Everybody has shopped for new housing. That�s nothing too unusual. But we be shoppin� for new towns. Which, when you shop in eastern Carolina, starts turning into a �Oh look honey, they put the Burger King on the south end of town in this one!�, or Ally�s contemplative �They wouldn�t be putting houses up on pilings if it hadn�t flooded here already, and no, I don�t care if it does mean the fishing must be great, we ain�t buying a house below sea level when the sea is two blocks away!�

Eastern Carolina is pretty. And yes, the fishing is great. They�re building stuff there which means I�d have something to do when it�s daylight.

As a plus, I just so happen to like Burger King.

Working on Big Daddy�s re-hab job is starting to fall into a pattern. I show up to �Just hang that door, and maybe fix that trim over there, Outfoxed� and find that eight hours later I�ve put up medicine cabinets and put in a new entry door, storm door, reworked bedroom doors and generally made one helluva mess. That was yesterday. He has a habit of seeing tools and me functioning smoothly together and just has to keep the party rolling. For more cash, of course. Today�s plan is to start a new deck off the back of the house.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of building decks. Must be the dysfunctional erector set side of me or something, but taking a bunch of green lumber pieces and laying them at angles to each other just makes me giddy. People pay me to do this stuff. It all works to the greater good.

I mean, who else gets to play in the dirt with a shovel and post hole digger, chop big chunks of lumber AND have a nice new place to sit at the end of it all? I had a sandbox when I was small but this is so much better.

And in the Big Daddy way, I�m likely to start building a simple deck and wind up putting a two story addition on the house. With him waving fistfuls of fifties in the background and yelling, �Hey, I�ll give ya an extra hundred to frame out a bathroom over there!�

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