Ms. Fix it

I like to consider myself as a handywoman of sorts. Maybe not in the league of I-can-fix-damn-near-everything sorts but somewhere near the types who know their way around the plungers and know how to get the car at least towed to the mechanic when at a complete loss which is all the time . I blame my handywoman impairedness to my genes and the environment I was raised in. The most handy deed I have done as a child was perhaps to climb up the roof with the rest of my cousins trying to valiantly hold the antenna in various positions while my dad and bro co-ordinated a big plan of fixing the blurred picture of our antique television. The most exciting part of that for me was a chance to exhibit my Neanderthal skills by out climbing my cousins the fastest to the roof. Apart from those exciting times I pretty much spent all my life in a nice well maintained residential colony where my dad was in some position to pick up the phone and call the maintenance man who was a big guy with a very impressive moustache and a big hearty laughter called "Meese (meaning moustache in Kannada) mama".

Every small leak and a spurt or a squeak in our house we just picked up the phone and called the moustache mama and he would smilingly arrive massaging his treasured moustache which he reportedly tended with most TLC and daily olive oil massages. What's more I was also his favorite in the colony and being a puny little creature I was eons ago which bear absolutely no resemblance to the present me in the weight department whatsoever he was a wee bit protective about me and I always always used it to my advantage. Whenever any big kids including my brother and a elder cousin gave me grief all I had to do was raise my voice and threaten to call my bodyguard aka meese mama and after a few episodes of running around the colony drenched in water to save your life with a big hefty guy with scary moustache chasing you around with a stick they quickly learnt their lesson not to mess with me.

My mom sadly is not a handywoman by any standards. She could I tell you courageously crush a cockroach and a spider while I screamed like a banshee and run and hide under the bed at the sight of them but when it came to fixing and being hands on oh boy!was she bad! Till recently also I and my bro had to deal with many a international calls while she was trying to get her head around the new cell phone thingy and not to mention the way she almost drowned the house while trying to try fixing a pipe in the bathroom. You see with all these influences it's a miracle I turned out to be even a wee bit handy myself. Perhaps I should credit it to my dear dad who unfortunately is no more but certainly shook his head in resignation after seeing his daughter try in vain for the nth time to build a school project which looked more like a caricature than an actual house. He had declared that fateful day that his daughter was to become a physician as she had absolutely no talent whatsoever in making her mark literally as a engineer. I followed his advice religiously depending on the likes of meese mama to fix things for me.

But all that changed again after PC Man made an entry into my life. My knight in shining armour turned out to be a super handyman amongst handyman. For our first date the dude actually made me a notebook binder resembling a floppy disk! irrespective of the fact that the act qualified him as a bonafide nerd and some of my girlfriends thought that was geeky as hell I was just giddy by the fact that he actually made it all by himself with his own hands!that never happened in my family people!The last thing I ever made with my own hands were those girl scout paper greeting cards which I was so proud of but no one in the school wanted to buy:(. This guy not only was smart as hell but actually fixed things and made things! he was an alien creature and a handsome looking one too. I thought of all the money I could save not having to hire any electricians,plumbers,mechanics and computer geeks to fix things for me. But alas,little did I know that not only did he do things himself he actually also expected poor old moi to follow the suite in years to come.

So through the years he has been trying in vain to genetically reprogram me to make me a handywoman. It has included various lessons about how to gracefully solve instead of trying to scream at the screen and threaten to dis articulate it with hammer computer glitches and how there were other parts of the car that need to be checked when it stops purring like a cat and has me growling like a tigress shouting obscenities at the maker of the car. I have been taught and retaught how to change a tire and fix a faucet and use the power tools. His confidence in me is unnerving. He still has hopes after I glued myself on the floor trying to fix the bathroom and drilled a hole right through the wall cutting out the cable connection to the entire building for one whole day while trying to hang up a family pic or locked myself out of the house trying to fix the lock. He is my Mr.Miyagi and I'm his karate kid,he is my Obi wan kanobi and I'm Anakin Skywalker and he is my Morpheus and I'm his Neo. What can I say?the guy lives in futilistic futuristic hope.

Lately however my mentor has not been pleased with my progress in the handy-dandy area. Without his supervision I have in his opinion become lazy. Can you believe that?Me,lazy?just because I am obsessed lately with sleep,food and drink 24/7 because I'm constantly deprived of all of them most of the time makes me lazy? *sad,hurt big pout* And all this because I called upon the CAA one day to change my tire and left the railing of the wooden bed unfixed lying around the bedroom for a whole month till he came and made him fix the bed and use the precious time to do very important things like catch up on those tivo episodes of "Canada's worst handyman" and "So you think you can a dance" and pretend dead on sofa .

Trust me I tried. I have trouble following instructions that come with these furniture things. Even though PC Man claims they are supposed to be without words so anyone who even can't read can follow just the pics and assemble them. I have trouble figuring them all out in a 3 dimensional pattern and visualize. Most often I spend hours after hours trying to reassemble the parts because the chair seems to be collapsing onto one side or the table seems totally crooked and don'teven get me started on the cot. The fact that the furniture guys left out a pair of iron bed frames along with the wooden frames just for fun leaving me utterly confused while I tried to diligently fix using them both is my fault?Hmph!

Anyway in spite of all past absymmal diasastrous projects I was determined to prove my handyman prowess to my husband this week. Me and my mom bought a microwave stand and I decided that this will be my DIY and prove my mettle in home maintanence to him. I spent agonizing hours trying to figure out which of the n number of different shapes and sized nails and their accompanying paraphernalia goes to which wooden piece,assembled it all upside down and then ripped them apart and re assembled them while trying to resist the urge to throw them all down the garbage can at one point. Finally after relentless 3 hours of labor mops of sweat,buckets of swears and some fattening potato chips the product was ready to use. All you perfect handywomen and men out there please don't ask me how the doors actually are totally misaligned and why are the door hinges nailed outwards instead of inwards and why is the cart in general bit too dainty on its wheels?oh!by the way they have NO wheels because I forgot to fix them early on and later didn't want to risk it given its delicate position. Anyway it is functional and that's what it matters. See I'm not a bad handywoman. I am a woman and I used my hands and I think that rightfully makes me one handywoman. Now just heave a sigh of relief that I am not a surgeon.