The Days in Purgatory Keep Piling Up aka Chore Day

I liked it better the last 3 years when I was training heavy for triathlons. That left no energy or time for chores around the house. Now that I have scaled back my OCD exercising, I have the time and the energy (but don’t tell my wife that). But it’s not nearly as much fun as running, biking and swimming. Well maybe it’s as much as fun as swimming since I swim like a dead rock. But you get my point.

I am only a handyman by necessity. As in, I can’t afford to hire people to do routine maintenance around the house. I’m not Tim ‘The Tool Man’ Taylor. Heck I’m not even Tiny Tim. While I do enjoy a new power tool every now and again, that doesn’t mean I know how to use them. When I get out the power saw; my limbs, children, small animals…they are all in danger. I’m not one of those guys who gets some sense of accomplishment from doing a project myself or who feels less manly if I have to call in a pro. I’m the guy who wants to win the lottery so I don’t have to do any projects around the house. Heck if I win the big lottery I can just move every time something breaks.

So while I’ll hire a pro to do major or real tough projects, the everyday projects I need to do myself. The latest project is rescreening a rather larger screened-in porch. Well it was kinda screened. Between the little kids and the squirrels it had more holes in it than OJ’s alibi. We have some type of mutant bushy-tailed rats around here. They like to claw their way through our screens and hang out on the porch; smoking, drinking playing cards, dirty dancing and who knows what else. I can understand the attraction of our palatial estate, but why can’t they use one of the existing holes? And why am I not invited to their parties?

This project needs to be done by April 26th. That is the date of a major birthday of someone I live with and who I am related to by marriage. She asks for so little (well besides asking for more kids) so it’s the least I can do.

A week ago I de-screened the porch. That was the fun part. I’m great at the demolishing part of a project. The rebuilding part…not so much. This weekend’s part of the project is repainting the porch and replacing the rotted wood that was found during destruction time. There is always something extra in these types of projects that isn’t planned for. The painting went ok except that every 30 minutes or so it would lightly rain for around 60 seconds. This had the wonderful effect of leaving raindrops on the freshly painted wood and also splashing mud on it. So on top of having to repaint parts of it, I now have to go to confession.

Next weekend I get to install hundreds and hundreds of square feet of screening. Stay tuned, it should be a blast and also keep the local priests in the confession biz.