Lawrence!

It’s been a long while since I did any projects with my good buddy, Lawrence the Handyman. By next weekend, that may change.

A little while after I’d gotten home last night, the mother casually says, “I talked to Lawrence today.”

And?

“He just got finished working on Friday … and he was at Lowe’s.” (He disappeared on us in late August to go back to the union job he retired from. Apparently, he can do that for a certain number of weeks a year without affecting his retirement or Social Security benefits.)

You’ve got to love Lawrence. He’s always involved in some kind of a side project or another. That’s why he is going to call early next week to see about a late weekday or weekend time to come and work. He was at Lowe’s picking up supplies for his current adventure. And I have never, I repeat never met anyone who is harder to discourage and next to impossible to rile. It makes him a lot of fun to work with.

Meanwhile, the list of things for him to do at This D*mn House continues to grow. It currently includes:

• Replacing both the front and back door hardware
• Installing an outlet in the dining room (the one he didn’t have time to do back in August)
• Possibly replacing the shut-off valve on the outside faucet (If in fact that’s why the faucet is leaking, in spite of the fact that it is turned off both outside and inside)
• Installing a new exhaust fan in the bathroom

And that’s just for right now. We’ll have stuff for him to do in the bathroom and kitchen (when we get there) and he already told me he would help me try to shore up the driveway next spring. That’s going to involve lifting up the carport and raising the columns in the now sinking driveway. It’s probably good we didn’t get to that job this year.

He may not have wanted to come back. Ever.