Mare came over this morning, just as he promised. He was even right on time. And, he's clean-shaven and has a new haircut. But his sense of humor is the same:
"You cut your hair off!" I said when he walked through the door.
"No I didn't," he replied.
"You had a ponytail last time I saw you," I insisted.
"Yeah," he grinned, "but I didn't cut it off. I paid someone else to do it."
We took the other half of the door (gosh, I hate saying that) off the frame, Mare took the hinges off both halves, and we carried the door(s) halfway out to his car before something occurred to us: That door will be twice as wide when it makes its return trip. It won't fit in the car. "One whole door might fit," Mare speculated, "but more than one door won't. That's a lot of trips between here and Warsaw to fix seven doors." We carried the door halves back into the dining room and decided that he'll put the doors together at my house. Mare thinks he has enough clamps to do at least two, maybe three, at a time. With the furniture pushed back against the walls in the front parlor, we'll have plenty of room. (This time, though, I'm rolling up the area rug in there—remember when he cut my kitchen countertops on the parlor rug instead of taking them outside?)
And you know it wouldn't be a day with Mare if we didn't have at least one of those Tracy-Hepburn conversations that makes me smack my forehead and groan.
Me: "So what's your plan to fix 'em?"
Mare: "I'm gonna biscuit the hell out of 'em!"
Me: "Do you have a biscuit cutter?"
Mare: "Sure, it belonged to my grandma."
Me: "What? Why would your grandma have—"
Mare: [laughing] "Ohhhhh...you mean that kind of a biscuit cutter! Yeah, I got one of those, too."
He's coming back in a couple of weeks with his biscuit cutter (presumably not his grandma's), some clamps and some glue. This oughta be fun.
And those hinges we took off the doors? They've been boiling in the crockpot all afternoon. Stay tuned.