SHED NO TEARS

Congratulations to me! I am the proud owner of the world's flattest storage shed.

Granted, it is supposed to be an actual shed that stores actual items, but in its current state, it would maybe be suitable for storing two or three sheets of paper.

You see, the shed I bought apparently does not want to construct itself and is therefore existing in all of its flat, unconstructed glory in my back yard.

It started a few months ago when my wife told me that she was tired of the mess in the garage. She tells me this quite often, which generally means I have to clean the garage. I have never told her this, but I really don't see what the big deal is. We have a two-car garage, and there is always room for her car. I see the other half as mine, and I should be able to keep my space as I please, even if that means stacking a tricycle on top of a bicycle on top of a wagon on top of what I think could be an old sack of potatoes. Or perhaps laundry.

After each garage cleaning, we both feel very accomplished. I feel good because the garage is spotless and everything is in order. My wife is happy because she no longer has to climb over a lawnmower to get from her car to the door.

But the times between garage cleanings were becoming shorter and shorter. We were accumulating more and more stuff, and entropy was taking hold. While my clean garage used to last weeks, it was now lasting, on average, about four seconds.

So my wife decided we needed to get a storage shed. We went to a home improvement store to check out the sheds they had on display. I immediately picked out the one that I felt would be adequate. My wife opined that a two-story storage shed that cost more than a new Lincoln Navigator was probably not exactly what we needed.

She noticed a quaint little single-story ranch-style storage shed. I went inside to tour, and found it was fine and all. But it was most definitely not the country estate model storage shed that I was convinced we needed. I explained to her why we needed the big daddy shed.

A few minutes later, we were in the check-out line with the quaint shed.

When we got it home, I opened the box to find that my shed-to-be consisted of roughly 48 billion pieces. I decided that the best option for construction would be to assemble a lot of the individual pieces together before assembling them into an actual shed. There were lots of smaller pieces that had to be fastened together to be bigger pieces, so I figured I would wage war on that front first.

And what better time to start clanging metal around on a driveway than 10 p.m. at night. Realizing that this was not the most neighborly thing to do, I took great precautions not to make loud noises, be it metal hitting concrete or spontaneous expletives after realizing I had fastened a shed door to my pants leg.

After a few hours, I had turned a bunch of loose pieces of metal into a bunch of larger, fastened-together pieces of metal.

But I was feeling pretty good about my progress, since I had assembled some major components of the shed, and now it would just be a matter of standing them upright, slapping the walls on, and moving in the lawnmower.

A funny thing happened on the way to garage dejunking.

I had moved the shed parts to the back yard, just off from where I would construct it at a future date. I knew I had to level some ground and clear out a few small bushes. But that would be an easy step, right?

Not so fast. One night I got home a little late from work and darkness had already set in. Another night I found a better offer on TV. Another night I ended up sitting on my neighbor's porch playing cards. So as you can see, it was always something very important that stopped me from continuing construction. After about a week of delays, my wife suggested that I dedicate the weekend to finishing the shed. Well, some rains came, and that meant no work. (I'll melt.)

So the shed is still there, on its side, awaiting my finishing touch. I'm not sure if this weekend will work for me, since I have some important stuff planned (sitting on the couch, maybe some breakfast, a nap).

I know I will have to eventually just hunker down and put the shed up. I know I will be glad when it is finally constructed. I remember the nice feeling of the clean garage, and this will go along way to help alleviating the ever-growing population in our garage. Unfortunately, when I finally do finish putting it together and getting everything moved in, I know that the shed will at some point reach the same fate as the garage, with unmanageable piles of stuff taking over. At that point, I will point out to my wife that the problem can easily be solved with the two-story shed.