Becoming a handyperson

Here's something I like. I like it when you have no idea how to do something, and it sounds like it would be totally beyond your abilities and you'd never get it right, but then you don't have a choice and you have to do it, so you do, and then it turns out you are capable of it after all.

This happens to me from time to time. Usually with something (very simple) around the house---like, there will be some table or something from IKEA that needs to be put together, and I think "I better wait for Sam to do this." But then I'll get tired of waiting, so I'll just buckle down and read the instructions and do it, and it turns out I can do it. And I'm always so amazed at myself. (I don't know why---I suppose they do, theoretically, make their instructions so anyone, literate or not, can follow them. But I still feel like I'm impressive for figuring them out.) Or it also happens when Sam and I do a project together that we've never done before.

It was that way last summer when we had to lay sod. Or a couple summers before that when we were installing outdoor lights or building garden beds or staining the deck. Every time, the task seemed so intimidating before we started it, but once we did it, we felt so proud of ourselves. And all those jobs ended up being fun, oddly enough.

(And it occurs to me: Is this how one becomes an adult? An all-knowing, capable-of-anything adult, like my parents always seemed to be? Just little by little, one new skill at a time?)

So, lately the project has been dripline for the garden beds. We hired a company to bring in topsoil for us and put in the sprinklers/valves, but then we raked out the dirt and laid the sod and built up some raised beds last summer, and the last few weeks we've been laying out the dripline and planting the plants. I think our landscaping guys were supposed to do the dripline as well as the sprinklers, but it just didn't seem worth fighting to get them to come back and do it, plus they did sort of a half-hearted job on everything else, so we figured we might as well just do it (better) ourselves.

We've been running back and forth to Home Depot for 1/4-inch connectors and pressure-regulating valves and tubing couplers and so forth, and it's amazing how fast something that seems totally foreign to you can suddenly become comprehensible, and even familiar. I didn't even have to ask for help on the last trip I made, alone, to the hardware store (very rare occurrence). So, if anyone else is installing dripline this summer, I am now available for consultation. :)

Next project: finish the basement. Hmm. That one really may be beyond our capabilities. But, I bet if we could find someone to show us a few things, we could do a lot of it ourselves. I'd be willing to give it a shot, anyway.