Easy Steps to Home Improvement

Step 1: A new home-improvement project dawns brilliant and joyful. There's an inner peace and an overall feeling of well-being. After all, I'm improving my home. I'm being the man of the house. It feels good. I go to the hardware store for my purchase. Almost giddy.

Step 2: Huh. I could have sworn I only needed four sprockets. I head back to the hardware store. No longer giddy, but it's all good. Just need one more sprocket.

Step 3: Did you know that they make the sprocket in different sizes? I didn't. Woulda thought I'd have noticed that before buying the fifth one. It's just one more trip to the hardware store.

Step 4: You're sold out of the size I need? Special order? No, thanks, I'll just drive to the next closest hardware store, which isn't very close at all. No, no, I'm not pissed. Just a bit frustrated. But they have the fifth sprocket I need. All is well, if only these morons on the road would drive!

Step 5: It broke. Not the sprocket, but the doohickey you attach it to. Just broke off right in my hand. I'm staring at it right now. Inert. But laughing its ass off at me. What is this doohickey? Can I replace just this part or, wait, it disappears into the wall. Where the hell do you disconnect it? Dammit, where's my drywall saw.

Step 6: Do they sell small bits of drywall or do I have to buy a four foot by eight foot sheet? And, no, the close hardware store doesn't sell drywall. It's back to the next-closest. I take in the doohickey that I disconnected from my house. I show it to the orange-vested worker man at the hardware store. "Hmm," he says and figuratively scratches his head. He calls in reinforcements. None of them have seen a part like that in years. Decades. I do live in an older house. It seemed so comforting when I moved in.

Step 7: "Honey? Don't use the yammick in the downstairs bathroom. I don't know when I can fix it. Yes, I'll fix the drywall, too. Do we have any beer?"

Step 8: Back in the car and headed to the liquor store.