A Weekend Project for the Whole (Monkey Wrench) Family

Normally, home improvement projects go pretty well for me. I mean, they might not look professional in the end, and definitely don't match up to the vision I had so carefully created in my mind (funny thing, how I'm so much more painstaking in my head than in actuality)--but I usually finish in the planned amount of time and end up with a functional and generally satisfactory product.

So you can see where this is going, right?

While I was playing in the lushly greening Southeast last month, I decided I wanted a patio/arbor/veranda/porch thing to provide similarly lush shade in our rather sun-drenched yard. (Monkey wrench chuckles from backstage) I announced my plan to Katie, and we drove off to the lumber yard together to gather supplies.

Enter Monkey wrench, stage right.

We chose the local place, for both ethical and sentimental reasons, and found everything we needed right at our fingertips. Couldn't really fit the boards in the car, though, because I'd decided my project needed to be so stinkin' big. This monkey wrench was defeated, however, with our clever use of bailing twine.

The only problem with local is that some things are, oh, at least twice as expensive, so we went to finish off our shopping at Lowe's.

Monkey wrench cartwheels across stage.

Here were the problems with this plan:

• Lowe's did not have 6' long 4x4s for the corner posts. And we did not want our arbor/porch/veranda thing to be 8' tall.
• We had no time to have the posts cut, since Katie had to go to work.
• When we asked if I could come back later to have the posts cut, we were informed that the in-store circular saw was only for boards. --But maybe someone would be willing to help us handsaw through 4 inches of solid wood.
• When I came back, as promised, for the handsawing help, the only Lowe's dude I could find was thoroughly unhelpful and told me that he didn't care who it was doing the sawing, that's too much wood to cut through by hand, and what was wrong with me that I didn't have a circular saw lying around at home anyway?
• I asked what the heck I was supposed to do, and he said to go back to the local place. Which I did. And spent nearly $50 on my 4x4s. (The happy thing here was that I made it back to the local lumber yard a scant 10 minutes before they closed. That makes one monkey wrench that I managed to dodge. . . )

This whole weekend, Katie was busy doing silly things like working during my free time, so I put most of the thing together by myself, but really couldn't manage to get it off the ground with just my own two hands. Since aforementioned roomie was headed out of town for the weekend, and I was really set on spending all my not-at-Starbucks hours perfecting our outdoor living situation, she graciously agreed to get up early and help me put the rather colossal structure up before I had to go to work and she drove off to the Front Range.

Monkey wrench invites family members--including in-laws.

Names of in-laws:

• Sleepy Katie + Impatient Rachel
• Grumpy Early Morning Woodworking
• Things Falling Over
• Things Breaking
• Crooked Screws
• Not Enough Time
• Partially-erected Structure + Strong Colorado Wind
• Things Falling Over, Jr.
• Things Breaking, III.
• Two-Person Job with Only One Person

Finally fed up, I gave those Monkey Wrenches a big old suffocating bear hug by getting up the gumption to ask my neighbor to give an extra pair of hands, and then my other neighbor volunteered to give me the proper drillbit, as he said mine was completely the wrong kind of Phillips Head (how many kinds are there, anyway?), so it worked out to be a nice community-building activity in the end.

And things went back to normal, and I painted things and planted things to my heart's content, ending up Sunday evening by finally enjoying my porch/veranda/arbor with a glass of iced tea and a good book. And the Monkey Wrench Gang headed back home after a busy weekend in Glenwood.

tony and the tale of the missing camper

One of the greater challenges I faced in my first few months at my job was a co-worker named Tony. He was a nice man, for sure, and his faith often challenged me with its sincerity. But Tony had a crush on me. This in itself isn't a bad thing, except that Tony is 18 years my senior, has three kids, and was only in the early stages of recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. I wasn't interested, but Tony wasn't in the best emotional place to just accept that. So I spent months trying to show grace while also setting firm boundaries, which added a whole lot of stress onto the already stressful load I was carrying.

And then Tony vanished. He left a meeting to run an errand and never came back--just texted to say where we could find his office keys, and for me, where to find the deed to the camper he'd just purchased. As I feared, I was the only one who got a letter of any kind, a five page oddity that centered around a prophecy about my next few years. Exceedingly weird. Without Tony, we all had to work about 90 hours that week. And now, though I in no way wanted it, I was the owner of a small camper made to fit on the truck that Tony had agreed to buy from me. I wanted neither truck nor camper nor weird letter.

Hug the monkey (wrench).

As much as Tony's exit was poorly executed, one silver lining shone brightly: I would no longer have to deal with weird emotional interactions with this co-worker/friend. That's a monkey wrench I can hug. But the camper? Now I had Johnny, the guy who'd sold it to Tony, telling me I needed to get it off the property it was stored on. I was annoyed in the extreme. The annoyance was slightly lessened, however, when I began to realize that I had basically been given a gift that would be 100% profit. I could sell that puppy for a few hundred bucks and pay off a few bills.

Yes indeed, hug that monkey (wrench).

So I set off on the still annoying but now-hopeful task of finding a buyer. The first prospect fell through, and I let it slide for a while. But then they came out of the woodworks, and I had just had a phone chat with a very interested buyer. Taking a walk later that evening, I decided to stroll past the storage place so I could chuckle again at my silly, rickety camper.

Gone. The camper was nowhere to be found. Wandering into the storage area, I talked with someone who told me it had been given away. Johnny had gotten impatient, made up some story about how the girl who'd bought it (aka, me) had lost the bill of sale, and told someone to take it away. Gone. No more camper. Dude couldn't even tell me who'd taken it.

Wait a second: Did someone just steal my monkey (wrench)?

It was funny, being so confused about how I was supposed to feel. One the one hand, I didn't have to worry about the damn monkey (wrench) Tony had so abruptly tossed into my lap. No more stress of trying to get the thing into someone else's hands. On the other hand, I had begun to count on that money for a few bills, and instead of cash I'd gotten a nasty phone conversation with the man who gave my camper away. The monkey (wrench) had become part of the plan, and now someone had, well...thrown a wrench into it. What am I supposed to be hugging here?

In the end, I laugh about the whole thing. True, I could have used that money, but it wasn't like I paid anything for the camper in the first place, and I'll get by just fine. Mostly, the camper was a pain in the rear, rudley dumped on me, and I had not at all been excited about having to sell it. All the other details that Tony had tossed a wrench into--from the sale of my truck to the way things run at work--had become oportunities to see God at work, always taking care of me the way only he knows how. This, too, was such an opportunity. The same God who knows how much money I need, also knows how much stress I can handle, and so he removed some of it. He stole my camper.

Breathe a sigh of relief, and hug the monkey (wrench).

ironic beginnings

There is no end to irony. You see, "hug the monkey (wrench)" was created entirely in honor of the call to embrace the foibles of life--even enjoy them instead of clinging to a need for constant perfection and order. You know, seeking the lemondade in a world that is inevitably full of lemons. Here's the irony: the reason that the blog immediately fell into disuse is that within days of its creation, we were evicted from our apartment. Turns out that our amazingly shady landlady (who knew!) was housing us all illegally and finally got caught. So there I was, returning from a great day of snowshoeing, looking forward to a warm shower, and posted on the door was a notice that all tenants must vacate immediately. It was December 30th. Happy New year, folks.

Hug the monkey (wrench).

The whole situation sort of made me laugh in a lot of ways. I love new experiences, and on some level I think it's great to have experienced eviction. Now I know what it's like. It might especially be helpful in my line of work (working with the homeless, many of whom have been evicted). And now, a couple months later, we are in a much better house which is both bigger AND has cheaper rent. Hug the monkey (wrench).

So there you go, a glimpse of what's ahead. We plan on recording the monkey wrenches that get thrown into our plans and our (sometimes feeble) attempts to hug them. As well, we will chronicle our journey through a journal called "Wreck This Journal" (Keri Smith, Penguin Group 2007). The thing basically instructs you on how to messily destroy the book. It was created for the anal and the perfectionist: a.k.a, me. My first assigment was to break the spine. I am still cringing. Bring on the monkey (wrench), journal style.

Over and out-
Katie

smooth beginnings

The creation of this blog seems to have gone without a hitch. That is the last such post you will ever read.