Muffled Thud

One of the homely sounds of our household, since we have been living in this house, anyway, has been the 6am twonnnng of the newspaper hitting the security gate in front of the door. The gate was here when we bought the place--they're a pretty standard SF feature, usually made of dull silver metal of some sort. Ours is a series of large curlicues set onto a door-sized grid of diamond-shaped lozenges; the grid is meant to keep malefactors from getting past the curlicues and trying to prise the lock open. Ours is not a high-crime neighborhood, but the 90+ year old woman who owned the house before us had the grille put up some years ago; it made her feel safer about living alone.

The problem is that the damned thing was really ugly. So this weekend, filled with girlish enthusiasm (or stupidity) I got some paint and decided to paint the grille. How long could it take? Well, so far I've spent five hours on the thing, spread over three days. I've done the grille, both sides, on about a third of it, all the decorative curlicues on the front, and the basic frames. Then it began to rain, and I had to stop. It's going to be beautiful when it's finished.

But there's been a sonic change: gone is that musical twonnnng; in its place a muffled thud. I love the look of the grille, all shiny and black; somehow it makes my house look more approachable. But I miss the twonnnng.