First Rule of Fight Club: You Do Not Talk About Fight Club

At what point does it become a fight? Our first fight in the new home. This from the couple who hadn’t raised their voices in years . . . until the packing of the car as we said goodbye to Texas.

Now I could say that it was merely a heated debate. I could call it an argument. But it was a fight. No screaming, just a yes-it-is, no-it’s-not, YES-IT-IS! kind of fight. And over what? Shade for the pool and pool deck. 

Rusty has an architecture background; he can construct anything. I have an HGTV background; I can order anything. Raise your hand if you’ve seen the commercial: How to install a washing machine with one finger . . . the homeowner subtly points her finger at the washer, moving the finger to-and-fro’ just an inch or so . . . camera pans to the installer scooting the washer an inch closer to its matching dryer. This is precisely how I see myself. It’s how April trained me. Order it from Amazon, call the installer (and if Rusty won’t do it I bet that my new pal Jose Gomez will), and install the sunshade(s).

Rusty, by his own admission, can over-engineer anything. This is the man who once went into a garage to organize some tools, and three hours later emerged with a beautifully built cardboard box, its opening with perfectly mitered duct tape around the hole for garage rags. Truly, he engineered a box to stow rags.
To this day, when Rusty disappears to accomplish a task, I ask if he’ll first need to build a box. He knows precisely what I mean.

Last night’s fight moved from discussion to heated debate over the silliest thing. We now call him Fifteen Thousand Dollar Joe. Last October we met a man here in Samara who’d had a tremendous amount of work completed around his beautiful home. I don’t remember his name – so sue me. Rusty recalls names, I recall prices. What I clearly remember is the tremendous amount of work for only $15,000. Not that $15,000 is a paltry sum; but for the amount of work performed (including a fantastic, high-cone thatched palapa/rancho/call-it-whatever-you-want, Rusty!) I was impressed. So for months I’ve been referring to this $15,000 guy; and evidently Rusty had no idea to which home I was referring. Last night Rusty said, Thatch, Kathy, like Joe’s . . . like Joe’s tall cone rancho. Who the heck is Joe?!? What are you talking about, and don’t you dare ask what is my problem? This, on the eve of 30 years of marriage. Happy anniversary to you, too, John & Sharon.

Fifteen minutes later we realized that we were actually on the same page about the high-cone thatched thing and did agree that for future discussions, this gentleman would be named Fifteen Thousand Dollar Joe. And Joe, I apologize if you really are named Joe and I’ve forgotten you.

So Rusty envisions a thatch structure shading the pool. And in my mind, I too pictured thatch . . . once upon a time . . . before thousands of pounds of tools were shipped and a carport/garage became priority-one . . . an expensive priority-one. And now that we’re here, thatch won’t really compliment the style of our home, in my humble opinion. Is there a place for a thatched rancho on our 1.65 acres? Absolutely. It’s called Rusty’s studio and it’s down on the third level of the property.

So who won the fight, you ask? That’s still to be determined. But I’ll say this: who doesn’t have any new patio furniture, and who sits next to me right now whittling a back-scratcher with his new whittling/carving tools. Just remember, darling, it’s my pearl on Sundays. Seventh Rule: Fights will go on as long as they have to. Lo que hay.