Serious pucker factor

My morning hasn't been the greatest.  It's 37 degrees out, the wind is howling non-stop, it's wet out, and I spent the last hour on the business end of a 24-foot ladder.

Late yesterday afternoon our neighbor rang our doorbell to tell us we had a piece of our fascia that had come loose and was making a crazy racket banging against the brick chimney each time there was a gust of wind. I went out a bit later to take a look at it and realized it was going to suck to fix.  I didn't think much of it until I let Memphis out for one last whiz before going to bed at about midnight.  When we got outside, it sounded like a shotgun was being fired.  Memphis was barking at the sound and I was trying to figure out which idiot neighbor was causing the commotion so late at night.

As I walked around to the side of the house, I realized we were the idiot neighbors as the fascia was just barely hanging on and crashing into the chimney with each gust.  My first thought was, "how in the hell am I supposed to sleep with that (because the fascia was right above our bedroom window)?"

Memphis and I went back into the house and I went into our bedroom.  It was just as I thought, while Jennifer was sleeping fine, there was no way I'd be able to sleep through it since I hear everything (it's funny, when I'm trying to sleep I hear every noise, but when I'm awake, I can't ever seem to hear anyone when they're talking to me).  So, I went into the mancave and went to sleep on the futon.

Very early this morning, Jennifer came into tell me that I needed to fix it.  Her tone was apparent, like I was the one who made the wind blow or who caused the fascia to come lose.  Being married I've learned that it doesn't really matter the situation or who or what is to blame, it's my fault and my responsibility to fix it.

Our house is a two story money pit.  It was built in 1986 and virtually nothing has been updated so EVERYTHING is falling apart.  I keep hoping it will burn down (Message to Dillow, my insurance agent/friend: nothing to see here, carry on) and I can start over, but so far, I've had no luck with that.  Also, everything that seems to go wrong is a pain in the ass to fix...like this fascia.  It picked the exact highest point of the house to come lose.  Not close to the highest or just a high spot, the exact top of the A-frame.  And because the nail holding it at the highest point stayed strong, the piece of fascia flipped, so it was actually pointing out a bit higher that the top of the house.

When I got up, I called a siding place.  I explained it was a simple job, something that even I could do, I just didn't have a ladder tall enough to reach the highest point of the house.  I have a 16-foot ladder and it doesn't come close.  The guy at the siding place told me there was a minimum charge, which I understood, and said I was looking at at least a couple hundred bucks because his guys work in two-man crews and he had to pay for both them and their truck to come out.  He suggested I just go spend a couple hundred bucks on a ladder and then I'd have it for future use.

Instead, I called Hayden's Grandpa because he's got tools and stuff he doesn't even know he's got and not only that, but I could probably borrow his truck to get the ladder home.  He was in town and told me to stop by.

He had a 24-foot ladder and asked if that was enough.  I looked and looked and wasn't convinced it was.  He said to take it and try it, and if it wasn't enough to let him know.

I went back home and put the ladder up to the side of the house.  The wind seemed to be blowing harder and harder with each passing minute.  13-feet of the ladder just reached the window as I kept sliding the one piece out farther and farther.  As I started running out of ladder, I thought to myself, there's no effing way I'm going up there.  With just a couple feet of ladder to go, it was just reaching the point where I might be able to touch the bottom part of where the fascia needed to go, but I was pretty convinced I wasn't going to be the one to do it.

I climbed up as high as I was willing, holding onto the ladder for dear life.  It was cold, the wind was relentless, my wet shoes were sliding all over the aluminum rails of the ladder and I was sweating like  nobody's business because I was pretty sure I was going to die.  The one thing I had going for me was that with the rain last night, the ground was muddy and soupy and I figured I probably wouldn't die after all when I fell, as long as I could avoid the gas meter just below.

Just when I was ready to take down the ladder and head back to Grandpa's, it occurred to me I'd have to give back Man Card if I didn't at least give it a try.  I figured if I fell, I'd only break my back, but I'd have a great story to tell.  In the end, having a story won out.

I trotted back up to the top of the ladder, using 23 of the 24 feet available and reached for the piece of fascia, but it was just too far out of reach and there was no way I was going any higher.  I again descended the ladder and went into the garage to find something I could use as a hook to catch the offending fascia.  In the backyard, I found just the thing...a shepherd's hook that I'd neglected to put away for the winter.  It extended my reach plenty, but meant I had to climb the damned ladder with mostly one arm.

Eventually the fascia had been caught and was back in place...but now I had to figure out how to hold nails in one hand, a hammer in the other, and still keep two hands on the ladder.  I went back down the ladder for the umpteenth time, my butt still as puckered as my first trip up.

I grabbed a handful of nails and a hammer and placed them all in my little construction guy belt and climbed the ladder yet again.  Starting at the lowest point of the fascia, I got the first nail in in no time and managed to stay atop the ladder.  With the fascia now in a semi-attached state, I tried to reach a bit higher to the next nail hole.  Unfortunately, there was no way to hold a nail and swing a hammer without ending up on the neighbor's roof so I called it a day.

After returning the ladder and truck to Grandpa (thanks Grandpa) I headed back home to get ready for a trip to the office, the fascia still attached where it's supposed to be.  My butt is still a bit puckered from the morning's traumatic experience, but I'm not in traction like I partially expected to be at this point in the day.  I'm really happy Grandpa had a ladder because I'd have wasted a couple hundred bucks buying one for my own because I have no intentions of ever going that high again.

Short story, please

Being a male, I'm not much of a talker.  Sure, I'll give you my opinion on anything, but I typically use as few words as I can get away with and if I don't have to talk, that's even better.  It's the same way when I ask a question.  A simple yes or no will suffice, I don't need the long story.  Whoever came up with K.I.S.S. was right on the money, keep it simple, stupid.

I get the long story at home a lot.  One of Hayden's grandmas is quite the talker.  Often I have to butt in and say, "Grandma, just give us the short story."  From time to time, that long story gene makes an appearance with Jennifer.  I ask a question that requires a one word answer and after a few minutes I stop listening.  Same thing with Hayden, everything with him is a freaking negotiation.  It gets to the point where I just stop listening to him as well.

I bring this up because I got it at the office the other day.  The people that process our payroll sent me a file with a list of employees who hadn't received a check in a while and they wanted to know if those employees could be terminated in their system.  I tried to open the file, got an error message and was told I couldn't access the file.

Subsequently, I sent a message back to the payroll girl explaining the message I'd received and asked if she could send me the file again.  I expected an e-mail with an attachment and maybe a three word-sentence saying something like 'here you go.'

Instead I got a dissertation on how she didn't understand what the problem was, that she'd opened the file and had no trouble with it, blah, blah, blah...I stopped reading.  I was prepared to fire back a nice, professional two-word reply; no not those two words, but two I use at home ALL.  THE.  TIME.  "Don't care."

In thinking about it a bit more, it occurred to me that I get shit at the office all the time.  Someone asks me something, I give a short, direct, wonderful answer; and then I'm given all the reasons why we can't do what I propose.  The whole time they're talking (generally speaking, after you've reached the allotted number of words I think an answer should take, I quit listening), I've already stopped listening, wondering why in the hell they bothered me in the first place if they weren't going to like my answer and have started back on what I was working on.  Then when they finish, if I'm still awake, I look up and say, politely, "I'm sorry, are you still in my office?"

In the future, I'd like for all to remember that my capacity for listening is several hampered by my y-chromosome and in the best interests of everyone, you should just give me the short story.