Some Assembly Required

Tomorrow will be our 12th wedding anniversary, although this afternoon I had some serious doubts if we would make it that far. When we were first married I bought a weed-whacker and we nearly divorced while trying to put it together. I have tried to avoid either buying anything that needs assembly or making sure I wasn't home when said assembly took place. That can present a challenge these days when you really need or want something and you have no choice in the matter.

I bought my husband a new charcoal grill over the internet for an anniversary present. It was delivered Thursday afternoon. Our UPS driver came up the road honking as he pulled up to the house. That's my husband's cue to come outside and help the driver. They are buddies now that hubby orders tons of stuff for his leather studio, so they are on first name basis. The UPS driver announced he had 2 packages for me and one was over a hundred pounds. My husband looked back at the house and asked me what I had ordered that was so heavy. There went the surprise! Oh well, only 4 days early, so I told him it was his present and what it was. I had them leave it down by the downstairs door since it would be outside anyway.

So, this morning he went downstairs to the box and was going to open it and carry the parts up to behind the house by the deck where we BBQ. I ran outside and grabbed my little garden cart and we loaded the big box in it and pulled it up the drive to the upper level of the house and behind to the deck. Then the fun began.

I assembled my tools (yes--I have the only surviving tool kit that my sister bought me years ago when I was single) and we unpacked the box. The only parts of the BBQ that were assembled were the side and front shelves. The rest of it had to be completely bolted together.

After he put the frame/legs of the grill together I noticed that one side had a problem. The two metal pieces weren't fitting together tightly like the identical opposite side. I pointed this out to him and he said it wasn't any big deal. So he proceeded to put the axle and wheels on the frame. When we got to the part where we had to bolt the bottom of the BBQ (that holds the charcoal) to the frame, the holes wouldn't line up on one side. That was because the frame was an inch wider on one side as I had pointed out earlier.

He tried to hammer it together using a 2X4 to prevent denting the frame. It wouldn't work. He tried pulling it back apart to realign it. He couldn't. We finally tried WD40 on the joint and after several attempts he was able to get the two pieces together and we were able to bolt the bottom on the frame.

At one point he was going to put the frame up against one of the 4X4 posts of our patio cover and use it to hold the frame while he hit the other side with a hammer. I could just see him knocking out the support for our patio and I said as much. By the look on his face I could see he didn't agree but somewhere in the back of his mind the scenario must have seemed possible so he reconsidered.

Is is just my husband or do all men require total silence in order to read an instruction manual? Every attempt to discuss the project or pick up a piece of the grill was met with a 'look' or the word, "Wait!" Wait? Wait for what? I was simply holding the warming rack and seeing how it fit into the top of the BBQ. Is that a crime? Does that prevent an adult male from reading step number 12 on how to put together a BBQ? It must in my house!

Eventually we got the thing assembled, properly seasoned the cast iron grate, and he's planning on using the roitisserie tomorrow to cook a turkey. I'm in charge of trussing it in the morning.

As he was leaving the kitchen this afternoon after handing me the owner's manual, he said "File this somewhere, will you?" I don't think he heard me say under my breath, "Bend over."