears, and it will reappear. I guess its just one of those lessons you learn. Big gates are new to me, especially metal ones. But now I know, and I’ll pay attention. All I can say now is that I’m glad I pushed back on getting a cast iron fence all the way around our property when the subject first came up. I’d really be miserable now.

Meanwhile, the maintenance lesson is not lost on me. It’s a full time job, and it’s easy for things to get away from you when you fail to do it. In a sense, it’s a lot like relationships. You need to work at them and pay attention and stop the little things from getting out of hand, because they can get out of hand, and it’s hard to put that genie back in the box. And these are all things I wished I knew when I was young, but I guess you’re never too old to learn, and I still have a house to care for and relationships to manage. So, en garde! I’m ready.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale