Screwing up my manicure

It seemed simple enough. 

Place the washer on the screw and hand it to my husband as he precariously balanced, ingeniously using his forehead and non-dominant hand/shoulder/or elbow, an over-sized sheet of particle board along the steeply-sloped angle of our garage ceiling.

Again.

Simple.

Imagine picking up dimes from a flat surface using chopsticks.

My pretty, pretty nails.

Not box nails, finishing nails, or roofing nails.

Not steel, galvanized, or vinyl-coated.

Finger nails. Gel. Pretty.

Chasing a silver-coated coin across a container with my manicured mitts was the weirdest and most frustrating combination game of Tiddly Winks and Pick-Up Sticks that I'd ever played. 

Fortunately, Brad Mosiman was super-patient.

Even when it took 45-seconds-to-a-minute to successfully assemble each screw. Even when I handed EACH screw to him the wrong way (I didn't even know that was possible). Even when I accidentally knocked over the container of washers and they rained down onto the garage floor and he had to climb down off the ladder to help me pick them up (My job was to hold the container).

I won't lie.

Over the course of this marriage-building, home-improvement project:

Words were said.

A storm-off (or two) occurred. 

But, eventually, taking MUCH longer than it should have, the garage ceiling got done.

And, a week later, so did my nails.

Brad Mosiman admired them as he was planting some flowers. He asked me to get him a trowel from the garage. Failing that, I brought him back some weird two-pronged fork thing with a metal handle that seemed "garden"-y. 

He gazed, for a long minute, at the replacement that I had brought him, before looking at me with a wry smile. "Perfect," he said.

Just like our relationship.