Dec 24 2007
Tethered No More
I’m not the handiest guy around. Ok, it’s much worse than that. I’m not very handy at all. My dad can fix almost anything, but at the age where he was working on projects around the house and I should have been helping in such a way as to 1) encourage him 2) actually be of some help and 3) learn some of what he knows I was a) swimming b) watching way too much TV and c) just not really wanting to spend time with my dad.
Now I regret that time, but I can’t go back and fix it. My dad and I have a great relationship now, but it took years of growth in my life for me to finally treat him with respect and such. Now we genuinely enjoy being around each other–but he’s in Arizona. Not too much help on the daily household projects.
Thankfully, my wife is patient. She’s willing to wait without nagging at all for most of the things that need to be done around here until I can find someone who knows how to do it to come help.
Occasionally a job comes up that I can do myself. Saturday, I picked up a new cordless phone. The last one broke a couple of weeks ago and it means that Theresa can’t talk on the phone without being tied to the kitchen wall. I asked her–would you like the cordless phone mounted in the kitchen and the corded phone someplace else? She said yes, and I put two screws in the wall (yes, it took three tries to get them spaced properly and in a spot where the phone didn’t jiggle) and now the phone is mounted:
My wife will enjoy having the answering machine a bit closer to life and the charger accessible more easily from where she spends her time.
Oh–and I fixed the picture thing so it’s not so big. On this and the dishwasher post. My wife helped me. She knows HTML. 
Nicely done! As a fellow misunderstood handyman, I salute you.
When it comes to these matters, I like to think of myself as a savantless idiot savant.
It turns out effort is most of the story – except with electrical. Then it’s about .3%