The World's Handiest Wife

I have the world's handiest wife.  A little known fact about me (and by little known, I mean widely known) is that I'm not very handy at all.  I would much rather pay someone to do odd jobs than have to do it myself.  Luckily, Robyn is much more handy.

She decided she wanted to build some shelves for our food storage in our basement.  She did about 98% of the work, but she did rope me in to going to the store with her, doing math to figure out how much wood we need, and transporting the wood from the store to the basement.  (I can totally do math, and I can totally carry stuff, so it didn't violate my principles.)

Oh yeah, I forgot that I had one more job.  I was assigned the job of documenting her amazing work.

Putting the angle brackets on the wall.

The same activity but with the photographer inside the wall.

Some completed shelves.

Completed shelves with food on them.

She looks like she's afraid of the shelves, she's actually trying to demonstrate that she can hang on them without them falling apart.

This is what Robyn looks like when she's really proud of herself.

The moral of the story is that my wife is more handy than your wife.

Changing a Lightbulb is Hard

Before you get too far into this, you should know that I'm well aware that I'm not handy.

But the following story possibly takes it to a new level.

Robyn's brake light on her car went out.  This means that she needed a light bulb replaced.  One would think that replacing a light bulb would be a fairly simple process.  It probably is fairly simple for most people.  But Robyn didn't enlist most people to assist her.  Robyn enlisted me.

Taking a light bulb out and replacing it with a different light bulb is fairly simple.  The problem with this particular light bulb is that you have to take apart the whole light assembly in order to access the light bulb.  Then you have to put it back together again.  Do you see where some level of handiness is necessary?

It started out fairly simple, I unscrewed one screw and that totally worked.

The second screw was where the whole process fell apart.  The head of the screw was stripped so that the screwdriver couldn't grip it.

My knowledge of taking stuff apart consists of 1)Insert screwdriver into screw head and 2) turn screwdriver counter clockwise.  When those 2 steps failed, I was at a loss.  I then spent the next hour trying larger screwdrivers, trying to grip it with a wrench, and other such useless tactics.

Then it occurred to me that being handy is no different from the rest of life's endeavors.  Anything life throws at us can be solved by Google.  (Feel free to cross stitch that last sentence and hang it on your wall.)  Google said to put duct tape on the screw head, and the tape would fill in the gaps.  It totally worked!

In the end, we successfully changed a light bulb.  It only took about an hour.  It was not a success that made me feel confident in my handiness, but it sure increased my confidence in Google.

Aren't you so proud of us?