My Husband is Handy

The other day my husband and I were talking with our very nice next door neighbors. They saw that my husband was gathering up a broken branch to bring inside and burn in our fireplace. They wondered how often they should have their chimney swept. Huh. We've been here for 10 years and we've never done it. Which doesn't really mean that you don't have to do it more often, it just means that we have blown it off. Perhaps we should do it.

I was naturally thinking we would call some kind of chimney sweep service. I mean that's the kind of messy job that might require knowledge as to what you're looking at when you look down the flue and to know what kind of brush to use and to know when it is thoroughly cleaned out. Maybe you need Bert from Mary Poppins to come over and give it a bit of a brush up. Bert would know what he was doing, surely.

But, just this morning I saw my husband was at the computer looking at a site. It was a site selling chimney sweep supplies. So, that means my husband was doing research into BUYING chimney brushes (not an OK compact purchase--although could maybe be rationalized as a safety/health issue--so then OK...). He was contemplating sweeping out the chimney himself! Uh oh...

It's not that I don't trust his ability--he can do anything! He researches, asks people, reads, thinks about how to approach something. He's contemplative. He ruminates. He cogitates. He sketches it out. He sleeps on it. My husband is a thinker. He reverse engineers everything he sees all the time.

If we're in an old building, afterwards, he'll ask me if I noticed the windows at the top and how there was a mechanism to open them up. Um. No. No, Honey I didn't. Were there windows? I didn't even see them, much less how they were opened and closed.

He sees things that I don't see. He's observant in ways that I am not.

On the other hand, he sometimes falls into the trap of thinking that things will work as they are supposed to. He is always surprised and pleased when a job goes easily, quickly, and he doesn't have to run off to the store to get a certain kind of hex nut or an adze or something. Conversely, when a job doesn't go easily and quickly, he is still surprised! It's supposed to work like this!! This is supposed to fit in here!! And it makes him really mad.

I don't blame him--how frustrating! But, might it be a bit easier on his blood pressure, if we had a guy come in? Couldn't Bert come in, climb up on the roof and look down the chimney and know, because of his experience--because it's his job, which brush to use and how and when to switch brushes and for how long, etc.? Aren't there situations where an expert might be warranted?

I think my husband thinks it's just a matter of giving the chimney a good scrubbing with a stiff wire chimney brush and then we're done with it. Done and done! *claps hands and brushes soot off*

I can envision brushes getting stuck and my husband getting pissed off and the chimney quaking in fear as it refuses to give up the stuck brush. Soot and dust could come billowing out of the fireplace. It could go that way.

I also know that if my husband has decided something, that's pretty much it. He's doing it and that's final. If he feels strongly about it, so be it. That also works for me. If I feel strongly about it, so be it.

I don't have any strong feelings about this, I have mild trepidation. My husband has strong feelings. We'll see what happens. He's in the research phase now. Perhaps Bert will end up paying us a visit after all. Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim, chim, chiroo.