THE TROUBLE WITH TOOLS

Tools. Those strangely shaped mysterious pieces of equipment. They seem to come from some other place that exists far, far away. Sometimes you see people from this place, this male dominated planet, walking around with strange belts on themselves. Slung low on their bodies, weighed down with tools, things that jingle and jangle when they walk, seeming to be held in place by sheer determination. These male creatures walk around, heads held high, dirt and grease on their hands, confident that whatever project they take on will be correctly completely. I look at these males in awe. They seem to know instinctively which tools to use to solve any given problem. Where does such knowledge come from I wonder. Why don't I have that knowledge? Can one acquire this information somehow?

The trouble with tools is that I have no idea how to use them correctly. Whenever I try to do anything with tools bad things happen; holes in the drywall, bleeding, expletives, yelling, broken glass, swearing, cuts, bruises and a general sense of frustration. And more importantly long, extensive spans of time.

My idea of measuring goes like this: first I struggle clumsily with the tape measure, my arms aren't long enough, or I'm not tall enough to hold it in place, it slips and slides and eventually I arrive at the determination that item in question is say...15 inches and...a little bit.

I hate home improvement projects. You return from the home improvement store full of pride because you actually found the gizmo you were looking for. You walk through the door all excited and feeling productive because you're getting things done. All you want to do is change the knobs on the TV armoire. That should be a cinch right? Just unscrew the old ones and screw in the new. Simple

No, it doesn't go that way. At all. First, the span of time has created some kind of vacuum and even the hand drill is unable to pull the screw out. Then you try to jimmy it the knob off the drawer with a screwdriver chipping the wood in the process. After 45 minutes you finally get the knob off only to find that someone took a short cut when staining the wood, stained it with the knobs on, so the area under the knobs is unstained and the new knobs don't cover this mistake. So, if you really want the TV armoire to look good, you now have to stain the area. So, 3 hours to change 4 drawer knobs and although they are in place, the project is not complete. Grrr.