I Was Right

Sometimes, I have a good idea.  My good ideas are usually quite profitable.  However, more often than not, my ideas really aren’t that good, they usually end up being more trouble than they’re worth, and I end up having to admit that I may have been wrong.  As much as this would delight most men that I’ve been in relationships in the past with, Pat is not one of them.  I suppose he would be, save for the fact that my “good ideas” generally involve him working on something, so my failures become his wasted time and efforts.  For some reason, despite all of this, he still wants to be with me.  Poor guy, I suspect he might have a bit of brain damage….who the hell wants to stay with a Horsechick?

Anyway, because we have come face to face with the harsh reality that the tractor we need around here is going to cost dangerously close to $20,000, my latest efforts have been focused on quick-flip “projects” that will turn a substantial profit in a short amount of time to generate tractor-money.  Most of these projects require a human much handier than I, enter Pat.

When we bought this place, Pat fell in love with the barn.  At this point, I’m certain the house could have been filled with dead bodies and snakes and he would have still made the offer on the property.  To be fair, it is a great barn.  It’s huge, easily bigger than the house, with cement floors, high ceilings, and lots and lots of room for stuff.  It also could have easily held six stalls comfortably, but I was quickly informed that hooves had better never touch the concrete floors or I’d be sleeping in said barn.  Without stalls.  Okay, fine.  I was allotted an 8x8 square in the corner for my tack and equipment (a space that quickly turned into 10x16-something because, let’s face it, I have a lot of shit), and the rest quickly turned into big-ass-workspace/Man Cave.  He has a mini fridge, which makes it official. 

I firmly believe that all significant-others of Horsechicks should have access to a space that is wholly and entirely theirs.  We are a tough creature to survive with, and since it is only a matter of time before show clothes and bridles take over the kitchen table, polo wraps and saddle pads cover the laundry room floor, and Vetwrap and Betadine appear in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, the least we can do is give our significant-others a space that is theirs.  Gloriously uninterrupted, horse-free, and beer-filled.  Pat quickly filled his space. 

Because of the existence of Pat’s barn, and the fact that he is a fantastic welder, my “good ideas” have gotten generally larger and more complicated.  The man can fix just about anything, and when it comes to welding, he is an artist.  There isn’t much he can’t make good as new, it’s just a matter of whether or not his efforts will be more than the profit margin allows for.  Last week, on a tip from a good friend, I drug home a rather tough-looking horse trailer.  The ’94 Bison had certainly seen better days, but for the amount of work that it needed, it was worth waaaay more than what I paid for it.  A hefty contribution to the tractor-fund, for sure.  When Pat got home from work, I didn’t get my ass chewed out from the driveway, so I must have done well.  I left the trailer hooked to my truck, knowing he would put it where he wanted it to start the deconstruction process. 

Now, maybe this is female-logic speaking, but since the barn is at the top of a hill, and the truck is already hooked to the trailer, I assumed that the future Mr. Horsechick would have taken the most logical approach and backed the trailer up the hill and into the barn with my truck.  Not so, says Pat.  That would result in the trailer facing out and a further walk back and forth to the welder.  Evidently, we are going to do things his way.   “Ooooookay babe, whatever.  Can you please not kill yourself while I go take a quick shower?”  “Yep.”

One would consider “Yep” to mean that it would be safe to take ten quick minutes of relaxation and scrub off at least one or two layers of dirt and that a grown man would take that time to do something other than nearly kill himself.  Pat is a pretty intelligent guy (aside from his decision to stay with me, but we try not to hold that against him), and is very safety-conscious.  I generally don’t have to worry too much about him.  But as I’m rinsing the conditioner from my hair, and I hear my phone start to ring from the bathroom sink, I get that gut feeling that this is a phone call I really need to take.  It’s Pat.  Oh hell….

“Are you dead yet?”

“No, but I’m going to be real quick here if you don’t come out here and help me.”

“Oh Jesus…Can I put clothes on first?”

“Only if you can do it like real fast…”  I can hear a little bit of panic in his voice.  Pat does not panic.  This is bad.

It was at that point that I leaped into the bedroom and spent a solid ten seconds trying to decide the pros and cons of finding underwear, shorts, a t-shirt, should I opt for a bra?  Ugh, what about shoes?  Where the hell were my flip-flops?  Wait, if he’s doing something stupid, I should wear more than flip-flops…I’m likely to get my foot crushed otherwise.  But then I’d need socks.  I’ll never find two socks right now.  WHY didn’t I put the clean laundry away instead of leaving it in the basket?!  F-it, I’ll just wear the towel.  At least I’m clean.

Clearly, crisis management isn’t my strong point. 

So I go sprinting out of our bedroom, down the hallway, towards the back door, snag my flip flops and jam my feet into them mid-stride, while holding up my bath towel, which sends both dogs into a full-blown OHMYGODSOMETHINGISWRONG!!!!-panic, and the three of us dash out the back door.  They’re barking at nothing and running in circles, I’m trying not to trip over them or my own two feet.  I run across the driveway, silently praying to whatever higher power governs this type of shit that the super-religious neighbors didn’t decide to grill dinner in their driveway tonight, and bust through the side door of the barn.

Pat is straddling the quad, which is a youth-sized 200cc machine and probably weighs less than he does, which he has hooked to the 2,800 lb horse trailer in an attempt to pull the trailer nose-first into the barn.  Up the hill.  Into the barn.  It didn’t go as planned.  The quad made it, and then lost traction and began getting drug backwards down the hill by the clearly much heavier trailer.  If he had let go of the brakes on the quad, the trailer (according to him), would have rolled back down the hill, probably swung sideways, and flung the quad (and himself) like a Frisbee.  I’ve never really thought about it until that moment, but I’d imagine Pat would make a pretty shitty Frisbee.  And wearing nothing but a bath towel and $3 flip-flops wasn’t really the way I wanted to meet the paramedics in this township. 

So he has me finagle myself to where I’m now the one holding the brakes on the quad, he’s grabbing chains, ratchet straps, come-alongs, whatever he thinks will remedy this clearly-fucked situation, and somehow manages to get the trailer worked into the barn and on solid, non-hilly ground.  I am still awkwardly sitting on the quad, trying to figure out what was so wrong with using my truck when two very important thoughts dawn on me:

1)   I was right.  Ha!  I wonder when he’s going to admit that...

2)   Mosquito bites end up in some very uncomfortable places when you’re wearing nothing but a bath towel.