It’s no great secret that I have known my husband since we were both in diapers. His father and my father grew up together, horseback riding to one another’s houses along a windy dirty road to mooch off one another’s parents food supply.

They maintained their friendship through their adult years and as luck would have it, they ended up bringing babies home within a six month time span. Those babies would be Boo and I for those not quick on the up take.

When I was 16 romance blossomed between Boo and I. All it took was me hurling a hammer at his head when I was building a pig pen with his best friend and Boo grabbing my hammer to pound in the last nail on the last board. The nail that I was so triumphantly trying to whack into the board to then be able to boast that I helped build an entire pig pen. Girl power and all that crap.

I rather lost my mind when Boo gallantly pounded in that last nail with such ease thereby robbing me of my girl power moment. I grabbed the hammer out of his over-sized paws and like a mad woman started screaming at him and then with all my might hucked the damn thing at his head while his parents, his best friends parents and my parents all watching the scene unfold.

Boo, being the agile and spry teenager he was, easily ducked the missile and that was it. He was in love. He mistook my desire to kill him as passion instead of the insanity it really was. He laughed and winked at me and then disappeared. I figured he had the good sense to know when he was moments from dying and fled like a scared bunny rabbit.

Turns out he didn’t. What he ended up doing was going home, saddling up his horse, riding back to the scene of the crime where he swooped me up in his arms from atop his horse and planted a very large kiss onto a still steaming mad blonde.

The rest they say, is history.

The moral to this story is my husband has rocks for brains.

As proven by his recent insistence on having me help him as he builds a wheelchair ramp for Jumby off our ridiculously high deck.

I reminded him of the hammer incident and he reminded me I am no longer the impetuous passionate insane girl I was almost twenty years ago. Time has tempered me, and common sense has long since kicked in. He reminded me that if I hurled any hammers at his head he’d likely not be quick enough to duck and I’d thereby be killing my only viable source of income and sentencing myself to a life of picking up bars of soap in a prison shower.

He also reminded me that orange is not my best colour.

He’s thoughtful like that. (See the sentence above: rocks for brains.)

So the great wheelchair ramp building project has begun.

So far he has yelled at me for not holding the tape measure properly. My defense: I was distracted by a pretty pretty bird. Dude, we are outside and you are telling me I can’t enjoy the bountiful nature that is surrounding us? Puh-leez.

Then there may have been a slight incident with the air nailer (a big ass gun hooked up to an air compressor which shoots nails at the speed of light.) He was a tad annoyed that I may have accidentally clipped the back side of his hand with a nail as he was holding the board.

Dude. Don’t be such a pansy. It only went into the pad of your thumb a few millimeters. I scarcely grazed it. It was barely a pin prick. You were the dumbass that put your hand on the back side of the board as I was shooting the nail in at the very spot you moments before indicated you wanted it nailed. So I may have jumped the gun a bit and pressed the trigger before you were ready. It is not my fault your reflexes aren’t as quick as they once were.

You gave me the air gun. Willingly, without any thought of the consequences. In my mind, you’re just damn lucky I didn’t push a nail straight through your hand for all the bossy attitude you have been giving me lately. And don’t think I didn’t think about it more than once my sweet love.

I am sorry for dropping that big assed beam on your foot. That was wrong. I suppose the correct reaction to your cussing and yelping as it landed squarely on your toes would have been to apologize and quickly ask to see if any damage was done, not to laugh hysterically and yell for the kids to grab the video camera so I could tape your one-legged hopping dance.

I can only apologize so many times though. Quit making a federal issue out this. For the record, that beam was significantly heavier than the five pounds you claimed it was. My arms grew weary with the weight. My fingers slipped. I’m not exactly built for heaving lifting, I’ll remind you. Perhaps if you had hurried up with your measuring and leveling and navel gazing, I wouldn’t have dropped the damned thing in the first place.

Aren’t there safety guidelines about proper foot wear on a job site? Don’t you have any steel toed boots? Should you know to wear them?

I’d also like you to know that if you are swinging a thirty pound rubber mallet to pound posts into the hard and packed dirt that is our front lawn, it is physically impossible for me NOT to make lame jokes as you heft your might and swing the hammer.

It doesn’t matter that I can’t even lift the damn mallet let alone swing it. The joke fodder is too fertile. There was the whack-a-mole joke that even my father snickered at. And the comparison to the Test Your Strength game at a carnival where you whack the base to see how far the ball will shoot up. Even you have to admit that was a brilliant observation on my part.

Perhaps I should have waited to make it until after you swung the heavy mallet instead of breaking out in a circus announcer’s voice and mocking your strength just as you were mid-swing.

But dude. The kid’s laughed. That has to count for something, right?

It’s not like I’m completely useless to you in this process. I have been a little helpful. I’ve brought you band-aids and beer without even being asked to.

And I haven’t once hurled a hammer at your head.

Just remember, what ever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

And you really, really love me.

I told you you had rocks for brains.

Now, when do I get to use the skill saw?