Fifty Shades of Frustration

Another quick update this week. We’re mostly settled into our new house. However, we are still working to get the old place ready for sale.

Unfortunately, I’m not the handiest guy to have around. When I was younger, I allowed that fact to bother me. I mean, it really irked me.

My dad could fix anything, regardless of whether it was inside or outside the house. He had a calm demeanor and could face a problem with an almost analytical approach.

I heard him say some variation of “Well, that didn’t work” many times before restarting a project. He’d simply take a step back, ponder what went wrong, then get going again.

Me? If that kind of bump appears in any project, I lose my cool almost immediately. I’m just not good at carpentry, plumbing, or electrical. Oh, I’ve replaced a toilet or two in my day and installed a couple of ceiling fans, but that’s the limitation of my skills.

Throughout my twenties and my thirties, I compared my lousy skills to what my dad could do. It frustrated me that he could make everything look easy.

He told me a story once. When he was a kid, he couldn’t get the family’s lawn mower to start, so he kicked it. My grandfather came out, primed the mower, and told my dad to pull the cord again. The mower started immediately. My grandfather said, “Kicking it didn’t help, did it?”

It’s hard for me to imagine my dad ever losing his cool on a project, but he clearly did.

My girlfriend says I’m not good at house projects because they don’t interest me. That’s true, of course. Writing interests me. So does tinkering on my website and developing ad campaigns. I could spend an entire day doing those tasks!

Painting a ceiling? Ugh. That should be considered torture and prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Changing a lock? Holy cow, it’s like trying to figure out a Rubik’s Cube.

Luckily, my girlfriend is fairly good at that stuff. She’s very patient with house projects, just like my dad. She’s the one in our house who changes locks. She’s also an expert painter.

This weekend while we were working in the old place, she walked into the room I was repainting in the original color. Easy peasy, I thought. What could go wrong?

She said, “Boy, that paint looks dark on that wall.”

“It’s wet.

“I don’t know. Which paint did you use?”

“The gray one you wanted.”

“Which gray?”

I stared at her. Which gray? I didn’t know there were two grays. When did this house have two different grays? Eventually, I said, “The stone one.”

“Stone Eagle?”

“Yeah, that’s what you said you wanted.”

“That is what I wanted,” she said, checking the paint can lid, “but this says Stone Infusion. You used the wrong paint.”

I looked at the room that was already fifty percent painted. “Great.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll just paint it this color.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s not a problem, but you know you missed a lot of spots.”

Painting should be added to the list of prohibited tortures, too.