The Outsider: DIY! But it's still winter

By Will Jones - The Outsider  |  March 15 2018

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I thought that this new blast of snow would have dampened her spirit, tempered her desire, so to speak, had her stop, pause and take a moment to reflect on how winter’s icy grip still clings to Haliburton County, but, no, my lovely wife has gone smashing headlong into her Spring Things To Do List. And, it’s only mid-March.

Baseboards have been ripped off, paint purchased and walls washed down and primed. Her cabin fever has mutated into a devilish monster and now that cabin must now be cleansed ... so to speak. 

 

Bugger! 

 

Because with her verve for all things painting and spring cleaning comes a long list of stuff for muggins here to do, too. And, if truth be told, I’m not quite as enthusiastic about renovating Little Z’s room as my lovely wife. My cabin fever is still in the early stages, I guess. 

 

I’m more into the ‘beginning to enjoy the still wintry but not quite as cold as January weather’ stage and standing on an icy lake (not) looking down a hole. I say not because I’m told that to look down the hole is to ruin any chance of catching a fish ... because which self respecting fish would want to get caught by such an ugly idiot as the one peering down said hole. 

 

Yes, I’m more into relishing my winter weekends in almost any way that is not too energetic, and which definitely does not involve doing DIY. 

 

But, that’s not the way it goes when my lovely wife has got a bee in her bonnet. Is that a saying here in Canada? Or would it be something more like, a beaver up her behind? You know what I mean: when she’s whirling round like some kind of spinning top, almost too fast to keep up with, spouting off one great idea after another for improving our home. 

 

And, don’t get me wrong, they would be great ideas, if only they could be achieved without major input from me. Ha ha, the remedy for cabin fever, being a millionaire! If I were a millionaire then all of my lovely wife’s renovating dreams would have already come true because we’d have moved, to a house that didn’t need sprucing up ... only for her to find other stuff that needed changing and to go through the same little dance again, as I shimmied around the subject and shirked the responsibility of calling in the builders to upgrade our millionaire’s mansion because I just wanted to sloth out the final few weeks of winter in my huge, expensive but utterly free of contractors, cabin. 

 

Damn it, there is no real solution to this problem of mine that the premature onset of spring has wrought. I guess I’ll have to resort to my old plan of taking a trip to the lumber yard, buying all kinds of baseboard and trim, bringing it home, and then telling my lovely wife that it’ll have to sit and acclimatize to our home’s humidity levels for a few weeks before I fit it. ‘Just so that it won’t shrink after installation, because that would be awful, wouldn’t it?’ 

 

Yep, that should buy me until April, at least. Then hopefully it’ll be spring, and the lakes will probably be a little dicey for walking on anyway.

 

WILL JONES - is The Outsider