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Monday, October 31, 2011

Another "Life With Bob" story

As a continuation of the Life With Bob series, before Bob and I got married, I was living in a cute little bungalow in West Akron that I had purchased after my divorce.  It was a great little house for me and the kids, but it was really drafty and cold in the winter so, Bob enters my life and offers to help me insulate it.
   He went to great lengths to explain the best kind of insulation to use was the kind you blow into the walls and what the insulation was made of and what the procedure was and of course, all I heard was, "blah, blah, blah" and I'm thinking, 'don't care, just make it so.  BIG mistake.  I  should have paid more attention. 
   The first issue was, we foolishly decided to do this in the dead of winter when the temperature was in the teens.  So we go to the Army/Navy store and buy bright orange survival suits that will withstand below-freezing temperatures for days.  We also bought big huge black boots called Mickey Mouse boots, evidently because they look like Mickey Mouse feet.  Then we bought the insulation which came in 40 big bags each shaped about the size of a bale of hay and weighed about 30 pounds apiece.  The store then lets you use the machine to blow the insulation in.  It was a hopper about as tall as me.
   So, a couple days before the big event, Bob went around the house and drilled a bunch of 1/2 dollar sized holes all over the house in which to blow the insulation.  And on the big day, we suited up in bright orange and black (so the neighbors couldn't miss how stupid I am!) and gloves and ear muffs.  Bob set up the hopper just inside the garage ("to keep you out of the wind so you won't get too cold") uh-huh.  Then he attached the 5,000 foot ( yes, an exaggeration) hose. 
   My job was to open the bags and dump them in the hopper.  This entailed slicing open the bags, hoisting them up on my shoulder and slowly dumping them in.  The first 10 or so weren't too bad, but after that each one started to feel substantially heavier.  I couldn't see Bob because he started on the other side of the house. (The sly fox)
   Half way through the bags, I had to take a break to get the feeling back in my shoulder so I decided to walk around the house to see how Bob was doing.  And there he was...............just standing there...................whistling...................eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich..................with a hose sticking in a hole.
   Of course, he did a deer-in-the-headlight when he saw me or more likely felt my laser beam stare burning into the back of his head.  He stood there frozen for just a second.....and then started laughing his ass off and comments sailed out of me like, "YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH!!!!"
   He tried to weasle his way out by telling me that you had to know just how to blow the insulation in and how to be alert to when it was time to change holes and blah, blah, blah.
   The only redeeming part of the whole day was when we went back in the kitchen and I opened one of the cupboards only to have insulation pour out and cover the kitchen floor.  Three guesses who cleaned THAT up! 

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