Hit Where I Stand At the Turning of the Years -Sunday, February 08, 2004 -4:52 am-
I'm getting to an age where I'm realizing what good parents I actually have. The downside to this is that I feel like guilty for being such a prick to them for a few years in the middle there. I feel worst about how I was mean to my stepfather because he really is a nice person and he was doing an amazing job considering the difference between how he was raised and how my mom raised me. I'm sure I'll write about this general topic again, but tonight I'm mostly thinking about my dad. There's so much I'm realizing I owe him for. Some of this has been brought on by my own introspection, and some of it by Ann. I few months ago, she commented that one of the reasons she finds me so interesting is that I can actually do things. It took a while for that to actually sink in, but she's right. My dad always had me in the shop with him, or holding the flashlight, or handing him tools as he worked. Heh, there was also this 1940's Popular Mechanics Encyclopaedia of Tools and Uses or something like that that I read through all twelve volumes of while I sat and waited for him to be done with the grinder. While at the time I was mostly glad just to be around him, now, I can't believe what and advantage that has been for me. I watched him do things for himself and watched him figure out the things he'd never done before. Somehow, all of that managed to instill in me a belief that I can learn and do anything. This has be invaluable living on my own. The amount of things that I have fixed, repaired, or replaced in my apartments would keep the maintenance people busy for a month. The other benefit is that I feel... worthwhile when I do something constructive with my hands. Quite a long time ago the little end table I use to put my laptop on broke a leg. It set around for far too long before I fixed it this week. It was really an easy fix, all that was necessary was for it to be taken apart, the mating surfaces on the leg chiseled clean of wood splinters and glue and then it had to be glued and screwed back together. The operation took less than 15 minutes (plus 24 hours curing time for the glue), yet I felt as if I had accomplished more that night than I had in the months previous. I feel the same way about my dining room table, which I made with my dad. I'm often depressed, sometimes severely so, because I don't feel like I'm doing anything, I'm not bringing anything into the world no matter how much I do with the computer or at school. 15 minutes of furniture repair is enough to keep me happy for 2 days. Anyway, I've lost the point of whatever it was I was talking about, so I'm headed to bed.
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