Hold my purse while I hammer this nail...

If any of you have ever been to our apartment building you know it's quite the fixer-upper. In the past two years that we've lived there, we have focused our (read: my boyfriend's) significant talents on improving the interior with painting walls, shalacking holes, and installing spice racks. We've made the apartment much more livable and will leave it in better condition than we found it for sure. But yesterday afternoon, we trained our (read: Stephen's) considerable aesthetic on the outside of the building with a little gardening.

We went to a nursery and picked out some purple and white petunias and a rubber plant (for inside). We also purchased some lovely window boxes that seemed easy enough to throw over our sills. Unfortunately, we arrived at home we found that there was going to have to be some intense drilling of screws through brick. And here we just wanted to plant some pretty flowers.

Now you might say to yourself, "Matthew gardening? No big stretch. I can picture the oversized straw hat and frilly apron already." That's where you would be wrong. In a shock to all of your gender-stereotyping, I left the planting and potting to little girlie Stephen. We can't get his delicate hands dirty. I took to the power tools! With a few massive drill bits, a hammer, a chisel and my ingenious technical skills I screwed the flower boxes right into the brick front of the apartment. It was difficult and sweaty work. Stephen remarked I was a regular Bob Villa, if Bob Villa wore Banana and sang the score to Gypsy while he worked.

Luckily, when I did try to assist in the potting of the flowers, the testosterone was still flowing (I can only produce so much per week). We had to use a neighbor's potting soil to fill a few supplemental pots as we had way too many petunias to plant. This half used bag of soil was a little old and dry, but we figured it was better than nothing. Being on my macho high, I grabbed the soil with my bare hands and filled the pot. A couple of fistfuls later, I reached into the bag and felt what seemed like a crinkly leaf. Good mulch, I guess, that'll do. And I pulled out a dirty, deflated mouse!

Did I scream like a little girl? Did I run and cry in my boyfriend's arms? No. Perhaps because this corpse was much more appealing than last week's rodent encounter, I was able to compose myself and shield Stephen from the horror. "Look away, this is no place for a person of your level of sensitivity," I demanded while I disposed of the body.

Power tools, dead creatures, protecting my better half. Very manly exercises for a very manly man. Grrr.

But tonight I think I'll bake a quiche.