The Truth About Jill

One person can only see one person’s perspective. Just like dust or underwear left on the floor, one person can walk by it a thousand times and not see it lying there. Someone else, a spouse for example, notices the dust and underwear every time she walks into the room. That’s why I, Charlie, decided it’s time I told my side of doing fixers with Jill.

I can‘t think of anything more fun than doing fixers with Jill. We‘re doing fixers right now, sitting in Starbucks, sucking down Americanos. It‘s part of the way we do fixers. You have to get out of the house, away from the construction, or you‘ll get sick of it. I decided she deserved a break. I’m just that kind of guy: I’ll sacrifice.

Jill is the most patient woman on the planet as far as living in a construction zone is concerned. As far as other things are concerned, Jill does have some drawbacks.

As you might have guessed, Jill loves to paint. It’s a good fit with my skill set, because I don’t. I once worked a second job as a painting contractor to keep bonbons in the freezer for my first wife. It was either paint and eat spaghetti-o’s or eat nothing and relax under the trees, homeless.

To me, the worst part about painting is the preparation and cleanup. When I discovered Jill liked to paint, I thought, “My troubles are over. A woman who likes to paint. I’ll never have to touch a brush again.”

The only problem is she has become used to an assistant who helps her set up and clean up. That assistant is me.

A typical day with both Jill and me working on the house consists of me doing carpentry work and Jill painting. She prepares the rooms for painting, gets rid of the kids, and maybe cleans up the dishes while I get an early start. At the exact time I raise up the nail gun to secure a heavy sheet of drywall, I’ll hear this sweet, lovely voice asking, “Do you have me set up yet?”

Not wanting to stop right away, I’ll say “I’ll do it in a minute.” A minute becomes twenty, then thirty.

I’ll hear that voice again saying, “You know, I can’t paint until I’m set up.”

I’ll grab the brand new five gallon can of paint from our candy store, Home Depot. I’ll rip into it, pour it into the paint bucket, set up the roller extension, and she’ll go right to work. I’ll get back to the nail gun and drywall, and try to motivate myself to start up again without getting some sort of hot beverage.

It didn’t start out this way. In the beginning, all I did was find the brushes and she did everything else. It all changed one fateful day at our previous fixer, the coastal-looking bungalow.

She began cleaning her brushes. I came along and grabbed them out of her hand. I said, “No, clean them this way.” You know how it is: you want to do things a certain way and you can’t stand to watch anyone else do it another way. I’m very particular about brush cleaning. It’s therapy after a long, sweaty day.

Jill seized the opportunity to never again clean a paintbrush. She began handing them to me after a day of painting, saying, “Your turn to have some fun.“ It’s been like this ever since. If you have the urge to take over when someone’s cleaning, resist. You never know what will become of a small urge to clean a brush.

In all fairness to Jill, the supplies are kept in the garage. It’s not so much a garage as a toxic hazard dump site. It looks like a bomb went off in it. She calls it, “Man-Pig Land.” It should be its own sovereign state. It would take her twice as long just to find the paint as it would for me to set it up for her.

The garage was the first part of the house I fixed up. I wanted to be more organized when I started working on the house. I put up siding and shelves and miter tables and work benches, and painted the walls. I found discarded cupboards at work, which I arranged against a wall for even more storage. I even finished up a separate storage area in which to organize tools and paint. It became quite a nice workshop.

The garage was nice and neat for about the first six months. Then one day, it became a disorganized garage sale without the tags. Jill realized the value of having me set up her supplies for the day. Although it’s very cluttered, I know exactly where everything is. She doesn’t even want to go in the garage, “Too scary,” she says.

During our workday, I nail up or cut and glue whatever I happened to be working on while Jill empties the paint cans. Everything’s fine in fixer-land. When both of us work, we lose track of time. We both get so focused we have to remind each other of the time. We only notice it must be getting late when we hear a particularly lame story on NPR for the third time.

Yesterday was a great day as we got a lot done. Jill emptied out the last paint can, then announced, “I’m going to take a shower.” She smiled, handed me her paint roller and said, “You have work to do.”

She gives me this cute, innocent little look. She’s so dainty and feminine that I couldn’t bear to watch her do any kind of grunt work, although she’s assaulted me many times in Tae Kwon Do.

For example, we’ll be working out in the studio. We decide to practice sparring, and we agree it’s going to be non-contact. She sees an opening, when I’m not on guard, and kicks me hard in the gut. She smiles and says, “You deserved that. You were open.”

Somehow I find myself out on the front yard with a hose, three rollers and a brush, cleaning away Jill‘s brushes. I think to myself, “This is the very reason I don’t like to paint.”

It’s okay, I’ve decided. It’s more than worth it. I look around the house and see all the difference a good coat of paint makes, and I get excited about all our progress.

It’s better if she takes care of everything to do with paint. Besides keeping her excited about fixers, she knows the right colors for each style of house we do. I guess that Art Degree of hers isn’t going to complete waste.

I wouldn’t pick the colors she chooses but when it‘s all said and done, it looks gorgeous. If it were up to me, everything would be steel blue. People would walk in the house and say, “What the hell?” I’d never sell anything.

A little help? [] 5:13:28 PM