Thursday, August 31, 2006

Past Due, Day 1, Thursday- The Dynamic Duo

After a long day of smashing my fingers with hammers, dragging bathtubs, and futile attempts at ridding myself of the “Hated Safe of Eternal Heft,” I ran out of coffee. The “Thermos of Continued Consciousness” was empty.

This would not do. I’m running on minimal sleep (I fell asleep last night, unable to cash in on my cabinet-building prowess) and am sore from head to toe. The coffee doesn’t really make me feel any more awake, but it does wash down the aspirin.

I did what anyone would do. I went home to make MORE coffee. I walked in, started the coffee pot and said hello to my dear wife. She was busy entertaining the baby by lying on the bed reading a book while a fan blew nice cool air on her.

Before I could commit verbal suicide, however, the door bell went off. Actually, the doorbell is our “Bassett Hound of Perpetual Dim-Wittedness with a Long Pretentious Purebred Name.” We call her Rosebud...

I answered the door, pushing back the fearsome pile of canine cowardice that is Chemo Clem and Rosebud. I found myself face-to-face with Wendy with an “E” (that’s WendE, because a “Y” isn’t “E-ish” enough) through the screen door.

“We’re going to go over and paint! So, we’re going to break into your house! Is that OK?!” Most of her sentences really do end in exclamation marks! Wende is funny that way! She’s actually a clergy type (in the President’s church!) but- and this is a very good thing- doesn’t have that funeral director “so sorry for your loss” slash preacher “listen to me or go to hell” kind of vibe.

Anyway, I was shocked. Not at the whole breaking into the house thing- hell, burn it if you want- but rather that she and her husband were willing- no, on their very way- to help me paint. Wow. Cool. Now I actually feel bad for the whole “shocker” thing, making fun of the way her name is spelled, and poking fun of her general zest for life as I did above.

“I’m making coffee- just give me a minute….” I stammered.

“No, if this is stressing you out, we’ll go…”

“No, no, no, I’m just, er, well, coffee…”

“Don’t worry! We’ll climb in the window!” Off she went!

My coffee finished very shortly thereafter, so I went back to the time sink. She and her husband Jack had, true to her word, climbed in the window. I showed them around. We all went to work, and I was extremely entertained by their banter as they made all of the green paint disappear in the dining room.

Wow.

Thus, I hereby dub them the Dynamic Duo, for the following reasons:
  1. They can break into houses without alerting the neighbors.
  2. They can turn green paint into white primer in just two hours.
  3. They call their son “Boy Wonder” so I might as well keep the whole “Batman” thing going.
Yeah, all-in-all, that was a pretty cool surprise. I'm pretty lousy at that whole expressing apprecition thing, so I'll just stick to what I know:

Thank you both, a lot.

Total costs: $2,368

1 Comments:

At 12:13 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Our pleasure! It isn't every day you get to erase a cosmic mistake like butt-ugly green paint from the Universe!

 

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