THE SONIC BOOMER
About 18 months ago, my husband Mark and I bought a building in which to house my second antiques mall. I love buying and selling old stuff, and Mark — well, he is simply a glutton for punishment.
I spend my days gleefully seeking out unusual stuff for my stores via private sales, yard sales, estate sales and other antiques malls, and I spend my evenings at various auction houses, waiting for That Special Something to come up on the auction block. Fun!
Mark spends his days watching the finances, repairing the buildings and sucking the gunk out of severely overtaxed air conditioning systems. He spends his evenings watching YouTube out in his car, parked in the seedy lots of various auction houses. Boring!
But last week we worked side by side, doing some remodeling in the back room of our second store. It all started when I glanced up at a large open space and decided a wall should go there.
“It would be a nice backdrop for my file cabinets on this side and a place for you to put pegboard on the other side,” I said. “You could put all your tools up there and not have to rifle through boxes.”
Mark liked the idea, even though there was existing pegboard on one of the walls now, replete with his tools.
“You could just move the pegboard over,” I said. “You wouldn’t even have to buy any.”
I also needed that wall for my tubs of seasonal items, but I saw no reason to bring that up.
So, he put up the wall, I painted it and, in a jiffy, my file cabinets were lined up against it like soldiers. It looked awesome!
Then I took all his tools off the existing pegboard and tossed them into boxes. His job was to remove the pegboard.
“Where’s my flatbar?” he asked.
I shrugged and pointed to the boxes. Eventually, the pegboard was down and propped against the boxes of tools on what we had begun calling “his” side. I ran to the hardware store and bought Styrofoam insulation and some paneling that looked like barn wood to put where the pegboard had been. Mark helped me put it up.
“Where’s my caulking gun?” he asked.
Same shrug. Same pointing. Big sigh from Mark. “I thought we were doing this so I could find my tools,” he moaned.
“In a minute,” I replied.
It is now four days since I told him that. His tools are still in tubs, his pegboard is still leaning against them and the new wall has big holes in it where I decided we needed more electrical outlets.
On “my” side, however, things look great! My files are neat and organized, the new paneling looks wonderful, and I have all my seasonal inventory labeled and stacked against it just like in a real warehouse.
But I don’t want you to think that no progress has been made for poor, long-suffering Mark. Far from it! In fact, just last night, I dumped all his tools onto tables and told him he really needed to sort through those before putting them onto the pegboard. I even plugged in a fan for him using the brand-new electrical outlet. Fun!
