Surviving a week without the Lil Woman

"You know, they will probably starve to death.”
That was what my somewhat smart alecky daughter (I don't know where she gets that from) said to my wife as they were packing for a week-long road trip to northern B.C.
ﾒI'm sure they will be just fine,” replied the Missus, in as believable a voice as she could muster.
Personally, I was not worried about the food aspect of their absence. I can order a pizza with the best of them, so the vittles were just 10 digits away.
Actually, I am fine in the kitchen – because that is where I leave the phone to call for pizza. Seriously, I can cook some rudimentary meals, but if my sons were expecting fine dinning, they had their expectations dashed.
Fortunately, they are old enough to pretty much take care of themselves. And we did have lots of ingredients they can put together to make food, so I knew we would be fine.
Although, within the first 24 hours of the Missus being away, both of my sons had already made a trip to a local fast food establishment.
I did go to the grocery store and picked up some easy-to-cook food. Not those dinners that proclaim they are for watching television while eating. Health wise, I might as well just inject glue into my arteries. One such 'meal' boasted 68 per cent of your daily intake of sodium in just a single serving.
Thanks, but I like my kidneys and would prefer to keep my blood pressure from blowing the top of my head off.
The easy-to-cook meals had to have at least some nutritional value. So after a bit of searching, I collected enough somewhat healthy food to keep three men eating for days, unless some of the teenage herd came by, then I estimated our food stocks would have run out in 67 minutes.
The food supply could also not include hot dogs. I am not 100 per cent sure what hot dogs are made of and that is why I prefer not to eat them. I have never been a hot dog aficionado, and even as a kid I preferred the avoid the quasi meat meal.
I can remember in elementary school when we had 'hot dog day.' For 25 cents, you could purchase a hot dog for lunch. I recall looking at this huge steaming, boiling pot of 'dogs with a thick layer of some sort of foam type substance covering the top and decided hot dogs were not for me.
I knew even without having to resort to ingesting mechanically separated meat products, the boys and I would survive the week of bachelorhood.
My biggest concern with the Missus being missing was the state of the house. With two young men and their friends hanging around all the time, I had visions of coming home from work to a smoldering ruin akin to Pompeii.
Or worse, a kitchen full of dirty dishes. With the Missus working part time, she has a little more time to dedicate to the keeping the house from collapsing into a dusty pile of wood, smelly socks and soiled housewares.
So as a preemptive strike, I had a little chat with the young lads.
ﾒGentlemen, I am not your servant, I am not your house keeper and I am not your maid. No where on me does the word slave appear and you are expected to help keep this house tidy and orderly. Is that understood?”
They both acknowledged my little rant and did a pretty good job at pitching in and keeping our humble home from turning into a pile of rubble.
Of course the hours leading up the return of the Little Woman were filled with the traditional frantic dash to ensure the house was spotless, well maybe not spotless, but at least it was clean and tidy.
We all survived unscathed and well fed, but I am glad she does not go away very often, my dialing finger was getting sore.

Copywrite 2014 Darren Handschuh

Terror lurks under the deck

It was not a good job for someone with arachnophobia.
The fear of eight-legged creepy crawlies can be terrifying at worst (and at best actually, because I really do hate spiders.)
Nothing in this world ― not a visit from the inlaws, a trip to the dentist, not even other bugs, scare me as much as a spider.
So with that manhood-shriveling fear in mind, you can understand why I was so reluctant to clean under the back deck of my humble home.
When we moved in to the house, the space under the deck was open and really not good for anything, so I put my vast array of carpentry 'skills' to work and enclosed the area with  two-by-fours and plywood.
The first thing I needed was tools and thanks to a watchful eye, I spotted several much-needed pieces of equipment in local flyers, the discount section of hardware stores and yard sales and soon I had an arsenal of mass construction. 
All of this was purchased with my wife's consent – more or less anyway.
Eventually I had everything I needed from a compound mitre saw (my favourite new tool) to a framing-finishing-gun-air-compressor combo (my second fav tool.)
Feeling like a real carpenter, I even bought one of those little pouch thingies carpenters wear to hold their hammer, nails, pencil, measuring tape, sawdust and what ever else happened to land in all those pockets.
The job didn't take long, and before I could say 'Why won't this stupid board fit, I measured it three times,' the job was done.
I was pleased with my mastery over wood products and the prowess I possessed in building such a fine enclosure.
Three walls, two doors and a window were all done by someone with marginal carpentry experience. 
Next came filling the newly created enclosure with stuff I wanted to store. First were the kid's bikes that could finally be kept under lock and key. After having three bikes 'liberated' from my yard it was becoming rather tiresome, but since I completed the addition to my home not a single bike has wondered off.
As time crept along, more and more items ended up under the deck, some of which had not been moved for years.
But along with the structural addition to my home came another addition: a breeding ground for spiders. At first it was not too bad, but after a few years there were more spider webs in that little space than moustaches in Mexico.
It was also getting full of leaves and dust and clutter, so I decided it was time to charge in and clean it out.
The first task was to move everything out of the area. Actually that was the second task, the first was to get a good pair of leather work gloves so I would not run the risk of my skin coming in contact with an arachnid.
When I moved a box and saw a wolf spider – that was actually larger than a real wolf – scurry away, I knew it was time to call in the heavy artillery: my shop vac.
With the longest tube extensions I possessed, my peak 5.5 horsepower spider killer was ready to go. I would move items with one hand and vacuum with the other. I sucked up roughly 2,347 pounds worth of spider webs, or something in that range anyway.
I also caught up to that wolf spider and I actually heard it make a clunking sound as its enlarged body entered the cold chamber of my shop vac.
I am still shuttering.
It took a while, but a decade of spider build up has been cleaned out. 
I also learned a valuable lesson that day: when doing a job that involves spiders, webs and other forms of ickyness – make my son do it.

copywrite 2014 Darren Handschuh