My wife is having a birthday later this month, so I’ve been popping little surprises here and there as part of a grand scheme. What I did yesterday took a week in planning. My two buddies and my son all arranged to be off; well my son didn’t have school so we scheduled around him, but you get the idea. The wife was volunteering at the school all day, so it was a perfect day.
The second my wife and The Boys leave the house; were off. I call Howie and Jerry to let them know it’s on. Doug and I go shopping, for area rugs. We pick two good ones that match the décor in the living room and dining room and it’s back home. Howie and Jerry arrive fifteen minutes later, and the work begins. Project one; remove the carpets. Something my wife has wanted me to do for almost a year.
So we move furniture around and take the carpet up in roughly four by four pieces. We’ve got the radio going and the guy talk is churning. By eleven, we’re done in the dining room. Howie and Doug start working on the floor; Jerry and I start on the living room.
At noon we take a break. We have a little more than three hours to go before the wife and kids get home. At 12:45 we’re back at it full steam. At 1:30 it’s time for stripping and buffing. The floor is already showing signs of beauty, except for a couple of lines in each room roughly in thirds, where whomever laid the carpet got happy with a staple gun. What I wouldn’t have given for a time machine yesterday.
By 2:45 every thing was finished except getting the furniture back in place. We put down the area rugs, arrange the furniture and start moving the old carpet to the garage till trash day. It was raining cats and dogs yesterday, so we couldn’t leave it by the dumpster. At 3:30 were admiring our handiwork. There’ll be a few more chores that the wife and I will have to do, like moving pictures. But all in all it looks great. Even the staple gun marks add a sense of character to the floor.
We crack open some Corona’s and a Coke for Doug, and wait. At four the wife and kids come in. The Boys are already shouting “cool”, “nice” and other adjectives. But I’m waiting for my wife’s reaction, and she looks stunned. She smiling and turning circles. I’m getting ready to be modest, the guys are wearing suitable “shucks weren’t nothing” expressions. She walks over, stops takes another last look around and says: “We need new drapes”.
Stuffy, if I had come home to find that my husband and friends had done something so awesome as that, I can guarantee the last thing on my mind would have been the drapes! There’d have been some serious wining and dining going on in the DWD household that evening! I’m talking steaks and chicken sizzling on the grill… yessirreebob!
That, and the hubby would have been inundated with hugs and kisses.
By the way, nice job on the floor, Stuffy. It was a very sweet of you to do what you did and she really appreciates it. She’s telling all her friends/co-workers what a wonderful, wonderful man you are.
Stuffy, it is not necessarily a woman thing. Some people just have trouble expressing themselves, especially in front of others. Does she show how much she loves you in other ways?
Some time ago, I was out for lunch with a bunch of guy friends. Once our food came and we started eating, we realised that we didn’t have enough food to go around. So we ordered some more. The new food arrived, but then we realised we were short of naan, so we ordered some more. The naan came, but then the food wasn’t enough. So we…
I think you’re right. My mother single-handedly underminded all my brother’s desire to ever attempting a cleaning project. When we were younger, we’d do the cleaning that asked of us, and he, being a little boy between the ages of 5 and ~10, would be all proud of himself that we’d manage to get most of it done, and would inevitably want to show off the progress to our mother.
She’d walk into the now reasonably clean room, look around and declare " It’s a good start." This, not being the reaction a very small boy was hoping for, would inevitably crush him, and he wouldn’t want to continue, so I usually finished up because I felt bad about how hurt he was; he did do a good job, but apparently she just focused on what was still left to do. Now she wonders why he doesn’t usually attempt to clean anything unless begged to. :rolleyes:
This must be it. Because I’ve been looking hard, and I still can’t see why the old drapes don’t match. Must be something in my male psyche that doesn’t allow me to notice.
Khadaji That’s not it, she known these guys since we were dating. I think she just like shopping…now that I think of it, maybe I would have saved money if she’d gotten to go buy the rugs
You’re subject implys that you believe that you should understand women. We all know this is an impossible task. relax and be merry that atleast nothing is out of the ordinary!
