On a day when the children were unusually, er, interesting, and just as my son had gotten in from outdoors and announced that he’d slipped on the pond’s ice and given his head a crack, Dave came striding in from work all energized and announced that he was building an ice boat.

The Clash of Creative Fugues

In the midst of novel-editing creative angst and complete frustration with the noise level and interruptions surrounding me, this enthusiastic pronouncement regarding new ways to crack one’s head on the ice — high-speed! — was unwelcome. I gave him a longsuffering stare which sent him off in a state of offense.

Why could I not just be excited for him?!?

Why, you ask?

We did sit down later and go over the plans together. Turns out he and his buddy from work got talking about this, and decided for sure they could find some kind of building plans online. Yep, they were right. There are plans online. Ooh, look, and it’s simple. Hey, and cheap to throw together. (Cherrywood Media’s good people to deal with, by the way.)

Logistics Are Not a Ladymaker

Now ever since a sailboarding neighbour down at the lake got talking about this sudden fantasy he had one day of attaching his sail to a GT Snoracer, Dave’s been wondering What Can Be Done to Engineer This Problem.

The Problem has been Engineered. In my living room, to the tune of a drill press, circular saw, and angle grinder. When I walked in and saw sparks flying across the variety of renovation-dispossessed items which have no home, including my dining table, I cleared my throat. Loudly.

He looked up from his metal cutting with a blank face.

“I don’t suppose you could do that somewhere where it’s not going to throw sparks all over everything,” I said.

He responded with a bullheaded stare, and the laconic tone of my 13-year-old in a recalcitrant mood. “Well, yeah. I suppose I could turn the other way.”

In the silence that ensued, the sound of a gauntlet hitting the floor was heard.

Negotiation Subtleties

“How about outside?” I said firmly, and walked away in deliberate ignorance of his disgust at the inconvenience I was trying to impose. Quelling the kind of breakpoint fury that can only be induced in a homemaking woman who’s been living in a major renovation for nine years, I gathered my laptop bag and prepared to run away to Mother’s.

By the time I walked back through (remember, the living room is right outside the master bedroom door, and the master bedroom is the closest thing we currently have to a finished room in that end of the house), the acrid stench of metalworking was awaft on the air. He’d switched back to the drill press altogether too compliantly, which led me to suspect that the moment I was out of sight, he’d be back at the angle grinder.

I determined to make his life not worth living for at least a week, if not a month, if that smell was still as strong when I got home. If volcanoes simmer, then yes, I was simmering. I calmly informed him I am ready to burn this house down.

Too Important Not to Call Truce

When I came back to pick up the girls for their dance classes, he was peaceably angle-grinding in the garage. Indoors, the ice boat lay half-assembled in a confetti-like scattering of sawdust and metal filings, fitting in admirably with the living room’s current ambiance.

I suspect it is this knowledge which softened him to the necessity of concessions. It’s a new thing for me not to even want to be here, certainly to the extent that I actually am not.

Two days later, as I ran away to Mother’s again, he and the kids were painting. Discussion of naming was underway. His work buddy had already called dibs on Ice Age and the Scrat image. The suggestion of Scratte came up, to make them a matched pair.

After all, she is a flying squirrel.

But no, it just didn’t seem quite right. So that debate is ongoing. In the meantime, I believe the metal slivers have been effectively cleaned out of the living room, as I don’t seem to be finding them in random locations around the house with my bare feet any longer. The iceboat is outside, and Dave is already scheming for a two-seater.

We’ll talk.