I spent a good part of yesterday, one of the last few nice days of the year, inside caulking my windows. I’ve moved into a very old apartment, with those kind of giant windows that think they’re all romantic, opening like shutters that take up the whole room, and hemorrhaging cold air in the winter. Luckily, the previous tenant left me a big blue metal caulking gun to seal the many vast cracks. Unlucky for me, I had never used one before.

I started with the window in my bedroom, and after doing exactly ONE SIDE of the bottom inner square (read like 0.5% of the job) my right hand cramped right the hell up. Holy CRAP this thing is hard to use. The goop comes out real slow, and you have to push SO HARD on the thing to make it come out- and then when you inevitably mess up and get goop all over the place, you have to wipe it away but you don’t feel like going to get a rag so you use your bare hands and realize it’s the CONSISTENCY OF HOT BOOGERS- and you do that thing where you roll the nugget around in your fingers until it dries up enough that you can flick it somewhere… except this kind of booger never dries up- you just keep sliming it around for infinity while you wonder if there are some dangerous toxins in here you probably shouldn’t be using as a moisturizer.

Because I’m stubborn as fuck, I kept going. I FINISHED TWO GIANT WINDOWS. I figured the caulk in the container would dry out by the next time I picked up the gun, so I needed to empty the container before stopping. I know I should be making more dirty jokes about caulk here, but goddammit I just really need to talk about how much BIG LOADS OF CAULK REALLY HURT MY HANDS.

So needless to say at this point, my hand looks like it was spooked by an evil demon while making shadow puppets and permanently frozen… but I STILL HAVE 2 GIANT WINDOWS TO DO. How do people do this??? I slump on the couch and for the 236th time since I moved in, wish I had somebody strong around—who also just happens to be a gorgeous, sweet, curious, passionate man—to help me with this kindof stuff. Not only would the CAULK be free-flowing… but the curtain rods would be up, the TV in its mount on the wall, the shelves and heavy art and mirrors hung and centered without zillions of gaping “tester” holes. WAAH.

Anyway it hits me, maybe the problem is not me, it’s the damn GUN. So I google caulking guns, and sure enough, there are guns that suck (6:1 caulking ratio) and guns that are worthy of my goddamn time (12:1 caulking ratio, swiveling head, smooth rod thingy instead of racheting among other qualities I don’t understand). I realize I’ve been caulking with a fucking 6:1 ratio racheting gun, which apparently is very bad for caullking hot boogers. For every 100lbs of force I put in, it’ll put 600lbs of force on the booger pusher. BUT I COULD BE GETTING DOUBLE THAT.

So I order up a red gun that’s not fucking around, and I tell that CAULK it better get ready for Monday when the gun arrives, because I’m gonna make it squirt so hard it won’t know what hit it.