April - Just For Openers

J U S T FOR OPENERS APR 2007 I S S U E #114Spouse’s CornerBy Pat Stanley, the Editor’s SpouseIn just a few minutes it will be April 2007 and I can say “See You This Month at JFO”. Last count I heard we have40 members coming. I’ve asked John for the list several times, but I don’t see it in my email box yet, but don’t thinkI’ll wake him up to get it!As I said in January, my column has become almost completely unrelated to openers, but hopefully at least thosemembers who have been to JFO will find my ramblings somewhat interesting.Jazzy and Snazzy now have car seats for their trip to Harrisburg. This week I took them to the groomers and almostforgot I had them with me. They just quietly look out the window. I’m smart enough to know that their behavior istemporary due to the newness of travel, but I hope it lasts at least through the JFO trip. I took them to the center ofthe campus of UNC last week-end to socialize them more in strange places, but I certainly have not done enough.They definitely won’t be bored at our fun convention!We want to make sure that the “girls” meet Harold Queen so they don’t hide from him. At the last convention wecouldn’t find Corkie after Harold had been in our room to check email. We found her in the tub, hiding behind theshower curtain!!We do ask that no one feeds Jazzy or Snazzy any human food. Not only is it nice to have dogs that don’t beg whenyou are eating, they both have restrictive diets, even their dog treats are limited to certain ingredients.John had to completely change around his opener room. It’s like this. Every year when we had to scrub mini blindsin the tub, he would tell me how much he wanted to get rid of them and that he liked plantation shutters. I thoughtwe needed other things more until I saw my friend’s new shutters. John never said anything when the people cameto measure for our new window dressings or when I went and committed dollars equal to lots of openers. Then nearinstallation time, he said he didn’t ever say he wanted them.Great, just great. Too late to cancel a custom order and I got them on sale, so it was the perfect time to get them.Now I didn’t really expect them to be outstanding except in my home office that I painted when John went to Brimfieldin September to help Art Johnson. All the other rooms still are crying for paint and I thought the shutters wouldlook pretty washed out by the yukky walls. Boy was I surprised at how beautiful they are.I know..you thought this was about John’s opener room. It is, just be patient. One little problem with these shuttersis that three piece of furniture no longer could be in front of a window… furniture that had storage space in them, areal necessity in a collector’s home. One piece could be moved and the other two are no longer in the house!One piece that had to be given up was in my office, something John put together in my office over a decade ago.Took a day to figure out how to disassemble which was necessary since it would not fit through the door. Anotherpiece was in John’s computer area…yes, he has two areas of our small house that are his space.PAGE 2The third was in the opener room and could stay with us if everything was changed around. Now even though I haveno strength, John pulls me into “his” projects and this particular week-end I just had to finish taxes or I would gocompletely crazy. Early that Saturday he started out with a command to write down that two windows had not beencaulked by the plantation shutter installers. Since John can write I had to remind him that if he wanted his refund, Ineeded to focus on taxes…not what I wanted to do, but something that just had to be suffered through. Yes, I’m aCPA but week-ends should be free from such details especially since I hate doing taxes.John suffered, carrying around heavy metal tool chests full of openers (the collection that supposedly has not grownin years because there’s just not much left out there???). It’s funny, whenever I had am assigned to mail box duty