Spoke Too Soon - September 10, 2021

 

Still fighting gnats.  We trap a few dozen one day, see only one or two escapees for a day or two, then one day we're battling them again.  WILL THIS EVER END?

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I must have a talk with Cousin Roger.

The telephone rang Thursday afternoon as I was prepping ingredients for a meat loaf.  

Roger said, "Hey.  Them little circles?  She wants one for her mama's grave."

What?  What little circles?

I peeked out the back door and found four unpainted wooden circles - two large ones, and two small ones and two unpainted wooden hats - leaning against the settee.  Roger had been busy with his new saw and had delivered me a task while I was at work. 

It took a minute to make sense of what he wanted me to do with them.  Did the woman - whoever "she" was - actually want a snowman on one side of her small circle, and a scarecrow on the other, like the prototype?  For her mother's grave?    Roger said he reckoned I could just put a snow man on both sides.

Once the meatloaf was in the oven, I went out to the porch to see what he'd brought.  The circles were made of plywood, not corrugated plastic like the prototype.  The back side of each one was rough - knot holes galore.  I took the two little circles and one of the big circles out in the yard and began spray-painting them.  They soaked up the paint like sponges.  It would cost us a fortune to spray paint them.

And the circles weren't *quite* round.  I measured the big ones.  They were 26" wide.  Why did he settle on 26"?  Plywood is 4' x 8'.  Roger could double his yield from a sheet of plywood by making the circles 24" rather than 26".  We must have a talk about "cost of goods sold."

After dinner, I got out my quilting ruler and made Roger a perfectly round 24" cardboard circle.  He was glad to get it, said he'd go cut some more circles.

So today after work, I stopped by the hardware store and bought more paint and a sheet of thin, wood-like stuff.  Don't yet know what we'll do with the wood-like stuff, but it might come in handy for something.

Some of the paint that I bought was not for Roger's projects; it was for the back porch.  We built this porch five or six years ago and have never painted the exterior wood.  I've brought forth the idea of painting or water-sealing on several occasions.  It was not something that The Husband jumped right on right away.

Anyway . . . . 

When The Husband came home from work, I said to him, "I bought you a present," and pointed to the paint, brushes, and stir-sticks on the kitchen table.  I told him it was for the outside of the porch. 

"Oh, thank you," he said.

He didn't sound like he meant it.