One man's voice Thoughts, rants and commentary of a simple man

Working works

Today I had to be accountable. This is something that I should be doing anyway, but it just had to be done today. And the coolest thing is that it allowed me to reap a grand harvest.

Today my wife and daughter had a scheduled outing. This meant that I had a morning home with my four other kids. It also meant that the promise I made to handle some of my "honey do" list items needed to be honored.

So I set out this morning to fetch some things I needed for some of the fixes and such that I needed to make today. I bought wooden stakes, some light bulbs, light switches, light switch plates, nails, a rake, some duct tape and some Vaseline. Ok, I didn't buy duct tape and Vaseline.

I got home from the store and made some breakfast and got started. And I worked it. Hard.

I trimmed the bottle brush trees on the side of our driveway. I raked the little patch of yard below the bottle brush. I trimmed some street level bushes. I trimmed a bush in the tan bark patch near my garage. I straightened up that tan bark. I pulled some weeds in the yard. I removed some dead bushes to clear a path for living plants to grow. I fixed some bender boards in the back yard. And I replaced two switches in my kitchen that needed to be replaced.

Do I tell you all of this to tempt you to pat me on the back? Not at all. I tell you this because I really, really didn't want to do it. But I had made a promise to my wife that this weekend I would take care of some of the things that she has been waiting a very long time to be handled. She has been exceptionally patient, and very gracious, and I have been very nonchalant in my promises. It was time. She had waited long enough and I had gone back on my word long enough.

Men, there is a lesson in this for you. If you tell your wife you are going to do something, do it. Don't whine, don't make excuses, don't not do it. Just get it done. My wife was very appreciative of me taking care of these things. And I was happy to do them. I didn't want to actually do these things. But I wanted to show my wife that I am her man, that when I say I am going to do something I do it, and that she means enough to me to be honest and accountable to her.

Yeah, it was only a little fixing up and cleaning up here and there. But it allowed me to cross a few things off the list of things that need to be handled. And it also allowed me be a man to my wife. I love doing that.

And you want to know a wonderful side benefit to all of this? I lost four pounds today. How awesome is that? Heck, I may just spend all winter doing some kind of physical on the weekends. It's almost like a trip to the gym without all the meat heads, gym rats and expensive memberships.