To those on the lookout for alien invaders, the scaly green flecks of skin should have been a dead giveaway.

I mean, no self-respecting extraterrestrial trying to infiltrate our world with subtle disguise tactics would overlook the importance of the surface of skin, right?

Still, I worried what strangers

thought of me a while back when I realized I had been walking around town for the better part of a day with a greenish complexion – the effects of dust and tiny chips of paint from a sanding project. I could have said, “Take me to your leader,” but I should have said “Take me to a sink with soap.”

Of course we should not judge one another based on superficial appearances. We need to look more closely. We need to scrape beneath the surface.

Scraping is exactly what I had been doing. In defense of my almost otherworldly level of distraction, I can only hope for understanding about how sanding is so demanding.

Virtually any household project or hobby involving the use of sandpaper is hard work. It takes – and leaves – true grit. Unless we’re talking about a minor repair or touch-up job, the result is like what happens when I play golf. It’s time-consuming and messy.

Not surprisingly, then, I tend to procrastinate on sanding projects. The sands of time drift incrementally through the hourglass until the moment arrives when I can wait no longer – when, like the surface I must attack, my patience is worn down.

In the case of the green paint, the obnoxiousness of the color spelled its own demise. My wife had rescued an iron plant stand from its destination of the trash bin at work. She knew it would be beautiful beneath the surface, and we could convert it into a funky lamp. It was, if I do say so myself, a brilliant idea.

Apparently the paint had been applied to stay on the metal until the next geological epoch. But I volunteered to remove it.

I did this because at the outset the job looked like it would be fun and relatively easy. Three days later, I finally washed my hands (unfortunately forgetting to wipe my brow) of the ordeal. I’d finally succeeded with a hammer, cracking and scratching and pulverizing the paint from the metal. Pounding on that thing proved the most therapeutic approach.

A task last week reminded me of the lamp project. I resolved to sand the edge of a kitchen cabinet door so it would shut properly.

I guess previous attempts by the apartment managers to “freshen up” the old building had amounted to slathering paint whenever and wherever possible. Over time, this technique had left drawers and cabinets stubbornly sticky. I’m convinced that now, after opening and closing some of those cabinets, they seal hermetically.

The need to forcibly engage in breaking and entering whenever reaching for a frying pan finally drove me past the procrastination point.

I could have resorted to a different and highly satisfactory tool, a wood plane, to shave the cabinet edges. But fearing that technique might damage the surface, not to mention the fact that I do not own a plane, I resorted to sandpaper.

When that strategy failed to yield satisfactory results after nearly an hour and a half, I used the blade of a screwdriver to chisel away the paint. “Eureka,” I cried, finally finding cabinet closure.

The actual act of sanding, it seems, slowly erodes my nerves. But I persevere.

Last year, my wife and I practically waded through sawdust after repeatedly staining and sanding a set of bookcases. At times during that project, I asked myself, reprimanding, “How much more sanding can we be standing?”

The intensity of the work may explain yet again my reluctance to begin another project, to restore an old mirror frame. I have propped up my excuses by using part of the frame to prop up a closet shelf.

But I love the warm, intricate look of wood grain, so often hidden by paint. The prohibitive cost of a power sander is no reason to avoid the satisfaction of scraping below the surface to reveal the beauty there.

My dad’s work as a carpenter taught me that sometimes to reach that final polish, we need to apply a lot of elbow grease, and, like sandpaper, we may need to be a bit rough to produce something smooth.

Applied collectively, by nature or by hand, a lot of transformational power is contained in sand. No wonder it symbolizes time in all its abundance and movement and sparkling reflections. In that sense, looking more closely and glimpsing the world in a grain of sand is not such an alien concept – even if your skin is green.

Brad Bolchunos initially planned to include a bit about how paint removal with the forceful use of sand can be a total blast, but he thought that pun might be too abrasive.