Saturday, July 21, 2012

Stop Him, Before He Builds Again

Hick is on a quest to raise a new roof.

He gets these ideas that must be conceived, plotted, purchased, and constructed in the span of forty-eight hours. Just like that time he was ready to butcher a couple of pigs he found while I was in town doing the weekly grocery shopping. That one was even quicker. Within two hours, he had it all figured out. He'd enlisted the help of a neighbor with butchering equipment, packaged up his pork chops, cured his sausage, and built a pen for the spare pig out of materials he had hoarded away. Was already smacking his lips over a plate of his yard-bird eggs and sausage. But then I got home, and made him go door to door to find out who the pigs belonged to. And made him release them from the BARn, and give them back.

This morning he declared he was going to buy a prefabricated barn building, and park his 1980 Olds Toronado under one lean-to, and the four-wheelers and hay bales under the other. Or maybe he'd just build a carport onto the side of our existing garage. Or extend his BARn lean-to area on each side. Or have some matching trusses made, and come out thirty feet from the front of the BARn. Or buy a portable carport roof thingy. Or build a 30' x 50' shed.

I am exhausted.

Hick says the real reason is because his Toronado does not need to be sitting out in the elements. I pointed out that he has an entire BARn in which to park that baby. But no. The BARn is full of truck. His collector truck. Which has been without its bed for nigh on thirteen years, what with him "fixing it up" to enter in car shows. Which has never quite seemed to happen. He says it's because I won't release the purse strings so he can buy parts. I say it's because he has jumped from one to another of about thirty different projects in that time. Most of which have eaten away at his allowance bite by bite.

I'll give it a week. I DID talk him out of building that indoor gym with regulation basketball court that he was dead set on five years ago. It's not that I begrudge him his animals and outbuildings and riding toys.

I need something more concrete than the skeletal plans he has proposed.

11 comments:

  1. On one sitcom I heard a character (male) say, "Men just want to have fun, and women want to march that fun out into the woods and shoot it dead."

    It sounds like you're marching poor Hick's fun into the woods, you killjoy you.

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  2. I have a feeling that Hick manages to get his fair share of fun.

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  3. Like a snake at your door is not in the woods! In WV, good men keep their crap acoss the road from the house (metal mechanical shit) and the women keep their goodies (family, food and flowers) on the good side of the road. "Nuff said". Period.

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  4. The satellite Sears store near us is closing. My Bob the Builder goes daily to see what's been marked down. I know what you mean.

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  5. wow--I thought Tim Taylor was just a made-up character in that sitcom Home Improvement. But--he's REAL! And you married him. So which is worse---a guy that "fixes and builds" everything or a guy who doesn't know the which end of a nail to hit?

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  6. p.s. It's "nigh on" not "night on." Like the difference between pipe and pike. I know, that was a typo.

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  7. Sioux,
    Or, as the students tell me..."You're a funsucker." Guilty as charged.

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    Stephen,
    Hick might beg to differ, but I'll jump on your bandwagon.

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    knancy,
    That's a scathingly brilliant idea! I had no idea the West Virginians were so advanced compared to us Missourians. However, we DO have people who connect the main old school bus they live in to the addition, the OTHER old school bus, with a wooden plank. Put that in your corn-cob pipe and smoke it, WV!

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    Linda,
    Well, it could come in handy if he finds an instrument to perform his own smarta$$ectomy.

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    Leenie,
    I do appreciate Hick's fix-up-titude. Just wish he had some finish-up-titude to go with it.

    Oh, dear. It WAS a typo. I shall repair the error forthwith. I really should have seen that mistake coming down the pipe to bit me on the but!

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  8. Believe me, I am smokin' my corncob pipe (pike?).

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  9. knancy,
    I believe you. In either case. Now maybe you should get to whittlin' yourself a slingshot to protect yourself from varmints whilst you're a-settin' in your rocker with the hounds on the porch. That's what I'm doin' after I prepare the evenin' vittles.

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  10. Wouldn't it be scary if our husbands met? There was a seasonal kamper here for a time that would sit round the campfire and spin ideas with him. This was when he had a dump truck he got a deal on. It was great old truck, if you didn't mind not having brakes. The whole dump part of the truck fell off to one side once and they got some welding tools. They played well together. Kind of frightening .....

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  11. Kathy,
    Oh! Oh! Oh! Mr. Kotterrrr! Remember Horshak raising his hand on Welcome Back, Kotter? I'm doing that right now. Because Hick would SO fit it around that campfire. He would build a fire pit and a bunkhouse and an executive outhouse, and bring some chickens and purloined pot-bellied pigs so they could all have bacon and eggs the next morning.

    And funny you should mention the dump truck! Hick and three buddies converted a Mack truck into a dump truck. Cut it shorter. Hick installed the hydraulics to make it dump.

    Maybe it's best that Hick and He Who are kept apart. They might take over the world.

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