The Lost Art of Being a Man

Our decades-old oven stopped working this week, so I had a nice little repair man zip on out to fix it. Thankfully, it only needed a new igniter, which is a pretty common problem and easy to fix. I was so delighted to hear that, seeing as how the new Premium Outlets opened down the road from us today, and I had earmarked the cash for that.

Unfortunately, I forgot to explain that to the nice little repair man, for he apparently replaced our faulty igniter with a platinum one, seeing as how this 15 minute job ended up costing $175.

I've now vowed to make sure my son AND daughter know how to fix any and all things around the house, so as to never fall victim to over-priced handy-men. My grandfather was the quintessential handy-man, much to the delight of my Dad, who would put off household projects until Honey and Pappy came for a visit. Which leaves me with the dilemma of finding someone to actually teach the children how to be handy around the house. I can duct-tape the hell outta a lot of things, but at some point electricity will enter the mix, and we'll all be toast. Shawn isn't much help in that department either, not because he's incapable, but mainly because he's never here. Lucky for him, I had a lazy-ish Dad who forced my sisters and I to mow our acre yard from about the age of 10, so I can at least pull my weight on that end. But I draw the line at toilets. I can barely clean 'em.

Anyway, back to my problem...Uncle Jeff is pretty handy...maybe we'll write something about handy-manism into the guidelines of Godparenting. And just to be fair, we'll get Lalo to teach them both how to embroider. That should be fun.

But for now, I'll just make do with the fact that Jax can at least make the handyman's visit entertaining enough to be worth the mula -- he spent the majority of the time throwing his lunch at the guy.