MENTAL JUMPING JACKS TO THE PAINT GRINDING FINISH LINE

I step carefully into my white marshmellow puff grinding suit and shove the headphones into my ears before zipping it up under my neck. The hood slips over my head, elastic cinching in around my face. With a click the grinder spins and the beats of the live Gentlemen album compete with its whine. There must be 16 layers of paint on this boat and it just so happens that the deepest one, the old light blue gelcoat, is blistering just along the waterline. Doing this job right necessitates removing all 42 years of these paint jobs to get to the root of the problem! Despite my respirator mask and sanding goggles, paint chips find their way into my eyes and mouth. I look down the waterline.about 30 feet left--of grinding that is--then I will have to go back around with the orbital sander. I can't let this beat me.I bring my focus back to collage of whites and blues just in front of me. With the music and the bounce of the long plank of the scaffolding, I slowly work my way toward the bow.

My arms begin to tire and my back aches; I must distract my mind. "Discomfort is an illusion. Don't accept what your senses are telling you," a wise friend wrote recently. I return to a favored technique, shifting my focus from the 'discomfort', starting with my family. Thinking carefully about each individual, memories and visions of them revolve on my mental screen--consciously positive thoughts. I then move on through friends and acquaintances, sending each a mental love FedEx. The ache and monotony dull. I look back at my progress, I've done another 5 feet and now I'm sitting in the circle on the worn brown carpet with my kindergarten class, and sending out a thought for my teacher, Mrs. Gibbs. The grinder rips through the paint. Six more inches and I'm with my friend Nicole Marotta, watching the sunrise from the hood of her car after staying up all night during the summer after our highschool graduation. I can smell the cool morning air mixed with the scent of wet assphalt and see the early light illuminating our bare toes as we lay back against the windshield pondering where our lives would take us. The mental journey goes on.finally it's getting dark. I turn the grinder off and hop down from the scaffolding. Glancing down, I grin at my dust-caked figure; I'm an obese Smurf. Could the paint chips be going to my head? I shouldn't feel this good!?