Doodle Dance, without the Dance, special guest appearance- Bruno

There was talk in the Facebook group about the Disabled Guy and his "Doodle Dance". He said he'd do it, got up, did it, but stopped when I picked up the camera. I posted this in the Facebook group, but I know some of you aren't in that group.

What follows is the discussion. Please ignore the loud TV in the background, I have no clue why it is so loud.

Apparently, I'm a nerd and DG is wearing underwear

It's no secret. I go to the renaissance faire. I even dress up. So does my 18 year old daughter. We both have season passes. Most of you reading this already know that fact. Some might not believe it. So, here's some photographic evidence from an awesome photographer named Tom George Davison. That's his work. You should go see it.







Quite obviously, that's me on the left and our daughter on the right. Well, today is Saturday and I'm not at faire. Sadly, I'm missing today. Ceej, the daughter, is at her college right now for "preview days". She's double-checking some things, meeting her roommate (who she has been talking to for a couple weeks now) and other college kid stuff. I could go without her- and I have- but I also had to drive her to her college on Wednesday. It happens to be about the same distance away as the faire (90 minutes, give or take) and with gas prices the way they are, I can only make that trip twice.

Oh, that's something- she would have driven herself, except last week, some golfer sliced a ball and smashed her windshield. Sadly, we only have liability on that car and we can't get it fixed right now. (Hopefully we can next week). Public golf courses are not liable for damage caused by the golfers. We would have to take it up with the golfer himself, but we have no idea who that was. A new windshield will cost us about $275, installed. That's cheaper than I thought it would be. We're hoping that when the house refinancing goes through, we'll have some extra cash leftover to get the windshield fixed. (the refinancing is a whole other issue that is more rant than entertaining).

So, I'm stuck here while she's off at her college and my friends are enjoying the faire without me. My older daughter (who lives in the same town where Ceej will be in college) is with her now and sent me a text. "Her roommate and her family are nice. Her mom really likes to talk. lol". I read that to the Disabled Guy. He gave me a knowing, slightly mocking look.

He said: "Oh. Wow. Yeah. Nerd."

Me: "What?"

DG: "You're a nerd. NERD!"

Me: "What does that have to do with her roommate's mom?"

DG: "Because you're a nerd and you like to talk to people. NERD!"

Me: "How does me talking have anything to do with being a nerd?"

DG: "You're a nerd and you talk to anyone."

Me: "Nerds are usually antisocial."

DG: "NERD!"

I know he was trying to make the connection between my going to the ren faire (where I've been known to talk myself hoarse) and my enjoyment of talking to strangers. Which I do. A lot. I had a conversation the other day at the grocery store with a woman from Tennessee who said she didn't know about the ren faire.

He kept calling me a nerd. Loudly.

Then he said, "I think I'm going to wear underwear today."

Me: "And that means what to me?"

He stood there, at the edge of the bed (I was getting ready to blow-dry my hair) and said, "I'm rounding them up. Puttin' them in a corral. Where they'll be safe. SAFE!" (he used the same loud voice for "safe" as he did for "nerd").

Me: "Putting what in the corral? What the hell are you talking about?"

He turned toward me and said, "Take a look... they're going away. Oooh-doo-doo-dooo-dooodle!" He did what I refer to as "the doodle dance" and said, "One last time! They're going AH-WAAAY-HAAAAY!"

He finally pulled up his underwear (green boxer briefs, just so you know) and declared: "My ass is HUGE!"

Me: "You weighed yourself last night and said you lost 20 pounds." (he did, actually).

DG: "It came back. It was jealous. Green with ENVY! Like my drawers! GREEN!"

I shook my head and asked: "What the hell are you going on about now?"

DG: "You're a nerd!"

Me: "You're telling me that you're going to 'put them in the corral' and 'them' means your junk and 'corral' means underwear. And I'm the nerd?"

DG: "NERD!"

So there you go. I'm a nerd, he's wearing green boxer briefs and our daughter's college roommate's mother likes to talk. Also, I'm missing today at the faire. I'm not really all that happy about that. The faire thing, the rest of it is cool with me.

Wrong words, Extra words, Words!

The whole point to the "Conversations" thing is that I'm sharing the humor with you. Sometimes, DG's disability makes him say the goofiest shit. Sometimes he's so funny, we drag it out by asking followup questions ("Rats with little Nike shoes") and sometimes, he just randomly inserts words that make no sense to the situation. That's all part of his disability. And, I only post the conversations and videos that he approves of. I would never make fun of him unless he was in on the joke.

Sometimes his disability makes him say the absolute wrong words- like the time the kids were running around and making noise (they were much younger). He was trying to get them to sit down and watch a movie. So, instead of coming out as a stern: "Sit down and be quiet!", in the same stern-father voice, he declared there was a steering wheel in the coffee table. We didn't have a coffee table at the time.

And sometimes, the disability makes him say extra words that eventually get to the point, when anyone else would have simply gotten to the point. ("You know that guy...")

Years ago, I had a Rottweiler puppy. He was the greatest dog in the world. I read several Rottie books before I brought him home, because I never owned a dog like that before. His name was Kodiak. I still miss him. I shouldn't have worried about training him. That dog was so brilliantly smart that he balanced my checkbook when he was just four months old. (that might not be a true story). So, I trained him with simple, one-word commands. "Sit", "stay", "down", "up"... easy.

Then came the time to train the disabled guy. Sit became: "Sit down". Stay became: "Stay there". "Lay down", "get up"... Luckily, the dog was killer smart and figured it out pretty quickly. But, even with simple one-word commands, the disabled guy's brain just added on extra words.

Today, he's outside fixing a bird feeder. Its a round one, with a plastic tube and a rounded wood-shingled topper on it. Well, it has seen better days. The bottom was almost completely rotted off. So he cut up some scrap wood and made a new round bottom for it. Except now he can't get the top to thread the cable back through. He asked me for help. While were standing there, trying to cram that cable back through the opening that was now half-blocked with rotting wood from the rounded topper, I asked why couldn't he just make a new topper that wasn't all rotted.

With what, he wondered. I threw around suggestions- how about that broken plastic plant pot? Take that bottom thing off, run that cable through, bam, done! No? Then how about you make a roof like on that other birdhouse, run the cable through, bam, done! That other bird feeder is rectangle-shaped and has a straight peaked roof. Can't do it, he says. Its round, that's rectangle. So, I said, you made this (the round bottom), make another one, drill two holes in it for the cable to feed through into the bird feeder frame below and bam, done!

DG: "Huh... that might actually work."

Me: "I know. Tell me I'm smart."

DG: "You're smart."

Me: "Tell me I'm inventive."

DG: "You're so inventive."

Me: "Tell me I'm pretty."

DG: "You're pretty enough." and there was a split second where he paused and then burst out laughing.

Me: "You couldn't say that again if you tried."

DG: "No, I can't!"

At least I didn't have to traipse through a maze of words to figure out what he was saying.

A walking tour of the new deck, sort of...

I figured I'd take my camera out with me and do a little walk-around on the new deck, so you all could see it in all its glory. Gypsy decided that she absolutely had to be outside with me because apparently, something might happen in her absence. So, you get to see her walking around, barking at nothing (because she thought I was talking to people and not a camera). You get to hear my nasally, wheezy, doped-up on Vicodin voice.

All that's left is for him to add some fencing around the bottom, to protect the Chihuahuas from absently running off the end and some of the patio stuff (an Adirondack chair and bench, the patio table, and the other porch swing).

The Deck is finished and a pre-blog story about construction and the Disabled Guy

So, the deck is done.

But first... the pre-blog story...

When we first moved into this house, it had a three-season porch on the back of the house. It was added on to the house decades after it was built. There was a door at the end and one would have to walk all the way into the porch to get into the house through the kitchen. Because of the whackadoo who built this place, there was no room for our fridge in the kitchen. And since the disabled guy lives here, we put our laundry appliances on this enclosed porch instead of down the narrow and harrowing basement steps.

Eventually, somewhere between the shelves and clothes dresser he built, DG decided to cover all but two of the windows (the walls were all windows) and put a wall up in that porch. He'd have to turn a window on the house into a doorway, but that was his plan.

If you've followed this whole deckscapade (see what I did there?), you know that DG uses vise grips and other clamp-like things to hold stuff in place. Well, back then, he didn't have as many of those things as he has now (which is dozens). So, he used to hammer a scrap piece of wood and use that for his bracing/holder/whatnot and then he'd just fix the hole it left after he was done. No problem.

A quick bit of background about me- for those who don't know... I have pain issues (I bitch about them liberally on my fibro blog). Back in those days, my pain problems were limited to Carpal Tunnel syndrome and I would randomly lose the strength in my hand grip. When I worked nights as a security guard (aka: uniformed receptionist that walked a pre-determined route twice a night), I was in charge of a rather large switchboard. During the day, the office lady wore a headset because she fielded thousands of calls. We didn't get that many, so our switchboard had the handset. But, being that it was a switchboard, we didn't have to literally hang it up. We had to hit the "disconnect" button and we could set the handset down on the desk. Well, my carpal tunnel problems- I was known to be in mid-disconnect and I'd lose my grip on the handset and it would scuttle across the desk and off the end. All because of my hands.

So, DG gets all up on this little stepladder to try and drill a block of wood in place. But he can't do it. He gets me to come out there and hands me the drill. He tells me to use the drill to drive this long screw into the block of wood and into the wall behind it. He'd hold the block of wood in place for me.

I held the drill in both hands, poised over the Phillips-head screw. I said, "Do you really think this is a good idea?"

He replied something like: "It has to be done, might as well be you."

I actually did put the drillbit into the screw, but I stopped before pulling the trigger. No, I said. I wasn't comfortable doing it. What if I lost my grip on the heavy drill and dropped it, breaking it? Or what if the drill started spinning and I lost control of it and it slipped off and hit the disabled guy's hand? He's on blood thinners. If you've ever tried to stop someone from bleeding while they're on blood thinners, you'd know that's not all fun and games. Even if it isn't serious. And I told him so. "You take the drill and I'll hold the block of wood." He said fine and we switched places.

Now, another factoid about me- I'm short. I'm actually perfectly average for a woman (five foot, four and a half inches). DG is around five-ten. And he was standing on a stepladder. I'm standing on my tiptoes, arm stretched as far as it can go and I'm holding onto the block of wood. I can't look up because I'm pressed against the wall (between the stepladder and the wall, actually). DG is behind me, getting ready to drill the long screw into the block of wood.

"Hey," I recall saying, "Don't drill into my fingers. I can't see what you're doing to move out of the way."

He replied, "I won't." And we both chuckled.

The drill fired up. I could feel the block of wood vibrating with the impact. Now, this all happened fairly simultaneously.

DG said: "Oh shit!"

The wood made a strange sound (of the drill smacking into it and skipping off it).

And I felt a searing pain in my index finger.

Then I let out a shriek.

That's right. The disabled guy jammed a Phillips head drillbit, which was spinning under the force of a power drill, into the tip of my index finger. I had a flat wart on my finger too, right on the smushy pad- when they fingerprinted me for the security guard job, it looked like a smudged snowflake.

Blood gushed from my finger and I let out the appropriate amount of swear words and I did that automatic "hand shake" one does when they hurt their finger. Blood arced up against the wall and onto the ceiling. I was swearing, crying and laughing. DG was apologizing and laughing.

And we discovered a new and rather effective way to remove simple warts.

Why did I bore you with all this?

Because today, he finished the deck. And it is glorious. He's just got to put fencing along the bottom so our over-excited Chihuahuas don't run right off the edge. I know, that was a tad redundant- "over-excited" and "Chihuahuas".

I was outside with the dogs and didn't take my camera, so there are mobile phone photos of the completed deck. If you're in the Facebook group, you've seen these photos.







Then, it poured down rain for about an hour. The sun came out and he went outside to put one of the porch swings together. He said he'd need my help, but I had just gotten home from the store. About a half hour later, he came in to tell me he was ready. When I got outside, the entire A-frame was already put together. It turns out that he can use those clamps and such to hold the frame up while he was able to put everything together. So, all I had to do was help him move it to where we wanted it and then put the bench on the frame.

He of the gimpy leg, me of the "wide-spread pain"- we lifted the frame and shuffled along a few feet to put into place. Then we took the bench and lifted it up. That's right, him with one arm, me with my "grip losing" hands lifted up the solid wood bench. Now, if you've seen his photos or the videos, you know his arm is fairly muscular and strong. There isn't much he can't do, even with only one arm.

I was holding the bench with one hand and I lifted it up so I could slip the chain-link over the hook thingy (it isn't a hook, I don't know what its real name is). Just as I got the link up, DG lost his grip on his chain. He didn't drop it, but it slipped. I didn't drop my end either, because I'd just gotten the link up over the hook thingy, but it did drop a bit. My left hand was suddenly and searingly painfully twisted into the chain. (it splits into a Y). I let out a string of swear words and lifted up the bench. I got my hand loose, still swearing, and shook it (no blood!). Then I quickly lifted the chain up over the hook thingy for DG so he could let go of his end.

I immediately iced my hand. Currently, there are three odd-shaped bruises forming. The part that caught the chain-tangle is that smushy, fleshy bit in between the thumb and index finger. You know, right where the utensil sits when you eat. Or the spine of a book while you read. Or the key chain when you pick up your car keys. And in my case, where the mouse for my computer rests against my hand when I'm mousing on the computer.

If the bruises darken to a lovely shade of black and/or blue, I'll take photos.

People want to be our friend... only because we're #7

DG doesn't spend much time online. Even when he did, it was mostly playing online games or reading NASCAR stuff I searched for him. So, when I come across a funny video or an article, I'll show him, or read the pertinent parts out loud. When it comes to article-reading though, I have to translate English into Disabled Guy Stroke-English, which means mostly changing words like "pertinent" to "important".

I was reading this article from Cracked.com and of course, started reading parts of it out loud to him. When I was done, I said, "We're on that list. People want to be our friend because we drive pickup trucks."

DG: "Why?"

Me: "Because, like the article said- everyone has to move sometime..."

He replied: "Ah..." and I figured that was that. But moments later, he said, "How do they know we drive pickup trucks?"

Me: "Who?"

DG: "Those people."

Me: "What people?"

DG: "The ones who wrote the article."

Me: "They don't. I said it. The article-writer has no idea who we are."

DG: "Oh. So he doesn't read your blog?"

Me: "Its your blog and no, probably not."

DG: "Then why would he want to be our friend?"

Me: *sigh* "He doesn't want to be our friend. Number seven on the list of 'friends people need' is the guy with a pickup truck. And that's us. We're guys who drive pickup trucks." (he drives a full-size Chevy Silverado shortbed. I drive a mid-size four-door Chevy Colorado. Plus, he has a utility trailer).

It took him a few moments to process this and then he said, "Fine. I don't want to be his friend either."

In deck-related news, last night at almost 9 PM (it was still light out), I went outside to check on him. He was almost done. He had three railing posts left to put in (then the railings). I asked if he was going to stay out and finish since he was so close. Nope. He was coming in right after he attached the railing to the posts.

He ran out of the screw-in post anchors. Three posts short!

The Disabled Guy doesn't want to hear about our logic

If you're in the group on Facebook, I already posted this there. But, I figured I should post it here for those of you who aren't in the group or on Facebook or even my parents. I know my parents aren't on Facebook.

I had some time to kill before I started dinner (which is cooking as I type this), so I went outside to discuss the deck with DG. I suggested he move his tools from one end of the deck to the other, where it was closer to his work area. Luckily, he was in a good mood and even went on with the video after I went back inside to get my camera.

Enjoy.