Charlie got in town from work early on Thursday and moved all the furniture out of the front parlor, fixed the low water pressure and the leak in the kitchen faucet, took up the rest of the tack strip in the front parlor, and put one coat of paint on the parlor window trim. I hung two more strips of wallpaper.
Then on Friday, he got back in town really early. By "really early" I mean that I was buried under the covers and a pillow fort when he called me and said, "What're you doin, sleepin?" I wiped the drool off my face and said, "Well, yeah. Doesn't everybody take a nap after they go to Lowe's at 7:30 in the morning to buy a ShopVac?" Charlie considered this a moment, "Ummm, not really. Let me in." I panicked. "You're here? Like, at my house, here?" My voice may have squeaked a tiny bit on that last part. This man cannot see me in my dorky Hello Kitty flannel jammies with bed-head and without concealer to cover the big zit on my forehead. I leaped out of bed, yanked on a pair of yoga pants, put my hair in a ponytail, tried to pull my bangs over the zit, tossed on the first shirt I laid hands on, and went to open the door. At that moment I realized the shirt I was wearing was the hoodie I borrowed from him a couple nights before. Hell's bells.
Charlie noticed. Of course he did. "Were you sleepin in my shirt?"
"No, of course not," I said. "I didn't wanna answer the door in my jammies and so--"
He looked at me critically. "What the hell happened to your head?"
I may have died a little on the inside then. But I think I made a good recovery. "So, uh, anyway, I bought a ShopVac."
"So you told me on the phone." He kicked the box. "And right here it is."
Now would be a good time for the basement trapdoor to finally fail, so I can just fall through it.
I cleared my throat. I tried to be business-like. "So. I'm sure you didn't come over here just to chat."
He grinned. "Maybe I did."
What an evil man.
And then he proved that he did not, in fact, come over just to chat because he patched the stovepipe hole in the front parlor, re-hung the piece of kitchen backsplash that fell off months ago, went to two rental places to find out how much a drum sander costs to rent, called one of his friends and asked him to come over Monday and fix my dryer (which hasn't heated in a year), and--saving the best for last--he took the sash locks off all five windows in the front parlor so that I could cook the paint off of them in the CrockPot. He was highly skeptical of that paint removal method until he himself fished a sash lock out of the hot water and the paint slid right off.
It was a good couple of days. A very good couple of days, indeed.