I May Be More Sexist Than I Thought…

By Renie Stag Smith

Sometimes, you just need a man.

As a feminist, I hate to admit that.  But after the last two days, I can make a clean breast of it – I needed a man a couple of times.

My eldest daughter, Jenn, and I decided that it was time to get rid of her beige, outdated downstairs carpet and put down wood floors in its place.  We watched many DiY and EHow videos and determined that we could do this major project in two days –the time her husband would be away from home at National Guard.  (Thanks, Anth, for all you do to protect our country!)

All the videos showed novices putting down housefuls of wood flooring in 28 minutes. All a person had to do was take out the wood flooring from its box, position it correctly, snap it to lock into place, and pick up the next piece to begin the process again.

We only had to do 2 rooms.  We figured it would take us 12 hours, tops.

The first thing we had to do was deconstruct – to take up the flooring that was already there.  The baseboards came off first so that we could get to the flooring.  That took 4 hours. This was the first event that required a man.

All of the “experts” suggested that we should score the edge of the baseboard and wall with a sharp blade before prying off.  Jenn didn’t have one, so I went to the local big box construction company to purchase one.  I fell in love with a yellow and black, foldable, retractable, super-deluxe knife that would make any toolbox euphoric to have it nesting within its confines.  I bought it!  And took it to her house.

When I tried to load the dangerous triangular blade into the knife, there were no directions. Obviously, if a person owns this knife, they don’t need directions on how it works or how to load it.

I tried.  The blade either disappeared or wouldn’t retract.  I tried over and over.  I’d used other knives that were similar to this one; in order to load them, you unscrewed the two halves, loaded the retractable blade, reset the two halves into one, and screwed them in place.  Then, the knife was ready to use.  This baby had no halves.  No matter what I attempted, the blade wouldn’t stay in place!

Finally, exasperated, I yelled to my daughter, “I’m going to find a MAN!” as I walked out the front door.  What a sexist thing to say!  I just assumed that anyone with more testosterone than I would be able to seat the blade in the correct place.  Jenn just looked at me askance.

As I stormed out the front door, the young man who lives across the street came out his front door, moving towards his pickup.  “Excuse me!” I yelled, “Do you have a moment? I just can’t get his tool to work.”

He came over and in just a few minutes had the darn knife working perfectly.  I promised him cookies in return for his help (that’s a sexist thing, isn’t it?  Let me go into the kitchen to reward a man for helping with the tools).

Back to work!

Only 8 hours from now and we’d be done! Tearing up the carpet and pad was easy – 1 hour.  But scraping off the glue and remnants of the carpet pad and ripping out the carpet tack strips took much longer than we expected – 2 hours.

We were down to 5 hours.  Cleaning underneath the major appliances took longer than expected.  And this is where I needed a male for the 2^nd time that day.  In order to clean under the dishwasher, I had to unhook it from the water supply.  I didn’t want to turn off all the water to the house, just the dishwasher.  But, for some reason, that wasn’t to be.  I had to turn off the hot water heater so that we didn’t waste any water or energy.

After laying down the under-liner by the dishwasher, it was time to turn the water heater back on.  No dice.  No matter how many times I primed the torpedo-shaped explosive device, it wouldn’t light. A male would know how to get this maniacal monster to light and warm the water for the shower that I so desperately wanted and needed but wouldn’t be able to have!

I gave up on the entire project and went to bed, 4 hours behind schedule and cursing all of the novices who could finish this project on YouTube and Lowes.com in just a matter of minutes.

The next day dawned bright and sunny, and I tried to leap out of bed, but couldn’t.  Every muscle in my body screamed when I moved.  My knees were bruised and on fire.  I rolled over to my stomach, put my feet on the floor, and pushed myself into a standing position.  There!  Ready for day 2 of this 12-hour adventure.

It took 4 hours to lay the first 2 rows of the flooring!  After that, it took an average of 1 hour per row.  Where were the super humans who could put down flooring for the videos in just minutes? It’s now been over 8 hours and we have half of the project done.

When Anth came home, I sheepishly asked him if he could fix the hot water heater.  Nothing I’d done over the last 2 days could make it come to life.  He got it working in less than 5 minutes.

I took a shower tonight.  It was pure ambrosia.  Tomorrow Jenn and I will try to finish the job that was supposed to take 12 hours to do.

We are working on day 3.

Wish us luck…..

–Renie