A Helping Hand?

One must keep in mind as I tell this story... Tom PRE-AD was a workaholic and we worked well together no matter what the job we were tackling.  Painting we were good at and fast and clean.  I'd do trim and he rolled.

NOW he not only does not like to do anything that requires physical labor but also doesn't like to step out of his safe haven....... "our woods"

My daughter Sandy, single mom of two boys just bought a house..... She works unforgiving hours and has a short time from closing date to being moved completely in........

She IS one of our main life lines in the world beyond "our life in the woods"....... and she is so good with Tom.

So he said we were going to go help her.....  Monday we packed up our girls and headed over to "paint".  Sandy and I had no expectations as we didn't know how this was going to play out.

The girls ran and played all over the house... loved playing chase up and down the stairs... exploring all the nooks and crannies.  Tom just wanted to start putting the paint on the walls and ceilings. 

She gave him a roller and paint.... I would do the trim so I could keep and eye on him......Sandy said he could not do anything she couldn't fix as it  touched her heart so deep that he wanted to help her......

After we left around 6:00 P. M.  Sandy painted till midnight to fix and finish the rooms Tom attempted to paint.  Next day we were back over and he was amazed at how those rooms turned out.   He has no clue how much she had to do.....

His biggest problem was we couldn't get him to put enough paint on the walls... we even had him do three coats?  "Put lot's of paint on Tom"  she would tell him.  It was a one coat paint over primer.

Now it's a given that day two of anything with Tom is going to just not happen.... Out of his realm for a day he is really messed up the next.  But he insisted we go back.

Sandy knew what day two would be so she put him in a room in the cool basement and gave him a roller and primer to cover HOT PINK...... I joined him as he needs to know where I am and Sandy just needed us out of the way so she could get on with what she needed to do.....

He tried to take some shelves off the walls but said the screws wouldn't come out.....?  and he painted some of the walls and said the rest needed to be painted with a brush...... it was a paneling with groves?

He didn't like this job and said it was a dumb job and went upstairs to see what there was to eat.

My daughter Kelly and her three girls showed up about then to help..... Kelly took the shelves off the wall and grabbed the roller and painted "the impossible" LOL
I finished the trim work.......

When we went upstairs I found Tom washing out kitchen cupboards.... he didn't look happy..... So Kel and I finished that job too while Tom drank coffee.... went out on the porch to smoke and ate everything he could find to scarf down and kept asking... "can we go now?"

This is what Sandy, Kelly and I experienced...... to the rest of the world Tom said he had been gone the last few days helping Sandy get her house ready to move into..... he did most of the painting..... poor little fart didn't have anyone to help her and Kelly came over and all she did was eat and talk...... didn't do anything to help?

I "get it" that most people don't see anything wrong with him but it drives me nutz!  Sandy and Kelly just laugh and say...  "it's okay..... he can't help it..... at least he tries"  LOL