The Ultimate Do it Yerselfer

Every girl needs a man in her life that can just do things. And by do things, I mean fix whatever is broken. It's also good to have a handyman on speed dial that knows 20,001 different uses for both gorilla glue and duct tape. For me, that man is better known as dad. The guy can fix pretty much anything, or at least improvise enough to make it seem like he can do anything.

John can do the basiscs, don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure he can hammer a nail into a board-however he definitely cannot eyeball a perfectly straight cut for a louvered door with a table saw, and my dad can. The man literally works 8 days a week. When you call at 8 on a Saturday or Sunday and he answers, it's weird, so my siblings and I don't usually say Hello. It's more like "What the hell are you doing home?" To which he responds "I live here." Right, we almost forgot.

Being able to visually and spatially accomplish a task is not one of my finer points. In fact, I can't do it at all. Dad used to come home from a job and start babbling about 2x4's and framing sidewalks and pouring 16x22 basements and I would hear the teacher from Charlie Brown start going "Wah wah wha wha whhaa wha wah..."

This brings me to the point. Oma and Opa got Jack a build a pirate boat kit for Christmas. Perfect to start working on before I take the boys to the Pirate Musical this Saturday. Perfect except the very succinct directions started and ended with "Comes with 85 interlocking pieces." and on the sheet the pieces were numbered, just to prove there were really 85 of them. That's it. Of course, my dad came over and started tinkering and built up, took apart when that didn't work, so he did it again and again. He has a lot of patience when it's a project that has nothing to do with his kitchen sink being scrubbed....

And...a few hours later, with the help of a cartoon photo of what the boat looks like in action, he did it. Voila! Feast yer eyes, mateys!


To round out the day, not only can the man build a boat in savant like fashion, he also taught Jack how to use homemade divining rods. "Go get me some wire hangers" he says. Okay....2 wire hangers, and some plier work later, we're out in the front yard figuring out where our water line runs. It totally works too....Just cut them as you see below, bend into little l's, hold loosely and start walking. When you hit the water line they cross.

John did it...it made a believer out of him! Opa totally rocks. The kids loved having him here to build stuff, and Oma here to cook stuff. It was a great way to spend Sunday afternoon.

So, who's your Mr. Fix it?