sledge, sledge, sledgehammer. wait! why do you have a sledgehammer out?!

As you might imagine, being married to a man who works for a Major Tool Company brings with it a tremendous number of perks. First, in the event I'm ever in the middle of a task that requires the use of a tool, all I need to do is journey out to my garage, and I have a home improvement store at my fingertips! Here, let me show you:

Of course, when I say "at my fingertips," I actually mean I must forage through the sea of boxes that show up at your house daily, push aside the various other garbage that, huh, I thought I'd thrown away already so isn't it interesting that it's here again, and then call my Tool Man and ask him where the desired tool actually is.

p.s. - This is half of our two-vehicle garage. Specifically, this is the half where the sensible Hyundai I've been driving since last spring to save on gas money should be parked. A few months ago, Tool Man cleaned this part of the garage out and I'm not kidding you, watching him do that was, for me, like watching porn. I am not kidding! I am way anal about cleanliness and organization (not so much with my porn viewing, though, if you get what I'm saying, and if you do, then ha ha ha ha, yeah, that was hilarious...but I'm sorry I went there, too), so trust me when I tell you THIS IS KILLING ME RIGHT NOW. Also, don't even get me started on what he has all over a huge chunk of our kitchen counters. The part that daily makes me threaten divorce, and Tool Man to roll his eyes and be all, "Well...put up or shut up," but because he also gets a company truck that I view as another perk to our marriage aside from the aforementioned gas money saving techniques, I stay with him. And also because he has a goatee, which I realize are like a dime a dozen these days, but it makes me smile how his goatee is sort of reddish but he has black hair and it looks like it's on fire when he's telling me to put up.

OK. Anyway...back up to that 'desired tool' part up there (and I had to scroll back up to that and seeing the garage again made me gag). A second perk of being married to a Major Tool Company representative is the sexy, sexy way we incorporate his work life into our sex life. Seriously, if you ask me to hammer you, I will totally drill you. The dude may belong to the wacker club, but every once in awhile, it takes two people to get the job done and I'm willing to earn my raise at performance review time.

However, seriously, when Tool Man poked his head inside the house Saturday and yelled something at me about running to town to get some rope caulk, I'll admit that I heard him wrong and, fearing his return, I called him and was all, "Um, listen. I love you and there's a lot of things I've done for you, but I'm not really comfortable with whatever it is you're planning, and I wish you would have talked to me about this before you just assumed this would be OK. Besides, we don't have anyone to watch the kids..."

"Caulk, honey. I'm going to buy caulk." he interrupted with a laugh (and perhaps a bit dejectedly).

Those are some pretty good perks, huh? But, to quote The Facts Of Life theme song, you take the good, you take the bad, and the bad part of things is this: Tool Man is cluelessly horrific when it comes to home repair matters. Ironic, isn't it?!

Here's how I imagine his job interview for his present (and, fingers crossed, long-term) position went:

Major Tool Company Hotshot - "Do you know anything about tools?"
Pre-Tool Man Tool Man - "Yes, sir, I do know things about tools."
MTCH - "Are you able to demonstrate the uses of our company's tools to consumers?"
PTMTM - "Yes, sir. Having worked a great deal with tools (We all lie in job interviews. You know it. I know it.), I'm positive that I am able to demonstrate the uses of your company's tools to consumers, thus helping to raise the company's bottom line margin and contributing to market growth."
MTCH - "You're hired!"
PTMTM - "Thank you, sir. I look forward to this challenging opportunity!"
Wife of New Hired Tool Man - "Hooray!" (which was said before I knew our garage and, subsequently, our shed would look like a big-box home improvement store. After a hurricane and a tornado)

That rope caulk he went the store to buy last weekend? It was to prevent air flow from pouring in through our upstairs windows on these freezing days. Another reason I shuddered when he used the word caulk with me is because I have nightmares (while laying awake at night in our now semi-less freezing bedroom) about the mangled caulk job he has done in our two upstairs bathrooms. Honestly, and yes, I'm ashamed to admit this, sometimes when I'm using my bathroom, I zone in on the bottom of the wall near my shower at the twisted, fingerprint-embedded slash of dried, dirty caulk running along the floorboard and I freak out (see garage issues). Doing so takes my mind off of the drip I hear coming from the boys' bathroom on the other side of the wall. The drip, drip, annoying drip from the toilet he attempted to fix. And the oddly textured chunk of wall up there where he previously attempted to fill in a crack. Also, does that towel rod look like it's hung crooked to you?

That madness drives me downstairs to my laundry room in which last weekend, Tool Man re-installed a set of cabinets that had been badly bowing by bolting a huge, poorly stained ledge of wood to the wall to serve as a shelf for the cabinets. A huge, poorly stained ledge of wood he believes no one can see under the cabinets but trust me, it can be seen. Oh, it can be seen, and, funny story, you'd think it would distract me from the big hole he gauged in the wall while positioning the cabinet, a hole I dread him repairing and painting over, but no, it does not. In fact, all I can see is HUGE, POORLY STAINED LEDGE OF WOOD!! and BIG HOLE!!

(btw, yes, I thanked him for reinstalling the cabinet, but sigh...)

Tool Man's long range plans for this year include tearing up the floor covering in our kitchen and installing new. The thought makes me weep, for as much as I want hard wood (let me say this before any of you get the chance - "That's what she said!"), I can't allow him to desecrate our home further. Because I think there's caulk involved in that kind of project, too, right? Seriously, all the caulk talk that's been going on in my house of late is scaring me (and sort of frustrating my Tool Man). The moral of this story is just because you can sell a hammer, it doesn't mean you should swing it.