Welcome To My World

My parents have recently bought a new condo, and took possession of it last week. They haven't moved in yet, but there were a few things they wanted to do right away. For example, the people who moved out did not exactly knock themselves out cleaning the place as they left, and my mother insisted that the fridge be tackled as soon as possible. Because if you are Catholic and your house is dirty when you die, you will go straight to hell.
They also wanted to get the locks changed, in case wandering strangers in possession of the key would come in and squat.

The Mister is very handy at that sort of thing, and my parents, decidedly are not. They are endlessly astonished at what he can accomplish around the house, like changing batteries and installing lightbulbs. (Okay, they aren't that bad, but they are kind of close.) Both of my parents are capable, competent people who are entirely able to write enviable eulogies, tell you what a bishop's robes are called, cook almost anything and travel half way around the world without batting an eyelash. But Himself has them dazzled when he airily fixes an electrical plug or tiles a floor. There was that one time when my brother and his wife had their bar-b-que stolen off of their back deck, and my parent's neighbours happened to be pitching their bar-b-que because it didn't heat up any more. The Mister not only replaced the burner, but he repainted it with special bar-be-que paint. Nobody in my family even knew there was a special bar-b-que paint. They all looked like they suddenly had a crush on him, and it was all clear now why I had married him.

He went over to replace the locks today, and after some time, my mother called me, sort of worried, to ask if he had come home. He had been there, she said and he went off to pick up the locks and had been gone a while. "Is it normal for him to take off to the hardware store and be gone for, like, an hour and half?" "Entirely", came my reply. How I treat a bookstore is the way Himself treats a hardware store; namely, like a religious retreat. Its an opportunity for meditation, seclusion and immersion in an environment of peace and security. (He can spend days in there looking for exactly the right size of quarter-round trim for the bathroom, and then never, ever put it up.) My mother was getting kind of worried, thinking that some sort of disaster had befallen him, but I knew what she did not, that a trip to the hardware store rarely involves only one hardware store, and repeat visits to the same location were not out of the question. Eventually, he came back to her place and after several hours and another couple of trips to the hardware store, the locks were changed.

I'm just happy that someone now knows what I have to deal with when he says "I'm going to the hardware store, I'll be right back". Because up until now, nobody believed me when I said "bring lunch".