My father, Joe the Pro, couldn’t hammer a nail into the wall without either putting a hole in the wall or in his thumb. If Dearly Demented Mom or I wanted something fixed, we did it armed with a screwdriver, a hammer and a repairman’s phone number. Through the years, many a repairman walked through our doors.

When I met Dearly Departed Husband, I had hopes that I had finally met THE ONE who could fix anything. One day, the automatic garage door got hung up going down as I was parking my car in the garage. I came in the house, announced the problem, DDH jumped off the couch and said very heroically, “Never fear! I will fix it!”

The next thing I heard was the garage door crashing onto my car, followed by, “That’s it! I’m never going to try and fix anything again!” So much for my all-around handyman. Again, many repairmen visited our various abodes.

For years on my own, I became pretty good at nailing up picture hangers, unscrewing screws and hammering stuff. I also had a long list of repairmen who loved to take advantage of an old lady who can’t fix a thing.

Still, I dreamed of meeting my Knight in Shining Armor, Superman or Sam Elliot. Come to think of it, I never saw one of them fixing anything that needed repair.

But then I met My Future Husband. This guy was in the construction business for years. He even built his own house which is drop dead ranch gorgeous. He can build anything, repair most anything and I couldn’t have been happier with my luck finding the perfect handyman.

Until I found out how hard it is to fix things.

First off, MFH’s got every tool known to man. Of course, he has to find it, to use it. That takes some time. Then the problem always seems to be that whatever tool he needs is broken, so he has to fix it before he can fix anything else. So that takes some more time. Then there’s tool gathering. This would be for a more extensive project when you need all sorts of tools to get the job done. And that takes much more time as well.

And then there’s the details. I don’t understand the details. “I sure hope the compression brass dome-shaped fitting will work when I fasten it to the blah, blah, blah…” That’s when I zone out and go get another glass of wine.

Eventually, he does a good job at fixing the problem, but it always takes much longer, and costs much more than it probably should. Sounds like most repairmen I know.

And then there’s the clean-up. Did you ever have a homebuilder build you a house from the ground up? You know, you run out to the construction site on a daily basis to see what has been accomplished since the last moment you checked. Did you ever see a very clean, everything’s picked up and in its place construction site? No, you did not.

So he’s got that construction brain that requires you to leave half the tools, all the trash and your half hot Gatorade slung around all haphazardly. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to find your tools when you start the next job!

I’ve found the best way to deal with this live-in construction fix-it-all man, is to just pick up after him while I cuss him under my breath. As he says, “I can fix it. It just takes time and money.” And clean up, trust me.