They say that stupidity will turn around and bite you sooner or later.
Last week it decided to take a while before sinking its teeth into my flesh.
Sunday evening last, my wife and I were thoroughly enjoying an exhilarating bout of house cleaning. This was more than just your average mop-the-floors and clean-the-windows house cleaning. The entirety of our house is a work in progress and work is always in progress. With this constant state of activity, sometimes I'm loathe to put away every tool, supply, or piece of hardware when I'm finished working for the night. My rationale at the time is that I'm tired and I'm going to be using the stuff tomorrow night anyway.
Of the zillions of flaws with this reasoning, three stand out:
I'll never be able to find anything if I don't put it away. Where did I leave the bright green tape measure? It could be anywhere in the house sitting next to any one of our ongoing projects.
A house full of wallboard tape, cordless drills, and safety goggles looks like crap.
A house full of wallboard screws, circular saws, and paint thinner is not an ideal environment for a curious baby who is on the verge of toddling.
So while I napped off some of the pain and fatigue of a Saturday spent paintballing, my beautiful wife gathered all the random junk in the house and covered our $5 dining room table with a truly astounding array of tools, hardware, and stuff.
I had a blast. All the tools I had been "missing" were now sitting right in front of me. All my meager energies could be spent sorting through hardware and making difficult decisions about scrap wood rather than poking around the house looking for stuff and being distracted at every turn.
I know that sorting hardware doesn't sound like too much of a hoot to most folks. My excuse is that it's genetic. My grandfather had racks and racks of found hardware organized in baby food jars with their caps nailed to boards. One of the few memories I have of their house on Golden Circle is of a garage ceiling covered in baby food jars. My dad can spend hours browsing through a hardware store. Frys is a paradise to me as long as I'm not looking for something specific.
In short, I had a blast.
At some point, I needed to retrieve something from our garage. As I took the first step, I heard this curious tearing sound and my heel exploded in pain.
Some more background is needed here.
Some months ago, I took the very same step, but this time I was wearing shoes. The heel of my shoe caught a thin strip of cosmetic wood paneling and tore it off. It had been nailed to a wood block protecting a gas line that runs along the wall. Now the head of the finish nails stuck out less than an eight of an inch. "I should do something about that," I thought and then blithely went about my business.
So the instant I registered pain, I knew exactly what happened. The blunt nail-head had caught my heel and ripped a big gash as I stepped down.
Can you guess the first thing I did after I stopped hopping around, swearing and bleeding?
Hammering in the nails took less than thirty seconds, even counting the many pauses for choice insults and expletives.
Stoopid.
Pakeha