Handyman Husband

My husband. You gotta love him. Very handy. About 6 years ago we bought a "fixer upper." We looked at it, said "wow, what a dump, where do we sign?" My husband, remember, very handy assured me that we could "make her like new". ( He probably said "we might be able to keep the health department at bay"). We decided that with three active kids we had to start on finishing the basement. We had spent a really fun winter putting on our coats and boots to go outside just to get to the basement. Steps were first on our list of priorities and that went really well. Confidence was building. We decided that we could probably do most of the work ourselves. Again, it was going really well. We hammered and cut wood and measured (sometimes in that order). But hey, were saving money. Normally we would work together. After he got home from work we would get a few hours in. Except for the day he decided to work without me. I was volunteering for 3 hours once a week teaching Art. My husband decided that because he was off work that he would put some construction time in. After all there was only one piece of molding left to nail upat the ceiling. It would go really fast because we have an electric nail gun. Very cool, also very fast, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Ok, so he's alone. With a nail gun. Alone, with a nail gun. Perhaps just a brief mention of a few things so you the reader can gain a little perspective. When I say "alone with a nail gun" you should be thinking, "oh the humanity." This is the man that bleeds everytime he plays a sport. You're thinking "rugby? football? maybe soccer?" I gotta tell you it's more like, checkers, foosball and air hockey. This is the guy who was talking on the phone at work, fell off his chair, hit his head on a chalkboard and blacked out. He woke up and the guy talking to him never knew a thing. Love him. Ok so back to being alone. So he gets the board and the nail gun and climbs the ladder. Again, ladder, not a good sign. Did I mention that we live in a modular home? It has these metal hooky things hanging from the ceiling. Well as my husband climbed the ladder, he sort of misjudged the distance between the metal hooky thing and his skull. Oh, he has a minor depth perception problem. Absolutely essential in both air hockey and construction. So, long story short, the hooky thing jams right into his forehead. He immediately knows this has the potential to go bad. Remember, board in one hand, nailgun in the other. He pulls his head out of the metal and blood starts to gush. Oh, he also doesn't like the sight of blood. We visited my cat in the hospital and he passed out. So, he's feeling a little woozy but he's already on the ladder, and he only has one little nail to fire into the board. He finds a paper towel, sticks it to the cut and decides to finish. He is so brave, and what a work ethic! One nail. Just one. He aims, he fires...he shoots the nail.... right through his thumb. Can you imagine the newspaper article on that one. Wife finds husband bleeding to death, nailed to the basement ceiling. Fortunately it has a happy ending. He managed to stay conscious long enough to get the nail out of his thumb and tend to his cut. I was of course very sympathetic. I told him to please never work alone again and the very next day I bought him 2 new tools. A pair of welders gloves and a hardhat. I would like to say that was the only incident of its sort but this is a blog and not a novel