On the subject of Karma, it seems to me the population is divided into two camps: those like me who are strong believers in it, and soon-to-be believers who will inevitably get clobbered right between the eyes by a vengeful Karma.
For a solid year and a half after we bought in the Highlands, my wife and I reported proudly that our wonderful 1930 house had “good bones,” was in spectacular shape, and needed practically no work at all. Karma thought our “proud reporting” sounded suspiciously like “smug bragging” and decided that a Biblical deluge between the good bones would teach us a little humility. In a period of less than two weeks, our dishwasher sprung a leak, a trickle from our attic AC unit stained our bedroom ceiling, a small gusher flooded part of our basement, and a pipe burst, sending a waterfall cascading into our kitchen and demolishing an eight-by-eight-foot section of the ceiling.
Verily, we were chastened, stopped bragging, and frantically worked to get thumbs in all the dikes. We had to call a plumber to repair the burst pipe, but we fixed the other problems “Ourselves.” That’s a reference to the fact that my wife will point thoughtfully at, say, a scraggly eyesore of tangled old shrubbery in the backyard and declare that it must be removed. “We could do that ourselves,” she’ll say, and of course Ourselves will trudge to the garage and sharpen up the ax.
Being handy is a blessing and a curse, of course. I save us a ton of money, but I burn a lot of brain cells trying to figure out how to do things the pros do without thinking. Another running joke is that I get the benefit of the Comedian’s Compromise. If the drywall patch I’ve installed isn’t exactly perfect, I just shrug and remind her that I’m a comedian, and that a drywall installer wouldn’t even attempt to do what I do for a living. At least I gave his profession a shot, and chances are nobody will ever notice the miniscule irregularity beside the refrigerator. My wife is very forgiving and pretends to have blurred vision quite often, bless her heart.
Since I spend a surprising number of hours covered in paint, mud, sawdust, insulation, cement, drywall dust, spider webs, rust, mulch and my own blood, it’s probably not surprising that we have an official Splinter Removal Station. I’ll yell, “Honey? Splinter!” and I’ll hear her mumbling while she puts down what she’s doing upstairs to meet me downstairs between the sink and the stove. She picks up the needle she keeps above the sink, sterilizes the point in a blue flame on the stove, clamps my affected digit in her left hand and digs out the offending sliver. I could build a birdhouse with all the wood she’s dug out of my hands.
The professional estimate of $3,000 to fix the leak in our basement was all the incentive Ourselves needed to give it a shot. The next time it rained heavily, I donned my grubbies and crawled through the mud under the deck looking for where the water was getting in. It wasn’t rocket science. I moved a lot of dirt, strategically placed some plastic sheeting, spent $7 on concrete patch, and it hasn’t leaked a drop since.
With that $2,993 we saved, we’re definitely going to enjoy Ourselves.
Mack Dryden is a comedian and motivational humorist based in Louisville. Go to www.mackdryden.com to see how to book him for your event.