Husband Lessons 101

Yesterday I wandered outside to find Hubby tinkering at his workbench on the little cricket garden tiller. As I was watching him I began to ramble about various projects I was working on. He listened to (or ignored) me politely because he likes for me to keep him company while he works on things outside.

After some time I said offhandedly, "You know, I think I would like to have a shelf thingy on the back deck for some flowerpots."

He wiped his hands and headed off to the tool shed. I presumed he was getting another wrench for the tiller. When he came back with a circular saw I was a bit confused. I couldn't imagine what he was about to do to that poor little tiller with a Skil saw. He plopped the tiller on the ground, brought out more tools and hardware...then some lumber.

Uh oh.

"Show me what you want and where you want it," he said.

"Gee honey, I didn't mean I wanted the shelf thingy right this minute. I still have a couple of weeks of pondering to do about it. You can keep tinkering on the tiller."

"Show me what you want and where you want it," he repeated.

Well, OK then...engineering and design on the fly. I pointed, drew, measured and 'splained; lots of hand gesturing was involved. Plan A for the bracketing didn't work, so we went to Plan B. The flowerpot shelf was installed to my specifications in about 40 minutes.

I was happy to have the new shelf but was puzzled about the course of events. I didn't understand why he dropped everything to tend to my whim on the spot. It was awfully sweet, but just a little out of character. It bugged me enough I asked him about it today.

He said, "I've figured out that if I stop what I'm doing and help you on the front end of a gardening project for 30 minutes or so, you will be occupied with that project for the next three days and stay outta my hair."

Oh.

Smart man.