Something I have learned repeatedly

If there is one thing I have learned, time and time again, it is that I am less than adequate at putting anything together. Really, anything. I did manage the IKEA bedside carts in my bedroom but the back still falls off of one of them so I have to keep it pushed tightly to the wall. I put together a purple martin house one time.  The house was supposed to be elevated on a twelve foot pole.  Purple Martins prefer to be quite high.  I could not, despite reading the directions a hundred times, put the pole together correctly.  I gave up and in the end the martin condo was only seven feet above the ground.  The martins poo-poo'd it completely, and it was eventually occupied by families of other birds.  I've had a string of these kinds of failures.

At this point in my life, I have more sense than to think I can put together anything harder than a shoe rack, which I recently had some success with.  I have wanted a backyard shelter over my patio since I moved to the new house 2.5 years ago.  The tent shelter I bought last year, though anchored down, was caught in a freakish ten minute long wind storm that came up very suddenly.  It was lifted and blown across the yard and smashed and was unrepairable.   ("There goes your tent!" my mom yelled, mid-sentence.)  Having that sun shelter was awesome, though, so I decided to go for something a bit more permanent, something that wouldn't go careening across the back yard.  My criteria, besides being extremely heavy and having a year-round roof, also included mosquito netting, because there is usually about one week between "hey we can eat outside!" and "the damn mosquitoes are out!" So I pulled the trigger today, after reading at least a hundred thousand reviews of gazebos (you should really have one custom made, but I've struck out with getting anyone to do such a thing inside of a year from now and under $5K) and settled on one.  If you order the thing through Amazon, they have this miraculous little button that says "Include Installation".  Yes, the reviews said that I and another willing person, with two ladders, in under two days, could get this thing together.  In real-world terms, I and a very unwilling person would struggle with it for a week and then have to use up my last big favor from someone to dig me out of the hole I'd got in.  For $350 I clicked that button and my gazebo will be installed, with mosquito netting, by mid-May.  A very cheap price to pay for my sanity. Friends, watch this space. FOTD is your near future even if the skeeters are out.