A job worth doing …

We were talking with another couple about my husband’s latest project, which he had finished with his usual finesse – later than originally anticipated.
“Well,” my husband said modestly, “If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.”
I smiled, “If a job is worth doing, it is worth getting it done, even if it isn’t perfect.”
He reiterated, “if a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.”
Another proof that opposites attract and test each other’s patience.
Building projects are one thing, making things presentable is quite another. I thought washing cars was his job until I realized it wasn’t cloudy, the windshield just needed washing. I waited, in vain, for my driver to clear the skies. He said, “I know the car needs washing, I just don’t have time right now.”
I endured the partly cloudy conditions until we bought gas. Then I grabbed the window washing wand and slopped that wet sponge over the front and back windows and squeegeed them dry. The couple streaks left I smeared out with a paper towel.
Back in the car, looking through the windows, my mood lifted. It was like sunny spring had come after a winter of seasonally affected depression. Riding down the road, I couldn’t see the grime on the outside, but sure could se through those windows.
A day or two later, I took a few minutes and a couple of dollars to give the car a lick-and-a-promise of a scrub down at a car wash and a 50-cent vacuum job on the cluttered floors. I figured it would last for a couple of weeks.
A month later, the “worth doing it well” guy backed the car out of the garage, hauled the garden hose out from behind the bushes and plugged in the shop vac. He was going to clean the car.
Three hours later, every nook and cranny of that car had been carefully cleaned, vacuumed, dusted, washed and polished, inside and out. For the two weeks it took the shine to fade, the windows to be covered with fingerprints and the hodgepodge of papers to re-gather on the floors, the car purred happily wherever we drove it.
OK, so that’s the car. A man’s domain. Vacuuming the carpet in the house, though, that’s my primary concern. Since I married into a ready-made family, I have always had plenty of trainees to help with a quick clean and ensure the floors are passable.
But occasionally such as when company is expected, the detail man tackles the floors. It takes him four times as long to vacuum as it does me, but afterward those carpets stand at attention for a week.
When we had dinner guests with a pre-schooler recently, I intended to use the unbreakable dishes with a napkin slid under each fork. My man took charged, covered the table with linen, pulled out the china and stemmed glasses and carefully folded a swan shaped napkin for each place.
And then some Hershberger spilled soda on that linen tablecloth four times. Must have been one of those jobs worth doing well.