We used to joke that while his dad was teaching his two brothers how to fix things, my ex-husband was out throwing rocks and setting fires . In all likelihood, he was probably running around being sporty while his siblings watched their dad fix stuff and put things back together in his tidy basement workshop, but it was more fun to infer otherwise.

The result was while my former brothers-in-law could build and fix all sorts of stuff, my ex didn’t always have the skills to match his enthusiasm for repair. One time, I believe I am not making this up, he got zapped trying to fix a lamp and singed his eyebrows. Like, he could smell the burning hair.

We joked about that for a long time.

But we would laugh about his mishaps because it just wasn’t who he was. He was a great athlete who wasn’t really interested in the way things worked. But somehow, maybe through the kind of osmosis that occurs when you grow up in a house with people who care about that stuff, he was handy enough to manage basic things around the house.

He could hang shelves and pictures and there was nothing the man couldn’t carry. He even single-handedly fenced the backyard of our first house in an attempt to contain the crazy mutt I’d given to him right after he graduated from college (an insane gesture for which I would like to apologize publicly). His methods weren’t always orthodox, but he could usually figure out how to get a job done. He was like the Macgyver of household repairs.

We hired plumbers or electricians for the bigger repairs but mostly, my first husband took care of all the other stuff around the house. He mowed the lawn and raked the leaves. He cleaned the gutters. He hung shelves and drawers in all our closets.

It was nice.

Today, I pretty much outsource all of those chores. I pay someone to mow my lawn and clean my gutters. My younger daughter showed a talent for hanging things a few years ago and there is nothing she can’t put up on a wall using the cordless screwdriver and level I bought her. She replaced a high school friend of mine who used to come over and hang mirrors and pictures for me after my husband and I split. That pal also painted stripes on my daughters’ bedroom walls and glued my kitchen stools back together when they began to fall apart a few years ago.

I’ve also found a couple of handymen who I’ve paid to hang smoke detectors and paint my deck. And finally, there are the poor, unsuspecting husbands of friends who have also helped me out over the years; the ones who’ve had to come over to start a generator or fix a leak under my sink.

Recently, I needed help hanging a fire extinguisher in my old kitchen as part of the smoke and fire inspection I need to pass to sell my house. I mentioned the dilemma at knitting and a gal pal immediately said she’d send her husband over to get the job done.

And honestly, while I really hate being so needy, I’m also tired of paying someone else to do these jobs. And I like to think that I can do just about anything myself. I’ve stepped up over the years and figured out how to shovel myself out of a blizzard and scoop up the dead things that crop up in my pool a few times a season. But if you’ve ever seen me hammer a nail into the wall, you’d also encourage me to hire someone to help out when drills are required for a job. I bring a reckless and imprecise approach to nailing things to the wall.

So I quickly took my girlfriend up on her offer and a few days later, she and her husband showed up to hang my fire extinguisher. Her hubby even had to run back to their house when it was discovered screws were not included with the thing. He also suggested a much better place to hang it than where I initially thought it should go. They were gracious about the whole operation and the fire inspector agreed a few days later and I put that part of the house sale behind me.

I dropped a bottle of wine off at their house not long after to thank them for helping a sister out. It was late afternoon when I left the wrapped bottle on their front porch and because I hadn’t attached any kind of note, I sent her a text so she’d know it was from me.

“Hey sexy … just left a treat on your porch, hopefully just in time for happy hour. So thankful to have friends like you with handy hubbies … xo”

On a side note: I am big on starting texts with openers like the aforementioned “Hey sexy.” “Hey sexy pants,” is another popular one. I also like a good “Hello gorgeous” or “What’s up fabulous,” so, you get the point. I like saying crazy things to my girlfriends. I can’t help it. They bring it out in me.

So, I thought it was weird that I never heard back from her but I’m not always the best message-responder either so figured she was living her life rather than checking her phone a zillion times a day. And then she called me the next morning laughing and told me what happened.

Apparently, they were having cloud issues at her house – you know, that mysterious virtual place to store data – and she never received the text, nor did she see the bottle of wine until she came back from the gym the following day. She brought it in and showed her husband and wondered aloud who might have left it there.

“I know who it’s from,” he said, and told her how a text had cropped up on his iPad from an unknown number that began “Hey sexy.”

“You made his day,” my girlfriend laughed when she told me the story. But as he read on, her husband found out the text – which landed on his iPad rather than her iPhone due to the confusing workings of the cloud – was just his wife’s weird friend and not some mystery admirer.

I can be a messy/haphazard texter, sending unfinished messages and sometimes to the wrong recipient. I actually do that a lot. I was texting with my 18yo daughter yesterday about a podcast I was listening to with our hero Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Rec’s April Ludgate) and inadvertently posted the text “weapon of choice? Poison, hello” on a thread I was on with a bunch of my Little Moms. Interestingly, no one commented on my weird interjection.

So take care when texting. Make sure you’re calling the right people “sexy.” And if you screw up, pray your girlfriend has a great sense of humor.

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