Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned this, but I married the Most Beautiful Woman In The Universe. She can’t help being lovely, it just comes natural to her. I really am truly grateful every day that not only is she beautiful, but she’s my best friend, and also I get to kiss her and snuggle and stuff like that there. That being said, even her Amazing Loveliness sometimes cannot prepare us for a horrific reality of life: BIG CHORES. We really don’t like big chores, especially when neither of us have had any experience with said chore. One case in particular began today after much anticipation and weather watching.
Earlier this year we decided we should stain our deck. A good idea, it’s made of wood and is 11 years old already. Until today it has never been stained. My Beautiful Girlfriend (the lovely lady who let me marry her 44 years ago) hired a nice man to come blast the deck clean with pressure washers and bleachy chemicals. He did a great job and made the wood look very clean indeed.
I bought the stain a few months ago, and after some delay with the deck cleaning job (the nice man had a scheduling whoopsie and showed up a couple months late); it was time to plan for deck staining time. This of course was completely dependent on the weather: in the event of rain you have to allow the wood to dry for a few days. Needless to say, it rained just often enough to annoy us greatly.
Here we are now on Labor Day weekend. I normally take a couple days vacation in conjunction with a long weekend so I can get lots of time off. And I figured if push came to shove I could spend my vacation staining the deck with the help of my Very Attractive Wife Lady. That fun began today.
Remember how I said earlier that neither of us really like BIG CHORES, especially ones with which we’ve had no experience? Well, not sure about anyone else, but we both got a little grouchy. She started off very grouchy, then apologized. Then it was my turn to be a stinker-butt, and I apologized. Then both of us decided that the stinker-grouchy-butt routine was not very helpful, and we managed to just get things done without trying to remove each others’ vital organs.
A friend of ours told my Sweet And Amazing Honey Pie that this deck staining job thing would only take 3 hours. Apparently our friend forgot to use the time multiplier during her ciphering… 3 hours was chewed up in nothing flat and we have several more hours to go.
Upon seeing the result, we were pretty pleased with ourselves; in spite of the mess we made. Some decorative rocks now have speckles. In the flower bed that trails around the outside of the deck is a little concrete kitty that is “sleeping.” It’s beginning to look more like a calico. We’re taking a break because the sun went ni-night; and besides, every joint and muscle in our bodies is crying for mercy. More fun tomorrow when we hope to finish it all off.
Both of us groaned that we woulda-shoulda-coulda hired all this out; but reality quickly slapped us in the nostrils because that would be rather expensive. Call us selfish, but we’re getting closer to retirement and are trying to make decisions that save us some cash. After all, as my Voluptuous Va-Va-Va-Voom Best Friend Person said, this deck staining business “is not rocket science.” Good thing it isn’t; not sure our home would survive the explosions. Hey, we made pretty on the deck, and our marriage actually survived!! Truly miraculous.
Please, no more BIG CHORES for this year.
Please.
Could have been worse, we could have chosen to build a boat…