home improvement

Growing up where I did, when I did and with whom was very interesting on many different levels. It was, for the most part, fun and carefree. Actually, that’s not 100% accurate. Growing up in Belmont Shore during the time that I did was more or less a free for all. A shit show of all walks of life doing all kinds of who knows what. From adults, parents, tying one on nightly, to the high schoolers pimping beers at local liquor stores, smoking weed and dabbling in the booger sugar all mixed with college kids in bars. Throw in a laid back beach atmosphere and you pretty much grew up in one gigantic party. While it was a fun lifestyle and environment to be in it did have it’s drawbacks. Most of the inhabitants of “the shore,” were renters. Whether it was a house, duplex or apartment, the fact was that most or a vast majority rented. As such, home improvements were generally left to landlords, handymen and the older dudes. Sure, I know how to build a launch ramp and put together a skateboard. I made some shit in woods and metals. Fuck, I even worked in an upholstery shop for a summer. However, we didn’t have sprinklers or a dishwasher, and quite honestly, there just wasn’t much on the radar of a kid between the ages of 9 to 16 in the way fixing shit around the house.

As a young adult I rented. When I got older I rented. When I got married I rented. When we had a child…you guessed it. Rented. It wasn’t until we had moved to Utah and been here for about three years did it really occur to me that I could buy a house. Frankly, I never thought I’d ever buy a house. Ever. OK, I have to dial it back just a bit. Most of the time well into adulthood I was partying and living the chef lifestyle, and I didn’t give two shits about anything except cooking awesome food, pumping up my ego and partying it up. That was one of the things about growing up in the shore that a lot of people were really good at-have a good time. It wasn’t until I had gotten sober, married, had a kid and moved to Utah that the thought ever crossed my mind. And sometimes, while I’m more than 100% grateful to be a homeowner or even that I had to opportunity to do so, I’d give it all back in a mother fucking heartbeat. Why? I’ll fucking tell you why…

Home fucking improvement! If you own a home you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s a pain in the ass to say the least. The upside, you own it. The downside, you own it. This is why I started off this post writing about growing up where I did. The many years of renting and not having a front or back yard or other things like that left me ill prepared for the never ending saga that is home improvement. Recently I was urged to start in on some projects around the house. It’s been a learning experience. A gift that keeps on giving. Before I forget I should probably tell you that in the little over a year that I’ve been mowing my own lawn I’ve decapitated almost every sprinkler head in both the front and back yard. I also took out, fuck I don’t even know what to call it, this part of the sprinkler system that…it’s almost too hard to explain. Let’s just say I took out this piece and the sprinklers stayed on indefinitely on one half of the yard until I was able to plug the whole made in this contraption by my awesome lawn mowing skills. I’m not kidding when the helplessness I felt literally brought me to tears. Let me see if I can comeback from that tangent. Needless to say, my skill level is not quite Tim Taylor. It’s probably more like Charlie Brown or Brian Johnson. That’s a Breakfast Club reference for those of you that are wondering. Remember when he’s talking about pulling the trunk of the elephant lamp and the light wouldn’t turn on and he wanted to end his life with a flare gun? I didn’t want to end my life with a flare gun or anything else for that matter, but the fucking frustration of not knowing how shit works or how to fix it was definitely real. As you can probably guess because I’m writing this post, I fixed it. Well, that’s not entirely true. I partially fixed it. The area where the gadget and wiring are filled with water awhile back and created a short in that part of the system and while I know very little about sprinkler systems, I know equally as little about electricity. I know enough not to put my hands in or around electrical wires and water.

Back to the present. I started last weekend on a project of laying concrete in a spot of useless dirt in my back yard. Have you ever mixed or poured concrete before? I hadn’t. Holy shit! That’s really about all I can say. Thank goodness concrete is pretty inexpensive because I’m gonna end up need probably about 10,000 bags of it. Just kidding. It won’t take 10,000, but it may take over one hundred. Seriously, I had no idea how much it would take to make a single square of 2’ X 3’. Lucky for me my neighbor, John, is like Spicoli’s dad, “he’s got the ultimate set of tools.” Not only that he’s a fucking Swiss Army knife of knowledge and know how. Since I had no clue as to what I was getting myself into I enlisted his help in troubleshooting what I needed to do and get to undertake this project. If it wasn’t for him I’d either still be working mixing concrete or I’d have ran full speed into oncoming traffic. There aren’t many things that give me anxiety in life, but home improvement projects are one of those things. John helped me every step of the way, and while we were at it he also walked me through what I needed to do to fix a section of broken underground sprinkler line in my back yard. Then when there was a second leak in an are about 4 feet away from the first he came right over to help me fix that one. When I tested the sprinklers after the first fix and saw the second I yelled out a deep guttural FUCK! He peaked his head over the wall and said he heard the distress call of the Southern California something… I can’t remember exactly, but it made me laugh and relax. He also told me something when we were fixing that second section of pipe. He said “You know every homeowner starts out just like you.” True or not it made me feel better about my struggles and where I’m at along the learning curve of home improvement. One day I’ll share my work with you…