So I was sitting at my office desk the other morning and my neck and shoulders felt like monkfish. I mean they felt like they looked like monkfish. You know those pieces of fish that are supposed to be edible, tasty fish, but look like your calf muscles in full on, middle of the night, yeah I better get more potassium in my diet kind of spasm.
I came home early for a de-spasming nap before the Kid needed to be schlepped at 5:00 to another destination for his pleasure and not mine.
But today was the day my handyman decided to attach the new gutters and chainsaw the dead tree in my front yard. I still believed a muscle relaxer could usurp the noise’s position in my ear canals and allow me and my best friend, the heating pad, a couple hours of downtime.
It wasn’t meant to be.
First of all the rest of my back turned into monkfish and then my pelvic area felt like it had never known pleasure in its entire life and therefore all parts decided to mutiny into some serious aching. Then new monkfish filets headed southward to my rather large quad area and to my giant Ukrainian calves.
Damn. These weren’t muscle spasms. Shit. I was getting sick.
And then the hammering began.
Now my handyman just might be the nicest man to have ever walked God’s green earth. I would rather stick icepicks through my forehead before I ever said anything less than perfectly kind to this old soul. We have had long conversations about writing and books and refugees and yoga and everything else your typical handyman probably would have not a snippet of knowledge about. (My handyman could also inform me to not end a sentence with a preposition).
I was happy the dead tree came down because there was this one broken branch, that is, log perched a might precariously between the fork of two lesser branches. I encouraged the Kid to take aim at it with whatever Star Wars or Nerf weapon he could produce, but to no avail. Thank you to my handyman for eliminating that branch and the rest of that rotting tree before it killed one of us and I would have to explain that gruesome accident.
“Mom, how did Mike get the tree down”
“Well, he had a ladder and a chainsaw…”
“Whoa Mom! Ladder and chainsaw should never be used in the same sentence.”
Agreed, but the task had been accomplished.
Now for the gutters. The gutters that were being reattached outside my bedroom windows while I was in the throes of a monkfish-muscle relaxer stupor - that got a little noisy. Shit, can’t I just be sick without the grating sound of metal against metal and a ladder clanging repeatedly across the front of my house.
And I felt stuck because if I got out of bed on either side my handyman would see me in my finest flannel men’s jammies and bird’s nest hair and face fused in a mask of sheer horror that he would see me in such a state.
But we have some history.
Last summer on a clear, bright, sunny day my handyman was repairing the roof on the house next door-because he is my neighbor’s handyman as well. This is the roof directly across from my very open bathroom window, the window devoid of any type of window treatment. I was in this bathroom. I was using this bathroom. I was leafing through my latest copy of Bon Appetit.
The FH used to scold me for parading around MY OWN HOUSE that had minimal window coverings in my less than…well in practically nothing- but hey- a bikini is practically nothing- but generally an acceptable garment that won’t alert the indecent exposure police. Now I am sure he wasn’t worried that someone would start salivating over my giant Ukrainian calves. I am pretty sure he just didn’t want to give our racist neighbors anymore ammunition to report us to codes for our trashbins languishing at the end of our driveway.
”Hey, if someone looks in and sees me in whatever state- it is their problem. They are doing the wrong thing. I am perfectly legal and at ease.”
Well, my life and my innocent, absolutely human bathroom activity took a bad turn.
I am fairly certain my handyman saw me wipe.
I mean WIPE.
Like a several wads of Charmin kind of wipe.
I sat down on the floor and started to sweat and hyperventilate. Well, not the hyperventilate part, but that would have been welcome as an attempt to stop the spread of my mortification and maybe just let me pass out.
I crawled across the floor, down one step and up another into my bedroom and regrouped. I looked out another window and my handyman was now on another part of my neighbor’s roof, hopefully looking directly into the bright sun to sear the vision of my bare behind from his mind. Then I hope he went home and had a total blackout night of drinking 151.
So around 4:30 the clanging and hammering stopped. He had nary a fleeting glance of my person that entire afternoon. It’s January. I still need to find a covering for that damn bathroom window.

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