Are you freakin’ kidding me?????!!!!!

Okay, so how many of us women trusted our guy to be out in the back yard, ALONE, without our supervision?  Many of us, right?…if  not all of us.  Well, ladies, that’s our first mistake!!!    Here’s my story about what happened to me, when my ex was left alone.

Imagine this…..  it’s Spring time, weather just turning warmer,  and we were starting to think about outside jobs to do around the house, that we had not done in the winter, because of the cold.  In our backyard, we have a gazebo, which surrounds our IN- GROUND jacuzzi.  The jacuzzi is another story for another time, and another story it is.  The gazebo is made of untreated wood, which was painted white.  This gazebo  was not in the best shape, and remained in the exact same lousy shape it was in when we purchased the house 12 years ago.  We used the jacuzzi, which was in GREAT shape, because luckily, it was in great shape when we bought the house.

So, I’m back to the  beautiful Spring day, when I decided to go to Wal-Mart to buy some flowers that I wanted to plant.  After saying good-bye to my ex, while he was laying on the couch watching a football game, off I went with anticipation of how beautiful my little garden was going to look, once I planted all my new flowers I was going to buy.  Well, anyone who has been to  Wal-Mart knows that when you go to buy something there…if you know what you’re going to buy…. doesn’t take that long.  I’m serious, I couldn’t have been gone more than an hour total!  I come back, and low and behold!, my ex is on an 8-foot ladder, hammering down pieces of the gazebo!  So, of course, I think, let me go see what he’s  doing.  He explained that he was going to redo the wood in the gazebo.  “The wood was old, and getting eaten by termites”, he said.  Well, I’m no termite specialist, nor do I know much about wood, but I did see the pieces he proceeded to show me, to back his plan, and I thought, “How sweet!, he’s taking on a big job here, and I didn’t even have to ask him to do it! I’m a lucky woman!”  I probably should’ve known better.

Well, the next week, he was off work, and I was not.  So, off to work I go every morning, which means he’s alone at the house, free to ponder his gazebo job, and come up with several ideas on how to really screw things up.  He ran the plans by me when I got home.  According to him, although termites had gotten to some of the wood on the bottom, there was not enough damage to have to replace all of the wood.  “Lucky again”, I thought.  And, again, I should’ve known better.  So, he would replace the maybe 10 boards that needed to be replaced, which wasn’t bad, considering there’s about 150 pieces total that make up the gazebo.  Whew!, and that would even save us money!  Good job, Honey!  I was so excited, I even went and bought a cute little white gate that latches for the front of the gazebo, to allow easy access to get in and out of the thing.

In the meantime, he spent all of his days off pressure-washing off the white paint.  Once the white paint was coming off, it was obvious the poor shape the white boards were in.  I brought that up to him, and he responded that once he painted the boards, the white paint would make the boards “look like new”.  This time, I wasn’t feeling so lucky that he was doing the job.  I questioned him about maybe us buying new wood.  “Just trust me”, was his reply, and so I did.  UGH!   So off to work I went, and off to pressure-wash he went.  And so this continued for a week… I thought.  It’s not like I went outside and checked the gazebo every day.  Dang!, shouldn’t I have been able to “trust” him like he told me to, assuming the job was being done correctly?  The job did not last 5 days, nor did his motivation.  He stopped working on it, and never returned to finish the job ever since.

Needless to say, 3 years later, the gazebo, of which I am now the sole owner, sits in my backyard looking like crap, paint peeling, boards missing, and even the sides that he had nailed and “fixed” have fallen off.  Let’s be honest, it’s a mess.  The gazebo has never looked as horrible as it did once I let him at it.  The only ones enjoying it to this day are the termites.  UGH!

No, … I’m not bitter!