How to ignore necessary repairs

Listen to: Live from the Hovel on the hill, No.19

(apostrophes and quotes removed on purpose, ...its complicated....)

How to ignore necessary repairs

I need things that dont breakdown, dont wear out, and dont whine no matter how I mistreat them. The old phrase With a house, there is always something has always made me long for that house. With my house there is always at least two or three somethings, and sometimes as many as 9 or 10.
I treat these somethings in three different ways. There are the things I pointedly ignore, like the stains on the ceiling tiles down stairs. They have no business being stained. Ive replaced them three times and re-done all the bathrooms at least once. Im not replacing them again until all of the boys either leave the house or stop taking showers that make the bathroom floor a swimming pool.
There are the somethings that I just forget about until I see them again. I can see them 3 times a day, but I still have no problem having them disappear from my mind as soon as I look away. This is because either they are too expensive to remedy without a big raise or a stiff drink (the tattered carpet in the dining room), require too much time and effort(cleaning the storage room floor in the basement), or the potential for a horrible realization is too terrifying to contemplate (the suspicious blurp-blurping sound the drains make down stairs when they dont think anyone is listening).
Finally, there are the things that I do get around to fixing or doing something about. What qualifies something to be gotten around to is either an opportune moment or this thing/condition/dilemma has gotten so bad I just cant ignore it any more. The best and most recent example of this is my cleaning of the garage.
I could not get from one end to the other with out using all my hands and feet, like a mountain climber negotiating a crevasse. Even though this required an entire Sunday and half of the following Monday, I toiled relentlessly against years of happy neglect. I can see the floor now, or at least I could until my son covered it with seats from the van.

Hey! What are all these car seats doing here? I asked in a hurt and stunned voice. He had whizzed in and clogged up my Opus Cleanus!

I want to see what my car is like without all the seats crowding it up.
Often, there are so many things wrong with a spoken sentence from my son, I have to work hard to focus on the most offensive part. I found the words my car made this very difficult.

Excuse me, what if I want to see what MY workshop is like without all MY CAR’s seats crowding it up? I countered.

Come on dad, this is a garage, It’s supposed to have car stuff in it. It must be tough being saddled with such a backward father.

Did you say Garage? I think you meant Alternative storage and work area. We dont have a garage. If we did, we would keep cars in it. I dont see any cars in here, do you? Nope, therefore you must remove these seats and put them back in MY CAR(Mine, mine, mine)and give up these foolish dreams of Garages and seatless vehicles.

Keeping ahead of three boys in repairs is not easy. Just keeping the house from falling down or the neighbors from feeling it might, is not easy. My house needs paint. So, much so, that I caught it trying to look appealing to the painters when they were working on the house next door. There were definite signs of come paint me rays emanating from my house. Needles to say the painters were un-seduced. Having the house painted is one of those things I avoid by saying yes, Ill get that done right after I re-do the trim that need replacing or something like that. I often build little domino trains in my mind of things that need to be done first before I get to the real problem.
Its the same with the front yard. Cant fix the front walk until I decide what to do with the garden, cant decide what to do with the garden until I get retaining walls in. Cant get retaining walls in, until it stops snowing for a minute or two.
However, instead of redoing the front yard, what if I just went with the whole Cannery row/ Couch on the front porch, refrigerators sprinkled around the yard, look? Already have a couple of extra car seats for the lawn. It would make a bold statement and no one would notice the paint, they would be too busy lighting torches and shouldering sharp farm implements for a midnight visit to the Grays.


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