What follows is pretty much the reason why you should never give blogspace to someone who is both a word geek and a tool geek. And that’s as close as you’ll get to an apology for what follows.

Why do we rehabilitate homes? I mean, I get the whole making-a-house-a-home, reduce-reuse-recycle, and economic aspects of the fixer-upper impetus, but why “rehabilitate”? Seems like if the habilitator had done a proper job of habilitating in the first place, it wouldn’t be necessary.

Come to think of it, I have never actually been introduced to a habilitator. I scanned the ads section of Zip06’s newspaper siblings as part of my extensive research on this blog and found no habilitators listed—plenty of people will to step in and clean up someone else’s earlier habilitation efforts, but no one ready to confess to habilitation.

Merriam-Webster.com defines “habilitate” as a transitive verb meaning to make fit or capable, as for functioning in society—or, as an alternate meaning, to clothe or dress (and so concludes my extensive research). This mainly serves to remind me of my friend Jake’s observation that no one "shevels" themselves any more, despite the fact that everyone can tell with a glance if you’re disheveled. Anyone walking the halls of a modern high school can immediately sense the need for a return to stricter sheveling standards. Kids.

“To make fit or capable.” Maybe that’s why people who make houses describe themselves as builders rather than habilitators. A builder builds—you look at a building, and pretty much by definition it’s built—Mission Accomplished. Is it habilitated, though? Is it fit to become a home? Is it capable of reflecting the owners’ needs, desires, and personality? Does it function as the center of (or respite from) society?

So we seem to be stuck with rehabilitation, both the word and the process. Could be worse—instead of rehabilitating, we could be spending our weekends trying vainly to return to a gruntled state.