If You Hire a Good Handyman

If you hire a good handyman, he's going to come over to see your project and give you a quote. You're going to have to wait six weeks because that's how far out he's booked. He has lots of good referrals so you decide to schedule in his next opening despite being a month and a half away. But that's ok because it'll give you time to order the doors and pick them up.

After 4 weeks of back and forth with the store, your doors are ready for pickup. You rent a Uhaul because you don't own a truck and then you and your spouse load the doors onto a hand truck and wheel them through the backyard to the patio. You're very proud of your hard work, and even your toddler says, "Those are the doors Mommy and Daddy carefully moved out of the big van" without you ever teaching her.

The doors we moved all the way to the back by ourselves.

When the day arrives for your new doors to be installed, he will start to uninstall the first existing door and frame carefully. You ask him to be careful with the trim because you want to reuse it if possible. He does a great job removing the door and frame. Unfortunately, you didn't measure the door correctly, and he forgot to check as an oversight. So your door is 4 inches too wide. 

Panicked, you call the store, ask them if they have the correct sized door in stock. They in fact do have two on hand, so the handyman graciously offers to drive the doors back to the store to do an exchange for the properly sized doors. 

An hour later, your husband and the handyman return with the properly sized doors. He continues to install the first door and finishes it at the end of day one.

The next day, he installs the second patio door, which goes much smoother than the first one. He puts all the trim he removed back on and caulks around the edges. You can hardly tell it's been redone. When he's all finished and done, he gives you the final bill and didn't even charge you extra for the trip to the store. In passing conversation, you also learn he is now booking jobs 3 months out. 

He leaves, you clean up, and you proceed to paint the door, inside and out. Except you overlooked the weather conditions and realized you painted with oil paint on a cold, wet day. So the edges don't dry properly and were partially ruined.

At least the inside paint looks great. 

However, painting is really not that big of a deal to you, , and since you're doing it yourself anyway, you decide you will fix it later in the summer once the temperature rises to unbearably hot again and oil paint can completely dry in a few hours. 

And later in the summer when you finally get around to repainting a second coat on the exterior of the doors, you'll be reminded again of the wonderful handyman who installed these doors and how he was worth the 6 week wait. 

*inspired by If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff *

If You Hire A Bad Handyman

If you hire a bad handyman, he's going to show up to your house guns blazing and start cutting and drilling. As he starts cutting and drilling haphazardly, he will miscalculate, and rather than cut a nice circular hole in the ceiling, he's going to cut a few circles because he encountered some ceiling rafters. Since he had to cut a few circles, he needs to patch the drywall around the hole. 

As you realize how unprofessional this handyman is turning out to be, you realize you have to watch his every move and make sure he's doing what he's supposed to do because you seem to actually know more than he does about this project. When he gets on the roof, you get on the roof with him because you want to make sure he installs the vent properly so there's no leaking in the roof. As he starts cutting, he starts making you nervous because you don't think he actually knows what he's doing.

You ask him to watch a YouTube video because you've brought your iPad up on the roof with you. As he watches the YouTube video with you, he realizes the guy in the video is actually doing a good job. And then you teach him another trick you learned from This Old House. And he tells you he likes that trick and he's learned something new. (Oh dear...🤦🏻‍♀️)

And somehow you end up being this handyman's assistant on the roof because you decided to get on the roof with him to keep an eye. And his actual assistant is simply on the grass looking up watching. And because you only remembered to change into tennis shoes and are still wearing non-work pants, the caulking gun he placed on the roof next to you with a tube of tar sealant has leaked out and smeared on the calf of your jeans.

The handyman will tell you they're ruined, and in the moment, you're not too disturbed by ruining $10 Forever 21 jeans. But as the days pass, you'll keep thinking about the pair of cheap, dark wash skinny jeans with tar on them which you actually liked. So you do a quick google search, bust our your bottle of Goo Gone and an old toothbrush, and you scrub that spot. And after the wash, you hang them up to air dry in hopes the stain is gone.

But it's still there. So you change your technique. You place an old piece of fabric inside the jean leg, spray Goo Gone on the outside, place another old piece of fabric on top, and press firmly to blot out that tar as the Goo Gone loosens it. 

And lots of darn brown is starting to bleed onto the rags. So you're hopeful. And as you run it through the wash again and let it air dry a second time, you still see the slightest hint of tar.

But it's better.

So, you might see me wearing my cheap dark wash skinny jeans with a dark stain on the right calf. And if you do, you might ask me what happened. And if you ask me what it is, I'm going to remember that it's roofing tar. I'm going to remember that time we wanted to install a ducted range hood vent, and I'm going to tell you not to hire a bad handyman. 

*Inspired by If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff*

Wildflower Nostalgia

I was walking outside one weekend on a beautiful Texas spring day. I came across a small patch of wildflowers, and suddenly they brought me back to a memory from close to 20 years ago I had long forgotten.

I was in middle school at the time. I had learned how to press flowers, the amateur way, in a book. I had picked some wildflowers, the exact same ones as the photo, placed them inside a tissue, and pressed them in the middle of a thick, heavy book. It was a side profile press. The flowers were on top and the green stems on the bottom. After a few weeks, I took them out and glued them onto a bookmark. On the bookmark, I had written something in pink glitter gel pen. It was for my mother. 

I can't remember if it was Mother's Day or her birthday or another special occasion, but that doesn't matter. I glued the flowers underneath my writing and placed the paper on my dad's desk. I wrote him a note asking him to laminate it at work, and I left a small pile of change next to it. 

He pulled it out of his briefcase a few days later after he got home from work and gave it to me. I punched a hole in the top and ran a ribbon through it. I gave it to my mother as a gift soon after. She liked it, I think. I honestly can't remember the moment of giving it to her. But I know she kept it in her Bible as a bookmark. 

When she died, we put her Bible in the casket. The bookmark was left inside. I don't know what it actually looks like anymore, and I never will. 

I wrote a letter to my mother and left it inside with her. In the letter, I wrote about the big milestones I knew she would miss: graduations. engagements. weddings. grandchildren. Those are the big things. Those are expected. Those are what I could envision and think of as a young teenager.

***

Grief is different so many years later. It doesn't affect me everyday and my life doesn't feel "sad" because of it. I enjoy my children. I enjoy my life. But every now and then, all it takes is a small patch of wildflowers to bring me to tears. 

One-Up

 I was a formula baby. My brother nursed some (or maybe a year) from what I've been told, but I grew up on formula. Supposedly, my mother said it hurt too much the first time and she didn't want to do it again with me. I don't blame her. It's not the most pleasant feeling. 

Later as I got older, she'd second guess herself and wonder if I would have been taller had I been breastfed. Of course it would not have mattered because the genetics were already in my DNA. Breastmilk wasn't going to change that. I was just destined to be one of the shorter females in my family. 

When my oldest was born, I tried nursing her. I don't think she got very much. She screamed a lot at the hospital. Even the nurses found it a little strange. So they offered alternative feeding options, we asked for formula, and that's what my daughter drank for the first two weeks while my supply was coming in. By about two weeks, I could produce enough to feed her. Unfortunately, I didn't get to nurse her. I tried for a week or so. She would scream and cry and being a new mom, I did not want to deal with that solely for the purpose of nursing. So I exclusively pumped for her. 

It's not a glamorous job when you exclusively pump and stay at home with your child. I remember coming home from playing piano for my dad's choir, feeding her with a bottle because she was hungry, pumping because I needed to, and feeling starved because I was hungry and there were too many things to do and not enough time or hands to do it. On another occasion, I had scheduled two lessons with merely a 30 minute break in-between. During that 30 minutes, I had my pump on the kitchen counter and cooked dinner simultaneously because I hadn't had time earlier in the day. This was not something I ever wanted to have to re-live. 

It's a huge sacrifice to choose to exclusively pump when you can't or choose not to nurse. 

I fed my daughter expressed milk until about two weeks before her first birthday. That was when I ran out. We went back to formula for the remainder of the days before she turned one and switched to cow's milk. 

When my youngest was born, I tried nursing him. He seemed fine. He slept a lot at the hospital. It was quiet. He would just nurse for 5 minutes and fall asleep. I wasn't sure if he was getting enough, but he seemed to be okay. About 4-5 days after he was born, I started getting nervous at how yellow he looked. It wasn't extreme and the pediatrician even told me he wasn't worried, but it was past my comfort level. So I started to pump again and bottle feed. He could drink 3 oz in a bottle no problem so I knew he wasn't getting enough nursing. That's when I again, reluctantly, chose to exclusively pump for my second child. 

I produced about twice as much milk with my second child than with my first. It was a wonderful problem, but it took up a lot of our freezer space. I had practically an entire chest freezer and garage refrigerator freezer dedicated to storing milk. Truly, a wonderful problem. I didn't have to pump while cooking dinner, and for the most part, I was able to keep my hunger at bay when I needed to without reaching famished levels. It was a much better pumping experience overall. 

I stopped pumping shortly after 2021 started. I had taken on more students in my teaching schedule, my husband's work was getting busier, and I was ready to get my life back. I had more than enough milk to feed my son until his first birthday so I was willing to stop early. He turned one a few weeks ago, and we still have a couple months worth of saved milk to go through.

I'm glad my son got to be exclusively breastfed for an entire year. He's the second child, and oftentimes he is treated like the second child, so I'm glad I was able to do this for him. And I didn't want to have the same doubts my mother did, so I tried my hardest to make sure I'd never second guess myself in the future. That's why I kept pumping for as long as I did. And I understand breast pumps were not readily available or covered by insurance 30 years ago. Would that have made a difference in my mother's decisions? Maybe, but I'll never know for sure. And it doesn't matter. I'm not angry with her and I don't resent her decisions regarding how she fed me for the first year. 

But I did one-up her. And I think she would be okay with that. 💕