“Really? Not ANY worse? Here I’ve been envisioning that the whole garage door could have fallen off its tracks on top of you, breaking your neck with its 200 lbs of weight.”

“Yes, or it could have twisted parts of itself off its tracks, losing wheels and tying itself in knots and then forced us to spend an hour and a half wrestling just to get it closed. Which was PRETTY BAD!”

* * *

“I’m going inside to pour a glass of vodka and coke.”

“I love you.” * “I love you.”

“JINX! you owe me a soda. …And it better have vodka in it!”

***

So you will have gathered that we had a garage door mishap this evening. It was pretty bad – though nothing fell on top of anyone. There was a point where Ian was holding up a corner of it with his head because so much of it was slipping off the tracks and those things are fucking heavy and we didn’t want it twisting itself out of shape. But no one got crushed or injured.

Basically, the cables on both sides slipped off the pulleys and so then they were wound around the torsioning bar and therefore we had different tensions on each side. And that caused a lot of pressure on one track while wheels slid off the other track (nearly collapsing on Ian’s head). And then we couldn’t get it closed because the cable was completely slack on one side leaving all the strength of the torsion spring on holding open the other side. And we couldn’t get at the damn torsion spring to release its … um, torsion because the damn door was open. So Ian basically used two vise grips on the side that was fighting to stay open to turn the bar in the direction of letting the door closed. Meanwhile I stood under the other side (where the torsion spring wasn’t doing a thing to keep the door open and it was sagging and pulling at the tracks) and tried to keep the whole thing level. I will hurt for that tomorrow.

Ian felt responsible. I could not see how he could possible be responsible. He said how if he didn’t have this DIY habit, it wouldn’t have happened. Oh, ah, sure. Only, his DIY habit has been very profitable in many other circumstances. And it’s one of the things I love about him. And it would be completely unreasonable of me to expect that nothing will ever go wrong with DIY stuff – because then he’d just be a professional at EVERYTHING (which would be nice, but not reasonable of me to expect). But I was not entirely nice because while he was fighting with that spring using two vise grips, I was braced under the door and talking away, “I’m just saying  you should tell me before you start moving anything. You people who usually work alone – I think you tend to just jump in and start moving things and forget that if someone’s working with you, they’re not just another tool holding things in place for you, they’re liable to get hurt if they don’t know which direction you’re pulling on things.” Because he had forgotten I was standing under the door and had just starting REEFING on it to try to get it down and I felt like we needed the home improvement therapy session right then, apparently.

Then later I made fun of the situation by parodying him with the whiny Meredith voice. (best comedy ever.)

The garage door issues meant that I did not get to put a second coat of paint on my shelves tonight. Also meant that I did not get to finish the invitations for Rachel’s birthday party. Which is too bad because it’s monday already and she should really hand them out tomorrow if we expect anyone to be able to come… argh.

It also meant that I did not get to go to dance class tonight, but I didn’t even remember that there was a dance class until it was 8:00 and I was standing braced under 100lbs of door. So whatever, then.

But, I did get my tomato plants potted. And I did get the primer and the first coat of paint on the shelves. And we got the kitchen pretty clean. And we also survived a pretty knock-down-drag-out family fight at around 3:00 when we realized that no one had eaten lunch and we were all about to claw each others’ eyes out. But after feeding the kids they were super-sweet and well-behaved, even.

So, I will summarize it as, “what a goddamn day,” but also, “we survived it and we kept the kids alive and mostly happy and we got a bunch of stuff done including contending with that fucking door and throughout all of that we behaved like a team and while I’m tired I don’t actually feel like I’ve taken a shit-kicking (which I once would have after this day) because really I’m just very, very lucky to have the family that I have.