Every man has a nightmare scenario, a pet horror. We stoke
the boiler rooms of those things without even trying. Just yesterday I thought,
gee, it sure would be nice to sit out
under the umbrella and smoke a Macanudo cigar and sip whisky and read a book.
The problem was the umbrella was broken. And life is about consequences.
Remember…I only wanted to enjoy a cigar…
It’s a good thing I live close to a Home Depot. And a Lowe’s.
But even that is a mixed blessing. It’s like I was telling the lady at the
register as I was checking out with my second armload of home improvement crap
of the day: It’s like owning a pickup. When people call asking what you’re
doing this weekend, you know they’re not considering inviting you on a bar
crawl or an adventure-packed daytrip. No, they’re calling to see if they can mooch
off you. They’re like, “Heyyyyy! Can I buy you a case of beer?!” One always responds
to such questions with, shall we say, reservation. Same with “being handy.” It’s
a blessing, sure, that I don’t have to call a plumber because I can do it
myself. But it’s also a curse because hello, I can do it myself. The problem is, I’m always doing it myself, and I have to make three flipping trips
to get it done. At least.
And while I’m on the subject of Home Depot, WTF is up with
these spaces labeled PRO CUSTOMER PARKING? And just what exactly is a
professional customer supposed to be? Someone who shops for a living? Just how
does that work, precisely? Home
Depot, we are laughing at you. Not with you.
I suppose I should throw some light on the source of my
angst, seeing as how it is considerable.
It all started ignominiously enough. We have a big yard
umbrella; one of those that stick up out of a portable base. Some stupid bolt
that was way past its prime on the base (Which is cast iron and freaking HEAVY)
finally gave up the ghost and rotted off. That left the umbrella tottering on a
wobbly base that had to be propped up just right in order to work at all.
Redneck engineering. You know what that is, Randy (I’ll leave the last name to
be filled in by those who know).
Anyway, it was either fix the goldang thing or prepare to be
irritated at least a little bit every time I went to use the durn
whozemawhatzee. So I steeled myself for a walk down the hardware aisle at the
big Orange Menace. I have to say at this point that Lowe’s is FAR worse than
Home Depot in the hardware department; extremely disorganized. Most hardware
sections are like a Vegas casino anyway: once you’re in, good luck getting out.
You’ll need to track your waypoints on a GPS. But Lowe’s—really? I’m not a conspiracy
theorist. At least I wasn’t until I went to Lowe’s.
Anyway, turned out my first batch o’ bolts was too short. And
there was much rejoicing. On the second trip to Lowe’s I was really in a bad
way, because I had foolishly decided on a lark to pitch the family tent in the
side yard today—you know, just really quickly set it up and see what’s broke
and what’s missing. It’s funny. I didn’t think a guy could forget so much about
tents in so short an amount of time, but a guy can, and a guy did. It probably
didn’t help that I did it all wrong, it’s an eight man tent and enormous, I was
trying to do it all by myself, the neighbor lady picked that exact moment to pop over to the fence
and ask me, “Puttin’ up the tent?” I mean, I had heard about the legendary most-unnecessary-rhetorical-question-ever,
but I had never witnessed it in the round. It was staggering.
And boys, if you’ve ever wondered what fiddlefarting is, I
was full on. I was dead center in the fiddlefartage. Murphy and his cansarned
Law were both doing their worst, too. Why is it tent stakes get bent out of
shape so easily? It probably didn’t help that I was using the sledgehammer, but
still…I wonder.
I finally wrassled the tent up with my wife’s help, and it’s
still up. It can stay up for a few days, as far as I’m concerned. I only
mention it to help explain how foul my mood was as I perused the
conspiratorially disorganized nuts and bolts at Lowe’s (trip #2).
Trip #3 was to Home Depot. But that was only after I had
dragged the Dremel, the Roto Zip with the angle grinder attachment, and the
fifty foot drop cord out of my cellar. Did I mention it’s a genuine pain in the
ass to do anything around my house because all my crap is buried in stacks in
my tiny little cellar? I didn’t mention that? Oh. Well. I should have. It adds
at least 50% more effort to every handyman task I have to do around my house,
because half the time I spend going up and down the cellar stairs chasing bits
of crapola I need that I forgot just where it is in the first place—though most
of the time it’s under something that’s been stacked on top of it. Whatever’s
on top is almost always either heavy or just awkward for the sake of being
awkward.
It’s like bolts that are so rusted they have to be cut off.
It makes one wonder why the one that rusted its own way out, thus necessitating
the repair in the first place, couldn’t have provided a better example for its
two other mates. But no. It also makes one wonder why the factory that built
the freaking umbrella base in the first place couldn’t just weld the two pieces
together to begin with, thus saving the need to have fasteners of any kind at all!
But that would be unreasonable. Or maybe it would be too reasonable; maybe that’s
it. As with most conspiracies, we’ll never know the truth. Not until somebody
important dies and the secret tapes are released.
Here it is: when I got back from trip #3 I was ready for a
trip to the firing range. Let me tell you. But I prevailed over rusty yard
implements and won my shade. The umbrella is up. And it’s rock steady. The only
problem is, now I’m too tired and irritated to smoke my cigar under it.
No comments:
Post a Comment