Staples

Here are two things I find annoying:

1.) When the word “literally” is used when it does not apply.

2.) How being an adult isn’t so much figuring life out but rather stapling something together and making it work.

I don’t have an example for the first. But for the second I offer you home ownership.

We bought a house in July of 22. When I saw it, I thought “Nice, ready to live in.” My wife saw it and thought “We don’t need to change much. Just the ceilings, the walls, the floors, all the light fixtures, the backsplash, the bathrooms, and the closet shelves. No biggie.”

“I’ve never done any of those things. Are you sure?”

“It will be easy.”

“Even the floors?”

She called our contractor friend Joel and then came back into the room.

“Yeah! Joel says it will be easy.”

So we got the scrapers and the sprayers and soaked the popcorn ceiling until it came off in sheets. We bought the paint in “Cottage White,” “Off-gray of the Immaculate Conception” and “Ocean Wave off the coast of Morocco in December Blue” and layered it onto the walls. We ripped up the carpet, and we took a crowbar to the basketball floor-ish wood in front of the door and in the dining room. We bought the engineered hardwood and the floor glue (this stuff is created by Satan) and filled the house.

And a year later, here we are with one final step: the quarter round. Without it, there’s a gap between the wall and the floor which is an invitation to spiders, the critiques of my mother, and even poison ivy growing in from underneath the concrete slab.

One Saturday morning, I loaded up the nail gun my friend Collin let me borrow and steeled myself for the final step. By the afternoon, I’d be on the couch with a finished house.

The wall I chose to start with was around the fireplace mantle. You know, the evil thing with the sharp edges we think is a good idea to put in houses with kids?

As I was cutting the quarter round on a miter saw, I thought: “Maybe I should put some ketchup on my hand and pretend I cut my finger off.” Nah. She’s holding the kid and that’d be traumatic.

I sashayed the long piece against the wall and reached for the nail gun on the ground forgetting about the fireplace mantle.

I slammed the corner of the thing with my head right where the scalp meets the forehead.

My wife says I didn’t make a sound. I don’t remember because I was reeling. Somehow I didn’t black out or see stars.

I steadied myself and felt an acute pain at ground zero of the hit. I put my hand there to try to ease the pain. There was a dent. Yes, a dent in my head. I looked at my hand: blood.

My wife was feeding the baby in the other room. I stood in the doorway and said “I hit my head on the mantle.”

“Oh, are you—”

“I think my head is dented.”

“Hwaahh! Wha? Wha?” she set the baby in the crib.

“Can you grab me a paper towel?” I just said it as if I was asking her about car insurance.

“Blood! Blood! Blood!”

“Paper towel please.”

I applied pressure to the wound, and she googled “How big does a gash on your head have to be to go to the emergency room?”

“Let me see it,” she had her phone in her hand.

I leaned my head over.

She backed away. She was making the face she makes when she sees my daughter’s boogers.

“I need you to get over that and look at it” I said, thinking my lifeblood was draining out of me.

She pushed my hair aside and flinched. “Oh, UGH, Oh! Oh! Oh! You need stitches.”

We went to the Urgent Care around the corner and the nice doctor from Albuquerque put some staples in my head. I want to complain about the pain but my wife delivered a baby this summer so I’ll just shut it.

I guess what I’m saying is at the moment I’m literally stapled together.