All those years that I was married to Husband I never had a problem with him having too much testosterone. I'm not talking about Testosterone in regards to sex, I"m talking about it in regards to being "macho" .
(You know "Macho Man" that the Village People sang about back in the seventies . .
When someone says "Macho Man" to me I immediately picture Bruce Willis in "Die Hard" even though that does tell you just how old I am. I'm sure there are plenty of Hollywood Hunks out there, I'm just not up on the current "Meat Market" .)
Husband was about the least macho guy I know. He was funny and smart but he was NOT macho. When it came to killing spiders or baiting a hook I was the one who stepped up and did the dirty work. Husband never held a gun nor did he want to. He never went hunting and only went fishing when he was embarrassed into it. He did not like fast cars nor did he ever play a sport in high school or college or any other time in his life. Husband was the perfect example of ZERO testosterone !
Along comes Mr.Man, Dwayne . . . He is the epitome of MACHO except he is old but doesn't know it. It is super tough to have a macho brain with lots of testosterone racing through your veins when you have lungs that will not allow you to breathe. But to compensate for this lack of lung function the man has a brain that will not admit defeat. That is a good thing except when his brain is telling him to do ten different things when he can only handle one. That's where I come in.
Rather than getting a lung transplant, (which he is not a candidate for because his heart isn't strong enough to get him through surgery), he has found a gullible but willing idiot to help him do all his projects for him. The fact that the idiot, ME, is seventy five years old and falling apart at the seams does not enter into this equation because I have just as much "stubborn" in me as he has testosterone.
I refuse to admit I am old (er) and not in the best shape of my life so probably shouldn't be doing half the things we attempt to do. No one can tell Mr. Man he can't breathe and no one can tell me I can't crawl under the RV to fix a strap holding down a battery for the generator.
Yesterday Mr. Man got it into his head to put the cover on the secondary battery in the RV. He WAS smart enough to have had a neighbor put the battery into its compartment on the side of the RV one day last week . . . THIS week the battery still had to be covered and strapped in place. (DO NOT ask WHY Mr. man did not ask the neighbor to do this when he was placing the battery in the RV, just do what I do and go with it.). This project was in The Man's head from the moment he got up and it was not going to go away until the deed was done. That is why at four thirty yesterday afternoon both The Man and I were sitting on the grass next to the RV cursing like sailors.
I was having a perfectly lovely afternoon sitting on the patio reading a book when out came macho man himself. (Oxygen hose connected to the concentrator in the house as always.) His way of sucking me into this adventure was to ask me to go into the RV and turn on his oxygen machine that is in there. That way he could detach from the house and attach to the RV, saving about forty feet of hose. (I TOTALLY knew this was a ploy to get me to do the job he wanted done but really can't do because of his breathing.) Being the idiot that I am and refusing to admit that my body no longer moves like that of a twenty year old, I "jumped" up and got right to "assisting". The Man was by then sitting on the grass next to the camper with the battery compartment open in front of him. He was making an "attempt" to get the cover over the battery which is in a small space with little to no "wiggle" room. He could reach one hand in the compartment while reaching under the RV with his other hand to try to wrestle the cover onto the battery. By the time he had accomplished this he was totally winded and ready to pass out. All this time I am sitting QUIETLY on the step of the RV waiting to either dial 911 or run for the hills. Thankfully neither was necessary. What WAS necessary was for me to take over the completion of this project . . . THE STRAP !
In order for the battery to not fall out from under the RV it is held in place by a strap. Just your average every day garden variety "belt" or strap that wraps around the battery, through a clamp and buckles into place. The problem being is this all has to be done from UNDER the RV. The man sitting on the grass is NOT going to be able to manage sliding under the camper, lay on his back and work over his head to get this freaking belt and buckle in place. SO . . . guess who got to help !?!?
Let me just say the easiest part was getting down on the grass and "rolling" under the RV. The strap and buckle were a BITCH with a capital "B" ! Fortunately my "bad" shoulder was behaving and I had taken some Tylenol earlier in the day so my body didn't hurt at all. It DID take about twenty minutes and much cursing but "we" finally got the damn thing strapped in and ready to roll. The only problems now were that I had to get back out from under the RV and we both had to get up off the ground into a standing position. This is the part that should have been caught on video because it surely would have been a million dollar winner on "Americas Funniest Home Videos" (Is that show still on?)
I will admit we laughed ourselves silly during the entire process. It was no easy feat and it DID take us quite some time to reach an upright position but since the alternative was to sleep on the lawn or call a neighbor with a back hoe to come lift us up we did manage to get up and make it into the house where we collapsed for the rest of the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment