Inspirations from cheese in a can. joey, kelly, danny, and charlie

I am so bored to death of me.  Thirty days is a lot of time to talk about yourself.  Maybe I’ll talk about someone else.  Okay, fine, I will fascinate you with a story about a fence and my dad.

A year ago we had a fence put up around the backyard, all the better to contain humans and small animals.  This way we could achieve much greater levels of negligence and still be within legal limits.  We did a little research and found a company that at least one person on Kudzu found not to suck.  And maybe they didn’t suck for them, but they a little bit did for us.  They cut a cable (or three) that makes things in our back garage work and offered to have it repaired, but it never really happened.  The thing that stopped working immediately in the back garage would have been the phone, if we had a land line.  We just use cell phones, though, so we didn’t care too much to follow up.  Otherwise, the fence installation went pretty well, besides a wee little drag in the gate when we would go to open it.

A few months later, the power to the back garage failed.  Some troubleshooting between Joey and my former-electrician father was attempted over the phone, with not much success.  So the next time he came to visit, he and Joey went out and found the problem (maybe the cable-cutting incident, maybe an over-eager canine digger) and fixed it.  Also, that time or the next, Dad noted that the gate did not have adequate support, and needed to be braced or yadda yadda I dunno.  He spent a few minutes explaining to me in great detail what I materials I would need, and what procedure to follow.  I just sorta stood there with my mouth open and nodded when it seemed appropriate.

Over time, the gate-dragging got worse, until finally we couldn’t even close the gate anymore.  One time, the dogs emancipated themselves.  Another time, Danny did.  In the meantime, Joey is calling the fence company every five minutes or so, and they’re promising to come out tomorrow.  Always tomorrow.  And after the second or third Saturday morning of sitting and waiting for them for three or four hours, Joey started to disbelieve them.  And he got really mad.  Really often.  So, if you’re keeping count, now we have two marauding dogs, one escaping toddler, one open-mouthed nonhandywoman, and a frequently, vocally angry consumer (who undoubtedly possesses the requisite skills to remedy this problem, but he already paid someone else $2500 to do it right, DAMMIT).

Open-mouthed handywoman is at her wits’ end.  Now it is one year after the fence has been installed, and escaping toddler’s second birthday weekend.  Dad and five of his favorite travelling companions show up.  And somehow, he either telepathically absorbed my desperation regarding the gate, or someone else that I complained to suggested that it would be nice if he would fix the gate.  Either way, in 40-degree weather on a Sunday morning, he rousted himself out into the cold, and (after fetching me some rosemary for a quiche to feed the masses), he commenced repairs on the gate.   And after a break to attend Sunday morning, Southern-Baptist three-hour church and subsequent cholesterol-fest, he (now assisted by Joey) completed repairs on the gate.  Which now works like a champ, and will be impervious to marauding dogs and escaping toddlers, at least until they get a lot craftier (or taller).

I don’t think Dad swings by here at the cheese very often, but if you should happen to read this, Dad:  Thanks.  That was nice.

Here’s Dad in a more baby-kissing mode.  But I assure you he shifts very easily into Bob, the builder.   I just was too busy with the house full of people to document his Herculean gate-fixing effort.