Lisa’s Table.

I mean, I really meant to have a good attitude yesterday.

Lisa had bought this hexagonal table after seeing one at a local Ziggy’s Coffee Shop. She ordered it, and then sent me a photo. I didn’t really study it beyond the material for the table top and seats, which looked like the now eternal decking we paid to have rebuilt back in 2020. I just figured it was just like the one at Ziggy’s which had a metal base and was held together by a dozen well placed bolts. Looking at the original at Ziggy’s, I figured an hour, with the right tools, tops.

The table was delivered on a pallet earlier this week.

It was heavy, I helped the truck driver hump it down my driveway, since his company wouldn’t allow him to back his large truck onto my property, despite the fact that it would easily fit. He should have tipped me.

It sat wrapped in cardboard until yesterday morning. Even its pieces were heavy as fuck as I humped them through the house and out to the back deck, screaming at my dogs, who met me at the front door and zig-zagged ahead of me all the way out through to the back, to get the fuck out of my way. Especially that table top. Wide as my arm span and no easy way to lift it.

I even went against everything that makes me a male McCaffrey and read the directions.

They looked idiot proof.

Fuck me.

The Big Lie was that the obvious pre-drilled holes in the table top and benchtops would match up with the pre-drilled holes on all of the support beams. The support beams would all go together easily and quickly by matching and bolting their pre-drilled holes together.

I spent a good half hour looking for pre-drilled holes. I even called Lisa out to the deck to see if she could find them.

They did not exist. Although Lisa kept pointing at the pre-drilled holes on the table top and seating like they would create new ones in all the rest of the materials.

I felt like Jesus at the Wedding of Cana. Lisa expected me to miraculously create pre-drilled holes with a quick prayer and a nod.

The smart man would have dragged all that shit back out to my driveway and then made a expletive filled phone call to the foreign country that shipped the product and told them to pick it the fuck up.

But Lisa wanted her table.

Fuck me.

Luckily I have a lot of tools from my past life of manual labor, my daughter’s stint as a National Sales Rep at Stanley, Black and Decker and those left behind by my son Luke when he and his family emigrated to Australia.

But because there were no pre-drilled holes, I had to reverse engineer the base and work from the middle braces, to the bottom frames, to the table top, then to the seating.

It was not like building a fort in the woods. Or a tree house. Everything had to be level.

Where the fuck is Matty Burke when you need him?

Six fucking hours later, the table finally together, I then learned for the first time that the heavy umbrella stand Lisa bought, and also had to be put together, did not fit beneath the table.

Fuck me.

You just assume she might have checked all this shit out before she bought it. Mais non!

I said fuck it, we don’t need an umbrella because it will probably travel to Oz during the first wind storm anyway.

I never win.

An hour later I had returned from returning the oversized umbrella stand at Home Depot with a smaller DIY umbrella stand from Home Goods and voila, it fit. Umbrella stands are heavy as fuck.

So, of course Lisa wanted to commemorate the event. The pyramid was built.

You can see just how happy I am. I really did try to smile.

This morning I woke up at two am feeling fucking crippled.

The good news is that the table won’t slide back and forth across the deck during the gale force wind storms we get here. But that umbrella is a dead man walking.

The bad news is that the remaining furniture will probably go to pieces like wooden ships against a large rock during hurricanes.

But that’s okay, Lisa will buy another. . . and another. . . and another . . . .

Until I pass across that veil.

And maybe, someday, people will sit around that table. During the rare Goldilocks hours when it is not too hot or too cold.

We can hope, can’t we?

Well now I have to take this crippled old ass and do the chores I didn’t do yesterday.

I’m grumpy as fuck.

But first I need a quick kitty cuddle and then do my rounds.

The animals I meet along the way always understand my griping.

And you fine, five readers, don’t let my negative attitude ruin your morning.

I’ll get over it.

You get on with enjoying your Sunday, which hopefully involves you reading a book.

I’ll be shoveling shit.

But let’s make today a great one.