It was a simple task. The kind of task they’d heard me talk about: Just give me a hole to dig. Or tree branches to cut.<\/em><\/p>\n “We’re going to town,” they said.<\/p>\n They selected a task: lubricate the attic stairs. They gave me a blue rubber glove, that I might not get sticky stuff on these keyboard fingers of mine. And they entrusted the tube of silicone caulk to my safe keeping. <\/p>\n It doesn’t get much simpler that this. Squeeze the caulk. Spread it out. Clean the glops. Spread them out.<\/p>\n And indeed, the attic stairs pulled down and pushed back much easier when the deed was done. That task complete, I tossed the blue glove in the trash and moved outside to the gutters, where there were many pine needles to extract (an obvious consequence of having a cottage in a pine forest).<\/p>\n They returned from town later. I heard them whispering in the living room.<\/p>\n I saw her pointing. “What is this?” was the question. Evidently a misplaced glop of caulk.<\/p>\n And then to my shame, he pointed to a streak of white caulk on the attic door surface, as if to wonder silently, “What on earth was he doing that he smeared it way over here!?”<\/p>\n A conclusion:<\/em> There is no task too simple for this man not to get something wrong in the execution of it.<\/p>\n A corollary:<\/em> Don’t trust this man to drain your pipes for the winter — which they did not do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. The Assignment It was a simple task. The kind of task they’d heard me talk about: Just give me a hole to dig. Or tree branches to cut. “We’re going to town,” they said. They selected a task: lubricate the attic stairs. They gave me a blue rubber glove, that I might not get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4741"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4743,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4741\/revisions\/4743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. The Execution<\/h3>\n
3. The Post Mortem<\/h3>\n