Off To Work We Go
2005-06-11, 3:07 p.m.

Be good to yourself. Cherish yourself. Give yourself the gift of ignorance. Because if you become handy at something, then your relatives will hijack you and your vacation and you will never relax again.

Hubby is good at basic plumbing and electrical work, minor construction, fixing just about anything mechanical, and knowing what nail versus which screw to use to keep your home from imploding. He also has a week off. Vacation? HAH. We�re supposed to build an arbor for my mother, and do who knows what else for his mother. Her list has ominously simple beginnings: tote a box to the attic and reposition a few others in the garage. She�ll whip out that initial two-item list, and the rest will rocket down the front steps and across the street on a 65-foot parchment roll. When mothers have a short to-do list, it�s unnerving, like the innocent swimmers cavorting in the surf while the rest of us hear the cellos of doom. Fight-or-flight tries to take over but has to be beaten into submission because, dude, it�s our MOTHERS, they brought us into this world, they can still take us out.

It�s too late for him to do what he should have done years ago, which was to scream like a girl and/or bleed spontaneously whenever someone drew near him with any kind of tool. Now everyone knows he�s good. He needs to blow up something they deem beneficial and then hit the beach, never to be bothered again. His greatest vacation hassle would then be to phone the repair crews while fretting that his coffee is growing cold or his beer�s getting warm or he is going to miss FIVE WHOLE MINUTES of fishing. How many yuppies does it take to change a light bulb? Two: one to phone the repairman and one to fix the cocktails. I would be ok with that.
I�m glad we can help our mothers, we can be there for them, we can make sure that they are safe and cared for and all that, but Hubby works awfully hard all the time and I just want him to have an unencumbered restful week.

The kids and I just returned from a birthday party where I won the jarful of �Jedi Energy Pills� aka jelly beans (I hate jelly beans) because I outguessed a yardful of young children and SERIOUSLY pissed off the birthday boy. I don�t care how nasty they are, I clutched that jar like an Oscar because it is proof, PROOF I tell ya, that I am infinitely more superior than an entire backyard full of 7-year-olds. I rule. I also had to promise the birthday boy that he could come eat them at our house, because he is adorable and I�m good at sharing when I really don�t like the stuff in the first place.

Our friends the Really Nice People came over yesterday evening to help Hubby replace the AC unit in his pickup, and as Really Nice Man is Really Good With Cars he ended up doing most of the work while Hubby played second banana. It works, but I don�t think it�s truly repaired because there were no parts left over, and every driveway mechanic knows when you fix something right you have at least a lingering handful of homeless anonymous metal bits. That, of course, is how the truck was built in the first place, according to my father-in-law years ago. He swore that the night crew at Admiral Motors swept the floor, saw there was enough to toss together a pickup, and voila! We wondered why he was so eager to give it to Hubby and buy himself a new one, but we�ve never been ones to argue with free. A-fixin� we will go.

We�ll be back in just over a week. Until then, all of you play nicely, don�t run with scissors, and please try to behave.
Hell with it. Run amok and have fun.

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