Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Q is for Queen!

I've always wanted to be Queen. Not for the power. Not because of the queenly duties. No. I always wanted to be Queen for very simple reasons. Reason 1- The idea of having people waiting on me hand and foot; taking care of my every need is very appealing. Reason 2 - The Queen gets to wear very beautiful clothes, and she has a lot of them!  Reason 3 - Who wouldn't want to wear a crown? Reason 4 - The castle! Does this make me sound shallow? Well, I am what I am!


I have actually been a Queen. It's true! Unfortunately, the experience was not what I had dreamed about. I had the title, but none of the perks.


This is how I became Queen.


When Hubby and I first got married, he was employed by a local company. After working there for 13 years, he decided to become self-employed. The business he decided to go into was the gutter business. Rain gutters. We thought about using the slogan "Our minds are in the gutters", but decided against it. I never gave much thought about gutters, and was concerned about whether or not there was a market for gutters. (I soon discovered that, yes, there was!)


When you go into business, it's very important to choose a good name. We thought and thought. Hubby's brother was also in the gutter business in another town. He's called The Gutterman. They have always had a friendly competition, and so we decided that our name had to out-do his. Well, what is greater than a man? A King! And, that's how GutterKing was born.


Since Hubby was now the GutterKing, that made me the Gutter Queen. (Yes, we called our sons Princes, and our daughter Princess, all of the gutters!) But, being Queen of the Gutters is not nearly as glamourous as being Queen of a small country.


As Queen, my queenly duties were to help the King install gutters. The Queen was required to straddle a ladder that was stretched any where from 10 to 32 feet in the air, while holding a piece of gutter, sometimes as long as 80 feet, sometimes with arms stretched above her head, against the facia board, while the King "set" the gutter with his trusty drill gun. Arms can get very tired, very quickly, and so the Queen was not always happy with these duties.


The Queenly winter wardrobe consisted of three to four layers of shirts, lovely orange carharts, three pairs of socks, big yellow boots, and two pairs of gloves. At times, the King would discard his coat, because he would be working up a sweat, and the Queen would quickly confiscate said coat, and add it to her many layers of clothing. Sometimes the Queen had difficulty working because of so many layers, but, the Queen did not like to be cold.


The Queen's head was crowned with a stocking cap, and the hood of a hoodie was tied tightly around her face so that only the bare minimum of skin was exposed. 


The Ladies in Waiting were no where to be  found!


In my quest to be treated as Queen, I found this cute little sign: 


I explained to my family that they should do as the sign suggested.
Except that when I first got this, the "n" on queen looked like an "r". So, when my loving family read the sign, they said, "You want us to treat you like the queer?"


"What??!! No! It says queen, that's an N."


"It doesn't look like queen to us."


That didn't go quite as planned. Then I found a new sign:





The story of my life!

5 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh 32 feet in the air....I get queezy just thinking about it. You are brave!!! funny post. Blessings, Joanne

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  2. Hehehe mom, this is your best post ever! I will continue to treat you like the queer..ehh..queen we know you are.

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  3. Too funny. I remember putting sheetrock up on a ceiling in FIL's shop. Trying to make sure that the insulation didn't fall out while Ambrose screwed it in with his trusty cordless drill, which of course the battery had to run out at some point... Ignoring the ache of your arms is impossible after so long. I take my hat off to you, you're definitely the Queen.

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  4. I so get your post as a self employed construction worker, wish my queen was half as hardy as you !! It would have saved me a fortune in labour.

    RJRDaydreamer

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