Thursday, August 30, 2007

The Seven Deadly Clogging Sins



My children have three Grandpas. They have my Father, my
Father-in-law and their Dad. My husband is a 34-year-old Grandpa. He gardens.
He can fix anything. He saves everything and he does quirky little things that
only a Grandpa does like create makeshift tomato cages out of scrap metal.
Yesterday he took his Grandpa tendencies to a whole new level.





Cobbler
I was walking out the door headed for clogging practice when
I remembered that I had forgotten, for the fourth consecutive week, to take my
shoes to the shoe repair shop. For those of you unfamiliar with clogging shoes
(and I bet there are many), the taps are connected to the bottom of the shoes
with small nails. The soles of the shoes are about as thick as a piece of
cardboard and the point of the nails in my right shoe had poked through the
padding and into my foot. It was painful and I was forced to clog in tennis
shoes, one of the seven deadly clogging sins. I told my husband about my
problem and he said, in a commanding voice, “Bring me the shoes.”





His face lit up and I was skeptical but I decided to humor
him. Maybe he could fix my shoes. He managed to save our lawnmower from
complete ruin several times motivated solely by his own unwillingness to drop
$150 on a new mower. My clogging shoes cost about $75. I knew that was
motivation enough to at least give fixing them a go. I brought them into the
kitchen and waited for him to return from the one domain in our house that I do
not enter willingly: our detached garage. It is filled with enough random crap
to make my head spin so I choose to deny its existence.





Amongst the random crap exists a cobbler’s hammer. Did
anyone know that there was such a thing as a cobbler’s hammer? I didn’t. I
pictured the shoe repair with some magical little tool that could exert enough
force to smash a nail inside the 1.5 inch toe area of a shoe. I’m an idiot. My
husband took his rusty old cobbler’s hammer (a large, heavy two-sided hammer),
took the laces out of my shoes and whacked them with enough force to make my
daughter cry. That was all it took. The shoes were fixed. My husband had been
waiting ten years for the opportunity to put that cobbler’s hammer to use. I
hope it was worth the wait.





15 comments:

  1. See, Husbands are good for something ;)

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  2. It seems Sean has more family traits than even he would care to admit, are you familiar with the story about Grandpa R.P. 'fixin' his shoes when they started lookin' worn and ratty?

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  3. Absolutely Hysterical. He does sound like a grandpa. In my family my father is called NoNo and anytime we need something chances are Nono has it in his basement (probably looks a lot like your garage) I remember once a hairdryer of mine broke I called up my father and sure enough he had three extra down the basement that he just happened to fix.
    Is clogging like tap dancing?

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  4. I must give props to my husband because he is good for lots of things. We have never had to pay a plumber/electrician/any type of contractor for work done at our house. My husband finds a way to fix things and it has saved us some major dough in the last five years.

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  5. Oh yes, Papa Dale, I remember. A little spray paint and they look good as new!

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  6. I'm guessing Nono and my husband would get along great.
    Yes, clogging is like tap dancing only it is done primarily to bluegrass music and the taps are not stationary so the sound is different.

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  7. You're still clogging--hey, that's great! Email Kate and get her back in the routine.

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  8. When he starts having garage sales at your house every weekend, that's when you start to worry.

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  9. Oh - I wish I had a grandpa-husband. My hubby just says "Let's pay someone to do that..." and I grew up in a family where we just did it ourselves... But I digress. GO GRANDPA/HUSBAND! You Rock!

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  10. Very funny.
    Sounds like somewhere between my husband, not handy at all and no desire to be (we have never even owned a lawnmower) and yours is the perfect mix. ;)

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  11. Aunt Becky-
    We all know that's not going to happen. He can't get rid of anything.

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  12. Janine-
    Yeah, I try not to take him for granted. He's probably saved us thousands of dollars in the past several years.

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  13. New Diva On the Blog-
    I'd say there's probably a happy medium between the owner of a cobbler's hammer and someone whose never owned a lawnmower ;)

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  14. I live with 3 grandpas. Hubby is in charge of gardening and maintenance. Son #1 handles anything that has to do with technology and handy home repair, and Son #2 golfs!

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