Its your Dad you turn to, isn't it? I know I do, even now aged 35.
Mums are great at loving you, but they often lack knowledge on faulty thermostats, head gaskets and leaky radiators.
Its always your Dad you turn to, if you are lucky enough to still have him around.
If you don't have him around, I'll bet you turned to him when he was.
Recently, I've realised that I'll be the one that someone will turn to.
Maybe not immediately. This little baby will just rely on me for the early part of its life.
But what then?
I've been thinking that I'll be the one that he/she expects to know everything. The font of all knowledge. The holder of all that knowledge that only Dads seem to know.
Getting the nursery ready has given me the excuse to hone my skills.
And I've noticed a change. There's nothing I wont tackle. Maybe this is the lead up to being a Dad.
I didn't get off to a great start with electricals (though I am typing this, so you know I didn't frazzle myself to death). Wiring in our house is contrary to quite a few safety regs (so Joe tells me) so no wonder I was reticent to mess about with what I found behind the switches
Joe did offer to talk me through it over the phone but I had an idea where it would end.
Hospital.
Not wanting this to dent my confidence, I moved onto something which didn't involve electricity.
Just electricity and water.
Wiring the new shower was a lot easier that I thought. The scariest part was turning off the water supply.
Once the water and power was off and the spiders were avoided, it was a simple case of off with the old one
and on with the new.
There isn't a picture. You've all seen a shower, right? If you haven't, click here.
Next up was carpet fitting. Or should that be carpet shitting. Looking at the pained expression, it could be either.
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| Thrusting |
I was forced to engage in refitting the carpet on the stairs because my wife is too nice to complain.
[Not where I'm concerned, I might add. She is more than happy to point out every single one of my failings. And there are many]
Thursday saw the delivery of the nursery carpet. A relatively straightforward process, one would expect. This is never the case where we are concerned.
Rewind to the preceding Sunday when we are in the showroom. We pick the carpet, the man is terribly impressed with my scale drawing of the soon to be carpeted area and the quotation commences. At this point Karen enquires to the colour of our chosen carpet and I expect some suitably faffy "colour" being described.
Warm Mocha, Soft Truffle or Cookie Dough etcetera, etcetera.
Not in Attercliffe.
The colour of our chosen carpet?
"Second One Down"
"Ah, Second One Down" I say.
"Yeah" he says "There's no point putting beige" "They all look beige"
And I'm tempted to agree
Fast forward back to Thursday, where I get a phone call whilst enjoying an after work pint.
[This fact is not relevant, so pay no attention to it]
"Hello love, have they been"
"They've fitted the wrong carpet. What do I do?"
"Do you like the one they've fitted more than the one you originally picked?"
"No"
"Then you need to tell them to take it back up and re-fit the correct one"
"And they've marked all your new paintwork on the stairs"
"Can you tell them to be more careful"
"$£%^&*&*"£%&^$%" (or as we put on typed interviews "Inaudible")
"Do you need me to come home?"
"Well, that's a decision for you. If you want to stay at the pub, that's your choice"
Ooof! The old "that's up to you to make the right decision" tactic.
I'll let you guess what I did next.
Needless to say, I return home to be told that my good lady doesn't like the way they've fitted to carpet at the top of the stairs.
Now, at this point, I play right into her hands. A schoolboy error of epic proportion.
"Could you not have told them you are unhappy with it"
"Well, if you weren't sat in the pub, you could have inspected it and told them"
And that takes us nicely to the picture above, of me feeling a hernia coming on as I try to remove the nails which the fitters have used to "securely attach" the carpet to the landing woodwork.
A more enjoyable task, and with less chance of hernias or soiling myself, commenced when this was shoved through the letterbox.
Which makes up into one of these
Once assembled, we found out that it takes some degree of skill and effort to collapse and unfold one of these as easily as the show you in the shops. There's also a fair bit of reading to do, to make sure you're using it right. I found a quiet moment to have a little practice, with the items I had to hand.
Only I didn't realise I was being watched!
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| Remember this face. This is what I look like when I'm up to sommat. |
At night.
In other news, I came home from work and thought the tram had travelled forwards through time. Is this the shape of things to come?
And finally, a trumpeted fanfare announces that I have finished my work in the nursery.
I don't think you'd believe it was the same room.
So, I thought I'd finish off with a little photo montage, to illustrate its transformation!
You may have noticed her lovely little face has been missing from all but one of the pics on this blog.
So, I'll leave you with a picture which sums up what she's been doing whilst I have been working myself to exhaustion. The picture was taken whilst I was in the middle of emptying our wardrobes and moving them into the attic.
She will, of course, take umbrage with this inference.
But that is a pregnant woman's prerogative!
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| Spot The Knit |
Thanks for reading x
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