OG is Bored - Heaven Help Us!

Hopefully by now you are well enough acquainted with OG to grasp the importance of that statement. Before we moved to California, he had an entire sixty-year-old house to work on. There was never a shortage of projects to keep him out of trouble. Since the move he's been cooped up in a condo half the size where most of the work has already been done by professionals.

You'll note I said most. Until last week, there remained one potential do-it-yourself project--the shower in the master bath hadn't been touched in forty years, and the tile was starting to buckle. No longer! Our daughter visited us for Car Week on the Monterey Peninsula in the middle of August, and two days after she left OG ripped out our shower. It turned out to be a very good thing.

Beneath the tiles, we discovered plywood--nothing more. No waterproofing of any kind, just soggy, moldy plywood. If you know anything about construction, you know this was not an approved method even forty years ago. OG cut out the plywood, re-plumbed the shower with a non-scald balancing valve (yaaay!), and is putting up concrete backer board. Next comes the tile, then a new shower door. 

I have no idea how long this may take, but I told him I'd like it finished by my birthday the first week of October. He laughed, but I have enough experience with his home improvement projects to be cautious. When he remodeled the master bath in our last house, it took six months. He's quite skilled, but (oddly) not quite as young as he used to be. Besides, with any construction project things happen. They just do. You might as well expect it and make peace with it.

Since he started this project, OG has taken a bit of a physical beating. The shower stall is small, and it's hard on the legs to spend a lot of time working in a crouched position. His hands are scraped from cutting and screwing the backer board, but having a project with a goal is well worth the aches and pains.

OG retired a number of years ago and has always struggled to keep himself occupied. In contrast to the many years he spent working in an office, he prefers to work with his hands on projects that produce a tangible result. Since I retired from insurance and we moved, I've been very busy with my career as a writer and designer, but OG hasn't had much to do. The shower project has been good for his psyche, if not

his body.

Our contractor is building him a workshop under the family room in our new house, where I hope he'll find enough interesting things to do to keep boredom at bay for several years to come. If he can't stay busy at home, I might have to resort to renting him out just to preserve my sanity.

Adventures With OG

As we begin, I thought it would be a good idea to introduce my partner on my journey into The Second Half. Henceforth, for purposes of this blog, my husband shall be known as OG (short for Old Goat – his appellation, not mine).

OG and I have been married nearly thirty years and have been true partners in every sense of the word. Our road has had its bumps and bends as most do, but we’ve stuck it out together and are genuinely looking forward to spending more time in each other’s company. We are the parents of a wonderful twenty-six year-old daughter who is the light of our lives but is now ready to spread her wings and start living her life—leaving us free to devote more time to building our own.

One unusual characteristic of our marriage is the fact that OG and I have never been employed full time simultaneously since our daughter was born (which begs the corollary--we've never been at home at the same time either). I took the first eight years of her life off to stay home, and then we switched places.

OG has shown unflagging support during the recent disintegration of my career, being no stranger to untenable work situations himself. In order to remain employed while I stayed home, he was forced to change jobs several times as employer after employer shut down, was sold, or left town. Ultimately, we moved to the Twin Cities when there was no work left to be had in Kansas City. When yet another job crumbled on him, we decided it was my turn to take my chances on the employment merry-go-round. I struck it lucky, and OG moved into the then-uncommon role of stay-at-home dad.

Our neighborhood is currently teeming with fathers who gather at the school bus stops in the morning dressed in jeans, clutching coffee mugs and chatting with each other after their children depart. However, eighteen years ago it was cutting edge. These men may work at home today, but OG’s job could only be done in an office. So for years he gamely drove missed lunches up to school and responded to calls from the nurse’s office, shopped for groceries and did the laundry.

I tell you this so you’ll understand this is his time, too. We’re both looking for a new challenge, something to make us want to get up in the morning now that we no longer have to set the alarm. We plan to pursue our separate interests, but we’re on this quest together. It makes it so much easier and so much more fun. We'll just have to be careful not to drive each other crazy in the process.