Heard you missed us, we're back
After spending the better part of the last three years either being a lump because I was bummed out, or being a lump because I was tired from doing all of the fun stuff I've been doing when I was busy, y'know, not being a grownup, the last month has seen me get back into my garage. I've cleaned it, enough to do stuff in it, and today I built a cat door for the upstairs linen closed the catbox lives in. It wasn't anything fancy -- at least, not yet -- just six pieces of molding and a chunk of plywood. But it's in the upstairs linen closet, the dog made a sad face when she looked at it, and I managed to clean up the garage back to cleaner than it was when I started this little project.
There's something about doing something with my hands, either fixing something that didn't work before, or creating something that didn't exist before, that just gives me some small shred of peace. Dunno why that is. Last week when I fixed the work laptop, same feeling.
While I was building the cat door, I discovered that my grandfather's scroll saw doesn't work. In an immediate sense, that was a bummer, because I could have used it today. But, in a longer-term sense: ...I will enjoy taking it apart, finding out why it doesn't work, and fixing it. It's not particularly fancy. I could probably replace it for, I dunno, $150ish. But right now, it doesn't work, and if I spend an hour taking it apart and putting it back together, that will be an hour that I enjoy life in a way that has been missing too often of late.
There's something about doing something with my hands, either fixing something that didn't work before, or creating something that didn't exist before, that just gives me some small shred of peace. Dunno why that is. Last week when I fixed the work laptop, same feeling.
While I was building the cat door, I discovered that my grandfather's scroll saw doesn't work. In an immediate sense, that was a bummer, because I could have used it today. But, in a longer-term sense: ...I will enjoy taking it apart, finding out why it doesn't work, and fixing it. It's not particularly fancy. I could probably replace it for, I dunno, $150ish. But right now, it doesn't work, and if I spend an hour taking it apart and putting it back together, that will be an hour that I enjoy life in a way that has been missing too often of late.