do it yourself jobs... and things that can go wrong

so nick put up a temporary round pen for the horses, and i told him how big i thought it should be. as usual, i was pathetically off on my calculations, and it was not big enough. but, i thought it might be a good idea to leave it up so the horses could get used to it.

again, apparently i was wrong, because they knocked it over in the middle of the night. so last night, i go out to fix the thing, and make it bigger. i discover that my normally intelligent husband for some reason used garden stakes (you know, those 5' tall greenish plastic stakes for tomato plants?) to hold up the ropes between the fence posts. that was his way of saving money, but not apparently, for making it actually stand up to 500-800 lb animals that didn't want to be in there.

so i took those out, did some adjusting, and we have a round pen again. in theory. i haven't used it yet. it was 10pm by the time i finished the stupid thing and too late to get a horse trotting about in it. all i could see of them was their dark sillouettes, moving silently across the field in the moonlight.

so we'll find out today. that should be fun.

another thing that was a recent do-it-yourself job was a clothesline. nick absolutely refused to let me buy one, stating that it was much easier to just make one that could be off the wall of the house, and would take "seconds" to put up. he decided something that could be stretched across when i needed to hang clothes would look much neater than a permanent line.

only problem is, he hung the line about a foot and half higher than i am. i asked him how i was supposed to reach it to hang clothes.

"use a ladder," he said. he was serious!

so picture this. i'm naturally clumsy, and if there's something to fall off of, i'll probably discover (unwillingly) how to do it. so me, on a ladder, trying to balance a basket of clothes? i don't think so.

i so hate tall people.

so now, every time i want to hang clothes, i'm going to have to get him to put it up for me. which he'll probably not be too keen on if there's a game on. which is why i wanted the permanent line in the first place.

don't get me wrong, i think he's sweet for doing it, but i just wish i could actually reach it, as that would be much more helpful.

this is why all do it yourself books should be banned, and then burned. it would save people like me from the acute distress of having their husbands make things for them that they can't use, because it "saves money."