Captain Dan is gone four days a week, he flies the friendly skies for a living and I am left to my own devices for the duration. This is not all bad, whilst I miss him terribly it does allow for a certain amount of freedom and independence both of which must be quashed once he returns to the fold, albeit for just three days. The challenge with these days is to make it look as though I am truly happy (now and newly unemployed) and extremely busy. If I don’t, then I succumb to the Captain’s schedule which is vastly different than mine, even though I haven’t created mine yet. For example, chores. For the past month we have been jointly working on the exterior painting of our house. Built in 1989 it is made of stone and has what looks like a wooden addition although it was all built at the same time. The wooden section has only ever been painted twice. Once, when we built it, then again about 10 years later. So now in 2014 it really needs to be done. After weeks of grueling decision making I finally just caved and agreed to his choice. Brown is brown as far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t that big a deal. Although now that it’s on the house I’m really not in love with it. We hired a professional as we both suffer an aversion to heights and hard labour. Upon discreet enquiries I also discovered that said painters would be willing to finish a couple of stalled interior projects too. A great month October, all kinds of accomplishments. But the shutters, all 98 or so still needed to be painted. This was something the Captain felt moved to personally undertake. How hard could this be? He did some research (translation, nine weeks online) then purchased a professional-grade paint sprayer. It came with a video he has watched at least as often as I have viewed Terms of Endearment. “GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE PAIN MEDICATION”
And so it began, three days of removing the shutters, two broke in this process, pressure washing every one of them. Drying overnight in the garage, all precariously balanced amidst the normal twenty odd years of detritus one accumulates in such spaces. Then he rigged a painting station outside. Not bad for a non pro, he managed to paint the first round of shutters, those from the wooden side of the house. Hauled them all back into the garage and gently leaned them against the interior of the doors. I only broke one, accidentally opening the wrong garage door. Now another weekend is dedicated to removing the shutters from the front of the house, I won’t bore you with the scary details of his trying to do this with one hand whilst perched on a ladder, ready with the other hand to deflect any bats that we assumed lived behind the shutters, judging by the droppings deposited directly below. (Don’t tell Rachel she’ll never spend the night here again.) This time he set up the mechanics of the paint job on the front, south facing lawn. A sixty foot extension ladder atop two saw horses received the painted shutters, he was on a roll, paint, lay down, next, repeat. It was all pretty impressive… until it wasn’t.
Despite my misgivings which, believe it or not, I do upon occasion keep to myself, it was decided after consulting the weather channel, to leave all the shutters outside overnight to dry before applying a second coat. And so to bed. The next morning we rose, eager to complete the task and forge on with the shutters still affixed to the rear of the house, those which had yet to be taken down. I made tea and coffee and as we like to call it, the big breakfast; eggs, porcine meat, muffins, juice. Whilst sipping the last of our drinks we sauntered into the front hall to gaze upon the fruits of our labors, only to witness a brief wind gust pick up most of the shutters and toss them off the ladder and over the front stone wall. We lost two more. He superglued one back together and by god we continued.
On the third weekend the Captain tried valiantly, to complete this now Herculean task. We trudged back and forth from the garage with the shutters one last time, set them up against the ladder and went in to view the instructional video, one last time. Not seven minutes in we heard a light crash followed by a cracking sound. Followed by words that are not fit for this page. Disbelief would be the best way to describe the look on my beloved’s face as we approached the stack of shutters. This time the ladder itself had blown off the saw horses. Three more were broken. I’ve lost count now how many we’d lost and it doesn’t matter. He has given up. Admitted defeat. Sold his handyman soul. He came into the house after a brief period of mourning and announced that he is buying replacement shutters. Pre-painted. I am trying to feel empathy for the man I love, to whom I had suggested, in light of his limited time at home, those pilots have terrible schedules you know, that hiring the housepainters to also remove, paint and re-install the shutters would be a good investment. He is always game to try, I do adore that, he will not lie down to allow other men onto his property to do something he feels he can do himself. But sometimes the time and money wasted in futility is not worth it, except for the writing fodder it gives to me. Don’t feel sorry for him, I can hear the chain saw running, he has clearly moved on.
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