My Handy Man

Somewhere between holding up metal shelving with my shoulder and looking at the rust stains on my fingers as I organized tools, my husband proudly says to me,

“You never thought I was much of a handy man did you?”

“No darling, I never dreamed you could be so useful around the house” was my reply.

After this quick exchange, I began to reminisce about our first date; Demetrio wore a stylish shirt that I did not recognize as stylish at the time. He walks up to me as I am waiting in front of the theatre and when I catch a glimpse of him again after a week, I had second thoughts. He looked so Italian and so gay at the time; Prada shirt, gold chain and matching bracelet and strolling down the street rolling his own cigarettes. Needless to say I had no aspirations that he would be of any use around any house but I must say on record that my first impressions of him were WRONG! Even though he collects shoes and cologne, wears leather pants, has a coat, over coat and jacket for every occasion, he is still very handy around the house.

This weekend was spent at three hardware stores and our not so favorite kitchen store. Our kitchen needed a few more shelves, we needed a bathroom junk holder and Demetrio needed a cologne showcase, so we went to IKEA. The rest of our apartment needed major HELP!

Being the paranoid person that I am and living on the fourth, (5th in reality) floor of my building; I wanted very much to get some plastic fencing for the back balcony so the dog and his toys would not go flying down into the courtyard below. This weekend we accomplished quite a bit: We bought and hung towels bars, TP holders, metal shelving for our storage room, a coat rod, shelving for D’s office, and hung our dryer (yes, our dryer is so small it can be hung onto the wall). Also we bought mops, cleaning detergents, salt for the dishwasher, brooms, outlet changers, and tons of electrical stuff. Who knew that my hubby us a certified electrician? Thank goodness for this because for some strange reason here in Italy the plugs that are attached to appliances 80% of the time do not fit into the outlets of your home or apartment. If this happened in the US, I think it would be an outrage, here it is normal.

As someone I knew used to say “You need the right tool for the right job, we had so many right tools, I had to buy 4 extra little tool boxes to fit them the all into. With my handy little label maker, I tried to slowly organize our lives. Demetrio on the other hand was drilling, hammering and assembling all afternoon long and into the evening. I followed him around with the vacuum cleaner, mop, and damp rags and cleaned, cleaned and cleaned. Now that the shelves are put up and we have some available storage, I am putting things into place this week and moving used boxes into our basement storage space. Around 9:15 pm Sunday, we were both dead tired and starved. I made our second dinner in our new kitchen and we had our first meal at the table, with proper glasses and silverware, note the boxes in the background. We still have a long way to go.