Home improvement strikes again

I have blogged many times about the joys and nightmares of home improvement projects. There was the flooring that I never did post a picture of...I will have to rectify that some day. There were the windows. There was the painting and the trim in "Alex's room." (I now say "Alex's room" in quotes because it obviously isn't Alex's room. Alex has a nice comfy suite somewhere in the afterlife, so we're going to use this room for some other purpose. We're not sure yet whether it will be a guest room or actually get used for a baby some day, so I just call it "Alex's room.") Anyway...I digress...

These home improvement projects aren't giving me grey hair. They're giving me weird ailments. This time...sore thumbs. Yep. Red, swollen, painfully tender thumbs. I cringe everytime I hit the space bar because it hurts. So what joyful project brought about the lightbulb thumbs? Why, installing a fence in our backyard of course.

I got the idea from Vixanne when she was having all that trouble with her homeowners association over her fence for her little doggy. Heck, if she can expend the money and effort for one little doggy, I should get off my fat ass and get to work to make a doggy playground for my FIVE (and multiple fosters).

Off we went with our sights set on something cheap and easy to install. NO SUCH THING! So we got what we thought was the least expensive and most efficient. It's wire, with vinyl coating to prevent rusting. Sounds good.

The posts, however, are a creation of some evil force that wants to torture me. No amount of twisting and turning or pulling and pushing is going to make this fence work with those posts. And believe me, we tried. I've got the swollen thumbs to prove it.

I have learned a few things over the past four months or so. The main thing is that I know when I've been beat. So tonight the posts are going back to Lowe's and I'm taking the credit card and buying wooden posts and fence nails. It's something I'm familiar with and I know I can operate. And I'm right handed, so I can be assured that, at most, only ONE thumb will be swollen and painful when I wake up the next morning.

Tell me it will be great once we get it done. Tell me I'll feel a sense of accomplishment when I see my furkids running around having a good time. Because right now, I'm this close to giving up. (When I say "this," imagine me holding my two swollen thumbs up about a quarter inch apart from one another.)