Home Improvement

My husband, Matt, has been working diligently around the house the last four days. Mowing the lawn, trimming, grouting the new tile floor in the master bathroom, putting down new moulding around the floor in the bathroom. All this work in anticipation of listing our house with a realtor.

Matt is very handy with tools (one of the talents that Mama said a man should have). He is also very willing to try most any home improvement project. Everything that he has done at our house(s) so far has turned out really great, both in quality and in how it looks.

Whenever I see Matt working around the house (especially so successfully), I have to compare his abilities to my father's. Home improvement was not his forte. I can understand why -- he wasn't taught home improvement growing up. I don't remember my Grandfather ever attempting to fix a leaky faucet or unstop a toilet--his talents were elsewhere.

With my father, I vividly remember the time the back door lock jammed -- the time I like to call "The Christmas Eve Door Incident".

Obviously, the back door lock jammed. I don't remember how long the lock had been broken, but apparently it hadn't bothered Tom until Christmas Eve. Quite possibly, he was trying to sneak out to his car to gather Christmas presents (just recently purchased, I'm sure).

Thus, when the back door lock interfered with Tom's plans, Tom decided to "fix" the lock. We're not sure what Tom did, but a jammed lock ended up being a back door flung into the back yard. On Christmas Eve. In a small town where all stores close early on Christmas Eve and do not open again until the day after Christmas. In the mountains of North Carolina, where it tends to get cold in December. You get the drift that this wasn't the most convenient time to have your back door in the middle of the back yard.

This ended Tom's ventures in home improvement -- to our relief. I have to admit that one of the (many) reasons that I fell in love with Matt was his ability to fix things. I know with him that the cold air will never come in.