I’ve spent the afternoon calling and meeting with local handymen who are stopping by to give me quotes on drywalling our upstairs. Right now it exists as two rooms that are used to house the litter box and lots of half-opened, half-unpacked boxes of miscellany that I have been happy to live without for the past year. But soon!? Soon they will be our guest room and cozy den for watching Netflixed movies on Friday and Saturday nights when we’ve finally gotten Penny to fall asleep. Frankly, that sounds like the perfect weekend to me.
Originally we had planned to do the drywalling ourselves, and honestly Matt is still not too keen about hiring it out. But the pressure he is receiving from his wife is akin to the pressure that I will soon be feeling on my abdomen when it’s time to push this little girl out. And there’s only so much fighting off the nesting urges of a pregnant woman that a man can do.
Plus, I think even HE realizes that drywall dust plus spending every weekend away from his 4 week old baby to be upstairs spackling by himself isn’t all that appealing.
So it’s been a stream of phone calls and visits from handy Southern gents all afternoon while I pepper them with questions and try to find out how quickly they work. After all the people we’ve had into the house, electricians, plumbers, HVAC repair guys and general handymen, I’m getting pretty good at this. At first I was a little intimidated, what with my big belly and swollen ankles and them with their Ford F150s. But now I’ve grown accustomed to being called “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’aaaaaaaaaam,” and I kinda like it. I like that nobody pressures me into anything and that they’re all kinda on island time. I like how they tell me to “talk it over with your husband and have him give me a call if he’s got any questions.”
So I’ve come to the conclusion that most of them are better people than the folks I know with college degrees. Plus they’re all a heck of a lot nicer to work with than business executives and women in designer suits.
I love my old house that’s constantly in a state of renovation in a neighborhood where not a single person has the interest or energy to be pretentious. And I love Tennessee.
March 18th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
prolly have nicer looking biceps too.
March 18th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
The drywalling thing, taping, sanding, etc. etc. etc. is so hard. We walled in our loft to make a room for Kate and the bottom half is beadboard but Craig left some of the sanding for me and my arm got tired so I just slapped some paint on and it looks awful. If you look at it from the wrong angle.
You may be watching those netflixed movies WITH Penny asleep on you . . . Kate like heartbeats and I spent many nights half-sitting in bed with her sleeping on me. Oh, and we watched the first Pirates of the Carribean when Sam was like a week old and needed Craig to explain it to me. I couldn’t follow it.
Don’t you love how people think you want to hear their semi-related baby stories when you bring up a topic?
Hire out the drywalling, Ma’am.
March 18th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
big ma, that’s an accurate assumption.
sarah, i love the semi-related baby stories, and i really hope that she wants to sleep on me, cause that would be wonderful. although i’m sure it can get old quickly.
March 22nd, 2010 at 11:56 am
My friend Jill says it was part of her Southern culture, to only date boys who lived in brick houses.
April 9th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
I love this post. Just had to mention that!