It was the regular Saturday dawn meeting: me, Ray, our builder Nick, the blue heron on lookout atop the cul de sac streetlight, a couple of black-capped night herons on the way home from work, gulls tuning their voices for the day.

We'd gone over topics like trying to find logic in the windstorm-required particleboard on only some inner walls, where the foam insulation had missed a spot, how to get the special-purposes wiring subcontractor to respond to email and deadlines, and had even nailed down -- if not the actual colors -- the general colors of the third-level cabinets and shelving (gold), walls (some degree of washing said gold), ceiling and window trim (white white), and floor (medium golden brown).

Then, looking at the pile of beautiful white pine stacked on the floor and ready to be nailed on as walls, I again brought up the topic of... vertical or horizontal? Ray always wanted horizontal boards, I wanted vertical. I had talked him down months ago, even brought in an interior designer as an expert witness to counter Nick's horizontal vote.

I let them talk, and then told the tale of last night's middle-of-the-night, insomnia-induced pseudo-dream of anticipating and imagining our dawn meeting, watching myself climb to the third-level to see what new work had been done since my last visit, and hearing my voice echo down the stairwell in a long "Oh nooo!" When my mind's eye climbed up to join my imaginary phantom voice, I saw myself observing the walls -- all done and put up horizontally! To my surprise, I saw myself liking it, appreciating how it flowed, how it balanced. That surprising feeling pulled me back into full, alert wakefulness. What in the world. I felt an odd and pleasant feeling of possible agreement. Oh nooo.

The guys were obviously surprised at my turnabout, maybe a little nervous, but with just a few short comments of encouragement, rationales, and agreement, we all realized we'd had yet another of our famous about-faces in this journey of home building.

I felt light, oddly giddy, strong, and more powerful than a rusted iron pipe held high overhead. It strengthened me, made me bold, and I heard myself saying, "Ok, here's a question totally from Mars, totally ridiculous, outrageous, totally undoable." I could tell by his smile that Nick was intrigued, and he gave me that direct eye-contact look I'm used to only seeing in one of his hombre-a-hombre conversations with Ray.

"Is it too late to add a window in a wall somewhere?"

"Where?"

"In that dark kitchen corner."

"It needs it, doesn't it? No, it's not too late."

Of course, that's not at all how it actually went, but it gives you the one-line summaries, though we talked on and on about how there was hardly any wall in the house not already hogged by a window, how this was the one dark spots In the house, how it was Nick's fault for not better protecting his reputation as Window King by putting a window there to begin with. In an moment, gone was one of only two places in the three-room third-level where we could actually display any art.

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.