Puttering

It’s been tough getting back to work this week. I’ve had little time for farting around.

I don’t use Facebook for much. Mostly, I use it to keep track of my friends that post there, monitor a few feeds of things I find interesting, and post funny memes I’ve harvested from my surfing. I posted this one yesterday:

In my post I added a blurb that somewhere should be a line about a wife complaining of all the time you spend doing this, utterly unaware and ungrateful for all the little jobs that had to be done each weekend.

On a typical Saturday, I might:

• Take my elderly neighbor lady to mass
• Take her to the store afterwards – Walmart or Fiesta.
• Walk the dogs
• Mow the lawn
• Fix sprinkler heads or leaks
• Prune the trees, and take the cuttings to the curb
• Weed/plant the garden
• Clean the garage, taking bulk trash to the alley
• Drain, clean, and refill the spa
• Do any number of small repairs in the house
• Maybe change my oil, if it were needed

The list varied, but was always around that size, with the work happening in the blistering Texas heat. When I was finished, I’d shower, then waddle to the beer store and grab a six pack and sit in my sunroom with the pups and enjoy the fruits of my labor with a cold snack and wait for Herself to post, or start prepping to cook dinner, cleaning the kitchen as I went along.

What was even better would be if it started raining as I cracked that first beer to sit with the dogs. There’s a special happiness to rain starting after a hard days work.

For Herself? She’d be at mass, having abandoned our elderly neighbor months earlier, then she’d volunteer with food share, head to the daughter’s to visit with the grandkids, and usually stay to let my daughter and her husband go on a date. She may or may not come home that night.

When she did post, she’d be unaware and ungrateful that all that background work was done, maybe complain that I’d be happy to spend my life ‘puttering’ (her exact words). And I was. I enjoy fixing and maintaining things. It’s how I relax. It makes me happy to care for my place and my family.

That image is Jethro staring at me enjoying a beer at the end of such a day, wondering when the old lady would post. By that time, the beer was mostly gone and I wouldn’t give two shits about anyone or anything, let alone her attitude. I’m not all proud about that. It just was.

I don’t have to do this kind of work any longer, by and large, since I rent. I do yardwork and fix the odd thing here or there. But since I don’t own the house, I don’t improve, fix, or modify anything.

To contrast this, I have a woman in my life now that spoils the shit out of me, and is super grateful that she has a man in her life that will install ceiling fans, fix hose spigots and toilets, tear apart the stove to fix a busted control, and clean the mess in the oven that her niece and nephew made last time they were over.

And at then end of a day of little fix-its, She sits next to me, cuddles, and thanks me for the other little job that goes un-recognized – She tells me that she feels safe when she’s with me. That she doesn’t have the worries she has during the week.

She’s grateful.

Simple gratitude is rare for us dudes these days.

So I’m grateful.