Anatomy of a Home Improvement Project:Husband Edition

Step 1: EXCITEMENT!

Saturday, 1pm.

Ricky: You’re going to love it when I’m finished! It’ll just take a couple of hours.

Lucy: Wonderful!


Step 2: HANDY MAN... IS HANDY!

Saturday, 2pm.

Hammer, hammer, hammer. Grunt, grunt, grunt! Manly man wipes his forehead on his shirt, looking manly. Lucy approves and thinks dirty thoughts about her husband, but knows better than to interrupt the thump, thump, thump & drill, drill, drill sequence of events.


Step 3: CUE OMINOUS MUSIC

Saturday, 4pm.

Drilling gets louder. The hour grows later.

Lucy: What would you like for dinner, honey?

Ricky: What did you do with my drill bits?

Lucy: Drill whats?

Ricky: *growls*

Lucy backs away slowly toward the wall, in her best “Crouching Wife, Hidden Scapegoat” manner.


Step 4: WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?

Saturday, 5:00pm.

Lucy jerks her head. What was that noise? She looks up. Tiny pieces of ceiling scatter, floating gently to the ground like snowflakes. A wire protrudes from the hole, slinking down, down, down. She holds her breath in the silence. Should she say something? Is the wire supposed to be there, in the middle of the ceiling? Deciding that the entire ceiling could fall in before she’d go upstairs and interrupt Captain McGrunty, she goes back to her yoga.

Ricky descends the stairs -- clop, clop, clop. His unfocused eyes, beneath dusty eyebrows, narrow at the cord dangling above. He lets out a breath and heaves in another gulp of air. Then, slowly, he releases a series of foul invective the likes of which the world has never known! Words so curse-ey, so profane, they are illegal in most countries, and not even allowed on Fox!

Lucy cowers on her yoga mat in rabbit pose, lest a stray “fucking” or “goatblowing assclown” pockmark her dewy porcelain skin. Even the cat has the good sense to flee and sit in the bathtub, like they tell you to do during a tornado.


Step 5: DENIAL

Saturday, 5:10pm

Ricky: [Expletive.] [Expletive.] [Expletive.] This was supposed to be easy! Why is the *&%$#@#@$%$ wire going through the ceiling?

Lucy: Because you drilled a hole there? You look very handsome, honey.

Ricky: I put two holes through the wall upstairs.

*Crickets*

Lucy: Is that a new haircut? Aren’t your muscles bulgey today!

Ricky glowers, clops back up the stairs, and slams the bedroom door. The skies crackle and open up, releasing a deluge of Heaven’s tears upon the unsuspecting apartment. (Not really, but that would have been totally poetic. And wet.)


Step 6: GIVING UP

Saturday, 7pm

Lucy dons her flak jacket and oven mitts.

Lucy: Dinner’s ready.

Ricky: [Expletive.]

Only one [expletive], thinks Lucy. Progress!

Ricky: This was supposed to be done by now!

Lucy: (Grabs a butter knife just in case.) I made pasta.

Ricky: Don’t go upstairs.

Lucy wonders what has become of her bedroom. She imagines a scene from Apocalypse Now, but with more pillows.


Step 7: PROGRESS

Sunday, 1pm

Ricky’s sandy brown hair gleams in the sunlight as he stands on the balcony, working. He tells something out there to “fuck off.” Lucy grins, glad she’s not that thing. He comes back inside and fiddles at the wall. A few moments later, he smiles and poses, hands on hips.

Ricky: Look!

Lucy: At what?

Ricky: It’s a wall jack.

Lucy assures Ricky that it is the most wondrous wall to ever jack! She has never seen such a wall jack! That wall jack will surely go on to cure rabies, and win the Nobel prize in physics!

Ricky: My hands are all sticky.

Lucy: That’s what she said.

Ricky smiles at Lucy.


Step 8: HALLELUJAH!

Turns out that Ricky has connected the bedroom and the living room DVRs. They have become MEGA-SUPER-AWESOME-ROCKET-POWERED DVR, with twice the capacity and twice the unicorn powers of a single DVR.




Lucy tells Ricky that she has always dreamed about, nay, lusted for a MEGA-SUPER-AWESOME-ROCKET-POWERED DVR, and that her life is now complete! Kalu kalay!

The happy couple sits upon the couch and browses the cornucopia of television available to them.

Lucy: What’s that on your shirt?

Ricky: Spackle.

Lucy: I can get it off for you.

Ricky: That’s what she said.


FIN