Fence Mending

About two years ago, I came home to find a Home Depot delivery truck unloading 1200 pounds of concrete onto a palette in my driveway. Since they don't sell concrete at Nordstrom or Anthropologie, I was pretty sure I did not make this purchase. Upon further investigation, it seems that my husband was the one who ordered this mess. My initial theory was that he was going to build some sort of bunker for apocalyptic times, and another friend suggested he might be getting ready to build a skate park. Awesome.

It turns out, he had more ambitious plans. The split-rail fence surrounding our backyard was in desperate need of repair. Personally, I wanted a new, prettier fence, but due to The Budget, my idea was vetoed. Clint decided he could repair the fence all by himself. Because we don't pay people to do things that we can do ourselves (unless "we" is me and I can get it done without Clint finding out).

The first weekend, a grand total of four fence posts went up. Real progress, considering there are approximately 40 something of them surrounding our yard. For anyone who hasn't heard my complaints, my husband moves at a pace somewhere between paint drying and an exhausted snail. He is the anti-ninja. Weekends went by, one or two posts more went up. Excuses started to mount as the novelty of the fence project wore off: too tired, too hot, too cold, too windy, too *whatever*. At the one year milestone, Clint was almost halfway home.

Let me also provide this background: I read our neighbors the riot act for tying their fence into ours (basically, "sharing" one side of the fence because they were too cheap to build their own). I demanded that they fix some shabby workmanship that was on my property line, followed up to make sure it got down on time, and commanded that project like it was my job.

My husband is a real life project manager. It literally IS his job to manage projects. And we have the world's slowest fence repair project in our very own backyard. If he was getting paid by the hour, he would be the Donald Trump of split-rail fencing. The irony escapes him.

The neighbors fixed their fence. And sold their house and moved. Renters moved in. Renters moved out. The house is for sale again. That fence looks fabulous and mine is still under freaking construction.

I've been told by the project manager that he is "closing in on it." I'm hopeful that by the end of 2013, we will have an entire fence enclosing our yard. And by the time he's done, the first posts will probably have already fallen due to old age. Return to start. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Or better yet: take the $200 and hire a contractor.

It looks like we should have about 300 or so pounds of concrete left. So maybe we'll get that skate park after all....