The dreaded put-it-together project
In yo’ face, supply chain!
After visiting Home Depot hourly for the past two months to inquire about the gazebo I wanted that was on back order, I finally snagged one.
Expecting to hear the usual, “It’s on a truck. We don’t know where it’s coming from or when it will be here or how big it is or if it’s even a gazebo but it’s on a truck,” I was shocked when I was told there was actually one in stock. In my excitement, I yelled, “Start the car!” The exhilaration wore off when I realized since our sons weren’t around to help, I’d be the extra set of hands my husband required to assemble it.
I loathe assembling things. I even struggled putting together those Lilliputian Kinder Surprise toys our kids used to love. My husband, on the other hand, is an engineer who can put together anything. He’s meticulous and goes so far as to read the instruction manual, whereas I prefer to wing it in the hope that he’ll never ask me to help. This time I had no choice.
I tried to run but he dragged me back. It started on Friday after work. He had taken the five hundred million labelled parts out of the boxes and laid them out in the garage. I saw my weekend evaporate before my very eyes. When he noticed my sagged shoulders and heard me mumble, “I wish I were dead,” he tried to rally me, “Let’s just put the frame together tonight. Won’t take long.” Famous last words.
I have total faith in his competence but he tends to underestimate how long something will take. I’ve seen him in the garage surrounded by tools and tires, lying underneath the car which was hoisted on a jack and say, “Just have to put the tires on. Be done in two minutes.” It was the same with the gazebo. As the sun went down and the mosquitoes came out, in my most supportive voice, I said, “Let’s hire someone to do this.” He gave me the ol’, “Are you insane? This won’t take five minutes!”
On Saturday morning, I’d no sooner wiped my morning latte foam from my upper lip than I was on a ladder holding an Allen wrench. I spent much of the day standing, holding, fetching and wishing I were dead. I was a trooper though and when a pair of pliers whizzed past me after my husband had been trying for upwards of 30 minutes to get a bolt in a hole that wouldn’t line up, I tried to cheer him up, “Let’s hire someone to do this.” I could tell he was thinking about it because he didn’t say a word for the next two hours.
I must say, although he was scraping the bottom of the barrel relying on me to help, I was a quick learner. For instance, it didn’t take long for me to stop calling the ratchet a ‘thingy’ and the socket a ‘sprocket.’ Furthermore, I was good company and when there were long, concentrated silences, I took it upon myself to fill them, “Penny for your thoughts.” He always opened up after that, “Can you hand me that screwdriver?”
By late afternoon on Saturday, it was finished and not a minute too soon. My husband’s hands were bloodied from wrestling with unco-operative parts and my legs were sore from trying to make a run for it more than once. The next project is gazebo furniture, which he can assemble by himself since I’ll be out of town that weekend. I’ll make sure of it.
Colleen Landry is a high school writing teacher, author of humour book Miss Nackawic Meets Midlife and co-author of the Camelia Airheart children’s adventure series. She and her husband are empty nesters in Moncton, N.B. Their two grown sons have ditched them for wider horizons. She is filling the void with Netflix, dark chocolate and Cabernet Sauvignon.