Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Things My Dad Taught Me

You know what I just did?  I just threw open all of my windows to let in some fresh air.

That doesn't seem like such a momentous occasion that one might need to sit and write about it, huh?  Well, it is.  It is, because, until recently, we had screens on only three windows in the entire house ~ two in the parlour, and one in the dining room.  There was very little in the way of cross-breeze capability at the new homestead.

Ahhhhhh ~ cross-breeze!  I feel it right now as I sit here in front of the sliding door to the patio.  (We broke down and bought a screen door for that a couple of weeks ago.)  So refreshing!  But, I digress. Remember?  That's what I do.

What I came here to write about are the invaluable lessons my dad taught me, which have stuck with me throughout my life.  They include (but are not limited to):

If something needs to be done, do it.
If you don't know how to do it, learn.

Seriously.  I think my dad could probably fix just about anything.  And, if something broke and he didn't know how to fix it, he would go to the library and figure it out.  Now that we are homeowners, we are trying hard to follow in his footsteps.  I'm lucky, because he actually taught me how to do a few things.  Most importantly, he taught that I CAN do things, even if I don't yet know how.

So, when it started to heat up around here, and we got to thinking, "Dang, it sure would be nice to throw open all the windows without letting in flies," I remembered that my dad had made screens for the little blue house we rented when Kaia was born.  We didn't have any screens, and we needed them, so Dad made them.  He showed me how to do it, and he left the splining tool in our toolbox, in case we ever needed it again.  A few years later, when we were renting a different house, the screen door needed to be re-screened.  I remembered what my dad taught me, and I took the screen off it's hinges, re-screened and re-hung it.  That was pretty easy.  This time, we were talking about making screens from scratch (just like my dad did, for the little blue house).

I'll be honest, the first thing I did was look around and sort of half-heartedly price having someone come make screens for us.  I was seeing a lot of "specials" in the $25-35/screen range, with a 10 screen minimum.  That seemed like a lot of money for something I was pretty sure we could do ourselves.  I kind of remembered how to do it...sorta.  I thought.  So, I zipped around online (I would have gone to the library, but the internet is so darned convenient), watched a tutorial or two to refresh my memory, sent links and tutorials to Shane and, a week or so later, we were making screens.  He did most of the work, and he's going to post pics and blog about the whole thing over at The Low Life, so I won't tell you how we did it, just that we did.

We did it.  And now, there is a fresh, cool breeze blowing through our house ~ all because, when I was a little girl, my daddy taught me one of the most important lessons of my life: I CAN.

EDIT:  Shane explains it all on The Low Life

No comments:

Post a Comment