How To Lasso The Bathroom Ceiling--Or Adventures in Home Repair.

This morning, I found myself standing on a chair, whipping my towel in circles in an effort to lasso the peels of paint hanging from our bathroom ceiling.

Now, I know that this is not a good way to remove peeling paint from anywhere, even a bathroom ceiling, even the nine-foot ceiling in our late-Victorian home. I know this because I was raised remodeling houses, with parents who, like most Americans, had more guts and ingenuity than money when it came to home maintenance. As a child, I sat in the neighborhood swimming pool, watching our future house, loaded on a flat-bed, as it glided majestically down the street. My folks had bought the 2400-square-foot home for a dollar, wed knocked off the brick facing and chimney, and theyd hired movers to haul it(uninsured during the move) to its new lot and new foundation.

I also remember the flood when I helped my mother repair the sump pump using only a pair of kitchen tongs; the time I watched her as she took apart our washing machine and replaced the drum; and the rat hole she repaired with a hammered-out soup can lid and some short nails.

In fact, the ever-deteriorating bathroom ceiling of one of these childhood homes finally met its match in my mothers sense of invention. She scraped off the peeling paint and covered every surface with pages from an old Sears Roebuck catalogue that she then coated with spar varnish. (Since she used only underwear pages, our bathroom visits were never boring.)

As an adult, I have followed in my parents dubious footsteps, remodeling four houses, even stripping one to the studs and adding on twice its width. Ive steamed off wallpaper, removed lead paint, built walls, and redone kitchens, staircases, back doors, windows and bathrooms. I know how to draw up a full set of blueprints, including framing and electrical diagrams.

And, yes, Ive tackled my share of ceilings, though never before with a bath towel. I recall that stucco overlay on the porch of our house in Los Angeles, the one where I spent most of a summer in foggy goggles, sledge-hammering and crow-barring over my head, thinking with pity of Leonardo Da Vinci painting the Sistine chapelbut at least he got to lay down, while I spent hours with an arched back and crooked neck as concrete crumbs collected in my ears, nostrils, cleavage, navel and any other available oriface.

So I know that scrapingor sledge-hammeringceilings is one of those horrible tasks that should, if possible, be hired out, (along with mudding and taping drywall and sanding hardwood floors). But in my households current financial situation, that would require some unknown elderly relative to 1) die, and 2) leave us the funds. Not likely to happen. Thats why, for the last couple of years, I have stood by and watched the dangling peels of paint grow longer and longer. And longer.

Well, this morning, something snapped. Something primitive. Something that felt like a ten-year-old kid. Something that knew, deep in my gut, that knocking those peels of paint down by swinging my towel steer-roping-style would be deeply satisfying, great, bloody fun.

And oh, it was. So much fun that after Id regained my maturity, gotten down off the chair, put the towel in the dirty clothes, and cleaned up all the paint chipseven the ones that had somehow made it into the hall, around two corners and ten feet beyond thatI grabbed my towel again, got back on that chair, and went back into my rodeo routine, all the while singing, Yippee-Yi-Yo-Ki-Yay.

I think I may be losing it.