Daddy was saying "Son of a ...!" because Daddy thought it best not to complete that thought. What prompted Daddy's outburst was, of course, a dreaded Home Improvement Project.
Oh, before I continue I see that I have my very first Follower. Thanks Nicole, for boosting my flagging self-esteem. Go ye now and do my bidding; here is my first command to you: "It's time for Helter Skelter." (Charles Manson jokes -- always tastefully hilarious.)
As I was saying, I am a poor man's Bob Vila. That is, if Bob Vila had no arms and legs (and became enraged every three seconds because he could not use his mouth to hold the nails and hammer them at the same time even with the special velcro mouthpiece attachment), and knew as much about carpentry as Rosie O'Donell knows about geopolitics -- I would be Bob Vila. My saving grace is that even though I am not particularly handy, I accept my limitations in this area with equanimity and good humor and only become insanely angry when major catastrophes occur -- like when stupid adhesive vinyl tiles will not fit together neatly.
Laying vinyl tiles. That's what I was doing today. Let me see if I can rank that on the home improvement difficulty meter, with 10 being, say, a project that only a team of architects, engineers and that master wood worker guy that's on after "This Old House" should attempt, and 1 being a project that a special needs monkey could complete while simultaneously eating a banana. On that scale, vinyl tile installation rates a ZERO. Not tremendously challenging for sentient beings with opposable thumbs. But somehow, in the midst of this laughably simple project, on several occasions I wanted to gouge my eyes out with the utility knife. (But I did not kick anything, and I only spiked my metal T-square twice. And I threw my tantrums only when the boys were busy in the living room making it look like a Claymore mine filled with toy cars and trucks exploded, so good parenting award to me!)
We were fixing up our "sun room." Sun room is a bit of a misnomer, since the room has no heat. This time of year it's more like an 18' x 10' walk-in freezer, with four large, crudded up picture windows. I believe the previous owners used this room to hang slabs of meat on large hooks and to store tractor parts. We keep our treadmill in this room, which was last treaded upon when poor Dubya was popular. When we bought the house, the owners had covered the original plywood floor with that green, indoor-outdoor carpet that looks and feels just like Astroturf. Classy! -- and in keeping with the authentic Colonial Williamsburg vibe. We covered that abomination over with a bunch of high end carpet remnants that were slightly too wide for the room; I decided that rather than spend a lot of time cutting and fitting (and screaming), I'd just let the carpet ride a few inches up the side of each wall, where it would blend in.
(I have visions of Ty Pennington inspecting our sun room, moments before demolition, shaking his head with a mixture of pity and disgust.
"So, you used this room to work out? I mean, this is bad. Look at this carpet! It looks like a blind man with a spastic arm went a little nuts with the staple gun. You've got staples out the wazoo. I see there was water leaking from the ceiling. You put the Lego bucket under it. Nice. Did you keep livestock in here? Oh, your two Labs. Man, the whole room kind of smells like wet dog. And the doctors think that's how you contracted Lab Lung? They said it was the airborne microbes from their feces breath? Wow. That's ... that's just a bummer. Well, Lucido family, the good news is that we're going to demolish this unsafe, uninhabitable sun room and you're going to take a vacation -- to the Camden Aquarium!")
Actually, thanks to my wife's mad painting skillz -- and some very nice, post-tantrum lining up of the tiles by moi -- the room came out pretty good. Of course, tomorrow I have to cut the tiles to fit around the room edges. That project could be ... slightly perturbing. I'm going to try my best to avoid having a Jack Nicholson in the "Shining" moment. Did I mention that Tara loves it when I have home improvement rage? She says those are the moments when she's most attracted to me. Well, that and when I swerve around people moving too slowly in the left lane and then give them the much derserved "You're a human cankersore" stare. She really likes that.
Enough lyrical prose for now. Maybe on Tuesday we'll discuss the myriad evils of creamy sauces.
No, wait. Can't do it then. I'll be watching MSNBC all day while at work and weeping along with the Revrund Jackson, Oprah, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins et al. Just for a different reason.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment