Hell is

Work in (miserable) progress

A shared project.

A friend suggested that "getting a marriage license should involve a skills test, carpentry, plumbing & electrical, squishing spiders, etc." I am all for it. I would also add a compatibility test involving renovating a room together, all by yourselves. For those who really (so smugly) think they've got the perfect marriage planned, a sure bet, then the test would involve an entire house.

You think you're made for each other, do you? You think that love cures all, hm? You think that you admire and respect each other and control issues are for others, right? I'm sure they are. I am sure you will be very happy together.

I really am.

So were we. For about the space of our wedding afternoon. Radiant. Just like Fiona and Shrek. Then came marriage, the other's kids, and exes (that would be his), financial reality, voluntary loss of real and gainful employment and self-respect (a place to be right), culture -- oh, yeah, big time (remember, Fiona was happy to become a whatever Shrek is, which pretty much sums up how marriages work), and a home to renovate within that financial and cultural reality.

When Worlds Collide would be a good title for our marriage.

I picked up the wood yesterday, right? And I had given them really detailed drawings, right? And they were going to cut the wood, right? Well, they cut it, but so that my husband would have all the precision cuts to do at home, without the tools, or the patience. The idea was supposed to be to cut it so we would only have to assemble it. That was about all we could handle. I noticed first that they hadn't done the detail in the edge of the window sill. Then I realized all the planks and wood sections were square. I soldiered on in my hope, right to the edge of the cliff, where hope ends and faith begins.

Let's skip that part of the dialog. It's unpleasant, and I'd have to type my part in ALL CAPS, and not because my voice is high and squeaky like Owen Meany's, but because I ended up shouting. With the kitchen door near the street open.

"Ne crie pas," said my husband, making a move towards the open door. I thought of my neighbor slamming his gate door closed and shouting at someone in his family -- if not his entire family -- all the way across the street and into their garden across the way and decided they'd understand my losing it in my kitchen and shouting very naturally at my husband.

"Oui, d'accord, tu vois? Moi aussi, j'ai besoin de décharger mon stresse comme tu le fais en ralant tout le temps, alors je crie." He looked at me. He blinked. "J'en ai marre de tes 'je ne comprends rien' et de tes 'comme je voulais le faire'. Si tu sais le faire mieux que moi, et je te rappelle qu'on a commencé comme ça, mais cela n'a pas très bien fonctionné, tu le ferais toi-même, tout seul. Je me dégage de toute participation dans ce projet. Tu le finis comme tu veux, et si je n'en suis pas contente, ce ne serait pas pour longtemps."

Uh-oh. I was really angry. I ended reminding him that we'd already tried his way, and it hadn't worked very well, but if he didn't like mine, then he is welcome to find his own way because we cannot work together, I wash my hands of the room renovation; he can do it exactly as he pleases, and if I don't like it, then so what? I won't be around long enough to really care.

He returned to work, and I note that my plans are in the vicinity, on the deck chair by the minuscule work table. And then he appeared at my side, my plan in his hand.

"Tu t'es trompée ou je ne comprends pas?" Are you mistaken, or don't I understand?

I knew the answer to that already without looking, but I took the sheet of paper and turned my attention to it.

"Le placo-plâtre, il arrive où?" Where, he wanted to know, did the sheetrock arrive. he was certain I hadn't thought of that.

I pointed to the line on the plan and said, "Ici." All you have to do is look at the section, but I understand, he is not in the building trades at all, but he knows better than anyone in them, surtout sa femme chérie.

Do I sound bitter? I hate that.

"Oh." He walked back out the door.

He returned a little later.

"Ta planche de 13 mm, elle arrive sur le verre?"

"Comment?" On the glass? Why would the jamb go just to the glass of the window?

"Elle va jusqu'au verre?" I thought hard about it. Vert. Not verre. Besides, you drink from a verre, the window is a vitre, which is not a homonym for verre. He meant did it arrive where the paint ended on the frame, or before it.

Reluctantly, I followed him into the petit salon, where I was sure to be made an idiot in about two judging sentences.

"Parce que," he began to explain, "ça arrive ici." He pointed about half a centimeter past the line where the green paint ended and the bare frame showed. "Je suppose ça ne fait rien?"

Now, you'd be surprised, but "je suppose" can be fighting words. Sort of like, "I gather". There is a whiff of sarcasm that clings to them when used in certain circumstances. Circumstances strikingly like the present one.

"Non, ça ne fait rien, surtout parce que la partie du cadre de la fenêtre de l'autre côté peinte en vert est plus large, alors ça serait plutôt symétrique." No matter that the painted part of the window frame was wider on the left, making having the jamb farther out on the right not pose a problem; he really wanted me to see that I had to have measured incorrectly. I was pretty sure I hadn't, but it really wasn't worth it.

Why, why in God's name do they push us to this to get anything done at all? Best to stick to the kitchen and painting one's nails.

Ain't no ze-en when he's here
and he's always here too much when he comes home.

Separate homes to renovate, perhaps? The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart. Remember, one must imagine Sisyphe happy.

I think I'll go take it out on the hedge.
....

Testing a marriage

The wood, screws, angles and color-coded plans

"Je ne comprends rien," he announced, with a tone of refusal laced with rejection, squatting back on his heels in front of the pile of wood I brought home from Comptoir des Bois and the plans on which I had just finished giving each piece a letter, which I noted on the step-by-step, IKEA-like instructions for construction I had labored to make this afternoon, as well as on each piece of real wood, and color-coding them, coloring my plan, section and elevation detail like a coloring book. I didn't know really what more I could do to make it plainer. I hate it when he says that. He sounds like his children, which is what I told him.

I no longer ask, "Did you try?" It's just a little too antagonistic and schoolmarmish. This evening, I took another tactic.

"Je n'aime pas quand tu dis ça. Tu as l'aire de tes enfants." I tried not to sound to negative or accusatory. Just stating a fact in the most fact-stating of ways, while communicating my own refusal to accept his.

The line was drawn. He had already taken me into the petit salon to show me how he had tried to do it and why it didn't work. It was the nylon anchors that didn't hold in the wall, he told me, and that wouldn't change with my plan. It was when he tried to nail something to them that his wood piece fell off the wall.

You need to imagine several lengths of wood, glued and nailed, or some such, to one another along their lengths, and this sticking out from the wall at 60°, attached by nylon anchors (remember those?) he inserted through holes he had pre-drilled in the first length of wood. There was nothing supporting the end that stuck out from the wall, but it did feature a nicely cut triangular section of wood, against which the sheetrock (plasterboard for the UK English speakers among you) would lay.

"J'aimerais pouvoir utiliser au moins ça," he said, showing it to me. "C'est très bien et ce n'était pas facile à faire." I shook my head. We weren't going to use it if we followed my plans, which I had labored to make, and for which we had all the wood we needed, at a certain cost, as well, mind you. I threw a small fit.

He didn't press the point.

"De toute manière," I pointed out, "on peut utiliser de la colle aussi entre le cadre et le mur, rajouter des chevilles à frapper supplémentaire, et puisque le bois fini est incorporé dans le cadre avant de le fixer au mur, tu n'auras ni à le frapper avec un marteau ni à le percer pour fixer les tablettes." Which is to say that since the whole thing is pre-built, it can be glued and fixed in place with the nylon anchors, and we won't have to bang nails into it or drill it for screws to attach the finish wood for the jambs later. In other words, it ought to hold. It is, in fact, far sturdier.

It's also true that it is a bit hefty. Maybe it will need some angles to support it on the wall, too.

I really hope it will work because I really, really don't want to find out what divorce court is like. I hate apartment hunting, and the frogs might take it badly.

It's getting dark, and he is still sawing. By hand.
....

We're not in Connecticut anymore, Shadow

Little window,
Big headache

Why does everything seem so simple -- ingeniously, deceptively simple -- until you sit down to actually figure it out?

I have spent the morning avoiding my latest solution in waiting (a problem, in other words), wandering around the garden, lost in contemplation of Nature's unceasing wonder and beauty, which I have been sufficiently intelligent to invite into my environs by planting English roses, clematis, and caring for what was already there, the peonies, the wisteria, the tea roses and the irises, and various other things that delight, however, I am now forced to sit down and figure it out.

It is the source of my husband's abundant frustration and ill humor these last days, surpassed only by the abundance of blooms in the garden.

Thank God for small favors.

It refers to the method of attaching the wood jambs for the windows and doors, and their associated trim, in the petit salon. It has been hell. We have tried cutting angles. The guy at Point P said, "Tout le monde utilise de la colle pour fixer le bois au métal." Everyone uses glue to attach the wood trim to metal angles? Sans blague?

"Vraiment?" He nodded. He was flirting with me. I knew it. He knew I knew. Even my stepdaughter had to know.

"Vraiment." I wasn't so sure, and even if I accepted that this is true, some things just feel unacceptable. But, I have come here to live. Sisyphe is not in Connecticut anymore. Maybe, I thought, it is time to accept a change of methods. I bought the glue and the metal shears to cut up the lightweight framing into the angles we needed. We'd attach them to the walls and the metal framing, and then -- uh -- glue the jambs to them.

It was only later that I had suffered my nervous breakdown, sitting on the floor of Leroy Merlin, sketching how we do things back home in Connecticut, and everywhere else in the US, Canada and the UK, while my husband took in the significance of this to me and several bemused shoppers looked on. I was preparing to abandon the metal angles I had cut, ripping the ones we had already installed out of the wall, and toss the idea neither of us liked of gluing anything to them.

I leaned back against a column, covered with the little plastic bags you can fill with your selection of screws, nails, or molly bolts, and stared at my husband, my sketch on the back of a receipt between us. It showed wood studs, beautiful wood studs, spaced 16" on center, coming up to a door. The studs doubled at the door to provide structural soundness and a lovely nailing surface for the jambs.

"Je vois," said my husband. He saw. He reflected, or pretended to, while I stared forlornly at my sketch. "Mais, comment fixera-t-on le bois au mur?"

I could feel someone trying to get at the little plastic bags just above my head.

"Excusez-moi," I turned and saw a man grinning at me. "Je suis en train de faire une crise nerveuse."

"Mais il n'y a pas de problème," he said. I looked back at my husband. A hint of a smile lingered around the corners of his lips, thinner and paler than usual from the stress of this solution-waiting-to-happen.

"Comme tu as fixé les lambourds à la dalle. Avec des chevilles à frapper." He nodded and we began filling the largest sized plastic zipper lock sac with nylon anchors.

It felt cooperative for the first time in days. Warm and almost fuzzy.

We returned home with our supply of nylon anchors, and he set to work, constructing a framework to receive the door jambs, while I deliberately did other things, like prune the gazebo terrace. I advanced to opening the pool for the season when he got to the window on Monday, a holiday here, and the swearing could be heard from the second terrace.

It didn't help that he had had fewer than 3 hours sleep on duty the night before.

Tuesday, he redid Monday's work.

Wednesday, under extreme psychological and emotional pressure, I sat down to make some millwork detail drawings and get enough down on paper to take to the wood shop to work out a solution. He hit terribly close to the mark the previous evening when he said, "Tu ne me montres pas ce qu'on fait et je ne peux rien comprendre."

The trouble was, I didn't believe he'd pay attention to what I drew.

"La prochaine fois, tu me laisseras tout décider car c'est moi qui le fais." Les mots qui tuent... Next time, you let me decide how we are going to do things because I am the one who has to do it.

But it isn't just the words, it's the look that goes along with them. And the tone. It is -- accusatory. Even worse, it was somewhat justified; whether I think he is going to pay attention or not, I owe him a workable method of proceeding.

At 5:35 pm, I pulled up at the wood shop. At 6:05 pm, I drove away with a solution, essentially the same one we had discussed the first time that involves building the "box" of the jambs, sill and top of the window trim and fixing it to the wall with -- metal angles. By the time I got home, those metal angles had morphed into a wood structure around the finished "box" that would take into account the lightweight framing members anchored to the wall and prevent his having to tear down his work.

At 7:40 pm, he walked in the door, kissed me hello and said, "J'ai eu une réunion informatique ce soir. J'aurais voulu aller chez Leroy Merlin trouver une solution pour le --" I interrupted him.

"Non, je suis allée voir monsieur au Comptoir des Bois. C'est bon. On a une solution. C'est la même chose que nous avons discuté la première fois, et c'est essentiellement ton idée de faire le "cadre" et le fixer au mur, sauf que au lieu de faire un cadre structurel et clouer le bois de finition là-dessus, on va fixer le cadre fini en place avec soit des équerres soit une structure en bois anchré au mur. Vide ton esprit. Ne te préoccupe pas. On aura ce qu'il faut vendredi soir." Just in time for the weekend's work.

"Je ne sais pas si je comprends, mais --"

"Si, tu comprends parce que c'est à la base ton idée, mais tu ne vois pas. C'est ton idée de faire la boite en bois, mais n'y pense plus. Tu verras." He seemed happy not to have to understand and went an settled himself on the sofa in front of Roland Garros, where Gaël Monfils was playing a playground level match against the number 92 ranked player Fabio Fognini.

Essentially, I will make a detailed drawing of the window frame and the lightweight framing in place, draw the finish wood desired to trim out the window and then add a system in wood with cut-outs around the metal framing that we can attach to the finished trim "box" and bolt to the wall. To address my concern that it will sound hollow -- why I had broken down in the screw, nail and nylon anchor aisle at Leroy Merlin in the first place --, they will make it out of 20 or 22 mm wood. Nice and sturdy.

You can tap all you like, and it should sound solid.

He wants me to use medium because it is cheap and you can't tell it from pine, beech or anything else once it is painted, but that's another hurdle for me to jump.
....