Husband can play the ukulele and makes my tea just the way I like it. He can dance and sing and erect a tent in under 10 minutes with almost no bits left over. He giggles at words like erect.
Last weekend he decided to erect a deck in our back yard and I foolishly agreed to help. Thankfully I was saved from that fate by an equally foolish friend who had nothing better to do.
Now, normally such an exercise (I just couldn't bring myself to use "erection") would be filled with humourous moments involving meaningful glares and sotto vocce swearing while tools were sought, boards were re-cut, or dogs were shooed firmly out from underfoot. DEFCON 3 would usually be declared before lunch time. Marriage vows would be tested to their limit. At least one extra trip to the hardware store for more/forgotten supplies would be made, aggressively and at great speed.
None of this happened. I have absolutely nothing worth blogging about because the deck was beautifully and perfectly built in 4.5 hours, including a stop for lunch.
I don't mind telling you that the dogs and I are completely unnerved by this, having pre-emptively and, as it turns out, unnecessarily moved the sofa to a safe location (the roof) for the event. I can only hazard a guess that it was the presence of an Outsider, that is to say, one not of our clan, which helped things go so smoothly, for which I am eternally grateful. It begins an interesting line of speculation regarding social norms and male bonding and other stuff which I am really not interested in researching now that I have 144 square feet of extra deck space. It was either that or the lunch time beers and surprise delivery of doughnuts and frappuccinos.
Yeah. It was probably the beers and doughnuts.
