Redneck Studies: The 70% Complete Solution

I've mentioned before my theory that the reason redneck properties end up looking like redneck properties is the subjects' congenital inability to complete any project. I hold to that premise.

Just a few recent items of note in passing:

My brother has a power wash machine that's been sitting in the garage for a couple years now. (I think the last time it was used was when Mom died and he blasted (most of) the outside of the house before the cousins came over for her wake.) A couple months ago he took it out and discovered just how easy it was to clean the driveway of twenty-odd years of weather, dirt and grime. He would do a smallish section at a time a couple times a week and we moved the vehicles around accordingly to accommodate.

Except he's apparently become bored with that now. The last 20-25% of the driveway, down by the street, hasn't been touched in weeks and there is no indication he intends to go any further. And it's not an even break between completed/untouched sections where he can pretend that it's a different color concrete or anything. It's just obviously not done.

The Christmas tree, at least, came down a week after I removed the last of the ornaments. He insists there is one proper way to assemble and disassemble the tree and he knows what that is. So it's in its box . . . which is still sitting in the hallway two weeks later. I do not know the location of his storage unit, neither do I have a key.

Meanwhile, though, he suddenly had the urge last evening to clean out the roll-top desk. It needed it desperately, having accumulated probably a decade's worth of holiday cards, utility bills, batteries (dead and alive), pens (dead and alive), address books (mostly alive), insurance calendars (assuredly dead), and other assorted ephemera and impedimenta. He had apparently finished by the time I came home since he was in his room watching TV having left the chair he was using blocking the doorway and all the drawers and top of the desk wide open. Do you want cats in your roll-top desk? Because that's how you get cats in your roll-top desk. They'd climb on it occasionally even when it was shut. I closed everything up.

I believe he honestly does not see finishing detail. And certainly does not see it as part of the project. The project was to take down the tree. It's down. The project was to clean out the desk. It's clean. End of story.

I don't know what the deal is with the driveway.