Handy- and Un-Handy-Men

I am the child of two committed do-it-yourselfers. When I was growing up, my parents heated our house with a woodstove. My dad purchased the rights to harvest the wood on a quarter acre of land, and he and my mom and I (and maybe my sister when she was really small) would go there, and he would chop down the trees, haul them home, and split them and stack them in a big shed (about the size of a small garage--it was so big that my parents are still burning that wood in their enormous fireplace). Every now and then during the winter, my sister and I would have the job of hauling the wood down into the basement, where my mother would each day feed the fire.

When the chimney needed to be cleaned, my dad cut down a small sapling and tied a rope to it. He stood at the top of the chimney and fed it down, and my mother stood at the bottom, and they pulled the rope back and forth to knock the sediment loose. In the research for my doctoral dissertation, I found this method of chimney-cleaning strongly advised in a housekeeping advice manual. From 1831.

I did not grow up in the Little House on the Prairie, or during the pioneer era. It was New Jersey in the 80s. But it illustrates the stock I come from, I think--you do everything you can yourself. Maybe this ethos derived from financial necessity originally, but it certainly has taken on a value of its own in my family, with all of the associations of independence and competence that it carries.

So, my parents have imparted to me a certain commitment to being able to take care of my own needs. However, I do not have my dad's upper-body strength (nor really even my mom's), nor do I have his selection of tools. At the new house, which is actually quite old, there were a number of small tasks that it seemed expedient to hire a handyman to do. Both Sam and I can do lots of things ourselves, but the temptation of having one person do a bunch of tasks in a single day when there were so many other things that only we could do (or that would be much more expensive to farm out) got the better of us. The home inspector, who was fantastic, had given a referral, and when the handyman came out, he seemed quite capable.

What we didn't bank on was his helper, whom I will call Rick, because that's his name. Rick was quiet, which is fine--one always hopes for quiet competence. But that was not Rick's kind of quiet. Judging from the odor coming off him in the afternoon, Rick's quiet was more of a stoner kind of quiet. His drug-induced lassitude carried over to his work. He mixed up the faucets and drains for the two sinks we wanted him to install; turned the water on to the house when he had left the water pipes open, resulting in a veritable flood in the kitchen; scratched an expensive (to us) faucet while installing it; and damaged the vanity he was putting the faucet into. His boss was only slightly better: the toilet he put in rocks from side to side, he shattered the pedestal to the pedestal sink, and he gouged the hardwood floors in the middle of the living room in front of the fireplace. The two of them basically left a path of destruction in their wake.

Luckily, my parents are coming at the end of the week. My dad has been asking what we want his help on, and I told him that Sam is removing the 6 layers of flooring in the kitchen. "Oh," he said, thoughtfully, "So I should bring my digging up tools."

Yes, Daddy, please!

Friends Like These

This hour would be a good time not to be wasting time blogging, but I need a break. I should be having one right now, as this week is spring break. But while it's been a bit of a break from school (not to be undervalued!), it's been one of the most stressful weeks I can remember--mostly because of a massive home renovation project going on at "the new house." Sam and I have been over there every day agonizing over delays with materials and contractors, intractable wallpaper fused to the plaster, a laundry chute built to withstand a nuclear holocaust (that needs to be taken out for the kitchen renovation), etc. We've mostly been stressed because there are so many moving pieces, and every now and then, there are just too many projects for us (mostly Sam) to keep going fast enough that everything is done when the next team comes in. By team, I mean: handyman, drywallers, electricians, plumber, HVAC guys, chimney sweep, tree guy, roofer, kitchen designer, cabinet installer, tile guys, carpet salesman, carpet installer, re-use people. No exaggeration--those are the people who have been through the house. And we're doing most of it ourselves!

We've mostly gotten in touch with these people through word-of-mouth, and they've just about all ranged from impressive to truly excellent. One day I will write an ode to Chad the electrician, who has spent a good amount of time just helping out with tough jobs that Sam couldn't manage to do with only one set of hands, manly as they might be (see last post). I'll also write one to my friend Jennifer and her husband Jon, because last night Sam and I were almost in tears (okay, that was mostly me) as we realized we simply didn't have enough time to get everything done before the next team showed up, and as complications arose, our to-do items only multiplied. Sam said, "We've got to figure out how to get our friends to help." But neither of us really wanted to bother them--except for Andrew, whom we called on almost without compunction, and who showed up cheerfully and lightened our load and brightened our day. And then Jen called and said, "We're back in town--can we help with anything?"

What can you do to express your thanks to friends like these? When people come through for you the moment you ask (Andrew) or even before you manage to (Jen and Jon), a day of exhausted desperation turns into one filled with the kind of amazed gratitude that you can't really ever repay.

Manly Men

Last night, as I was making up the slides for today's church service, Sam asked petulantly, "Are we going to have a bunch of 'I love you, Jesus!' songs tomorrow? Jesus and I have a manly relationship, and we don't usually talk about our feelings."

Welcome to the Vineyard, sweetie.

Back to the Future

That was the theme of the 80s party that I attended on Saturday, where I got to meet Sam's friends from high school. The party even included a Delorean, which was smaller than it looked in the movie (even on my Dad's ridiculously big TV).

They were all really lovely people, funny and friendly and willing to welcome a newcomer. Having never seen them before, I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to imagine them in normal non-80s attire, but this only lends them a charming eccentricity.

Kids Today

I'm going to Cincinnati this weekend to meet Sam's family and some friends of his from high school, who are throwing an 80s party. It will be nice to be in the company of other people who actually remember the 80s, without blank stares from a bunch of people who were born in 1989. Which, by the way, is the year that some of this year's college freshmen were born.

I'm looking forward to all of this meeting of people, although Sam has warned me that I may be the first Asian person his niece and nephew will ever have seen in real life. Whew. Well, at least I got to practice my diplomatic-response-to-child skills this past Sunday, when a little kid (about age 6) ran up to me at church, said, "You look like a Chinese person!" And ran away.

Why I Never Exercise (for Long)

Theoretically, it's supposed to make you healthier. But a couple of weeks back into regular workouts, I've injured my shoulder. I'm pretty sure I know exactly when it happened--I was using one of the weight machines, and I decided to press on through a certain amount of muscle fatigue, figuring that's what you've got to do to build up the enormous deltoids that I expect in my future (ha).

It has happened before. A while ago, I realized that my back no longer ever bothered me, and I realized that it was because I had stopped doing yoga and exercising and doing the things that had formerly made it ache. Yay--instant results!