I married MacGyver. I did. It’s not just that Chrisanne can take a paper clip and create a National Bank with 4 branches; it’s that she can take a paper clip and design the plans, hire the workers, install new carpeting, and THEN create a National Bank with 4 branches. It’s really frightening.

When I arrived here, the house was pretty well put together. She and Mitchell have been working like Trojans unpacking, hanging pictures, making bookshelves, and getting settled. It’s an awful thing this moving. It’s one of the many times in my life I longed to become Samantha Stevens. A wave of the hands and the house is decorated, unpacked and the fridge loaded. That is not life. That is psychosis. So, there were still a million and a half things left to do. Odds and ends, putting things away, creating more storage space, and cleaning and organizing the bedroom.

I told Chrisanne we needed some more furniture in the bedroom. There was a large shelving unit, a desk, the computer and the bed and two nightstands made out of rattan. I’d rather drop a bowling ball on my big toe than have to look at rattan. I don’t even know what rattan is, but I hate it and I’m not going to look at it. So, off we traipsed looking for new furniture. We took this weekend, and shopped and shopped and finally found some great cherry wood stuff. They were 2 nightstands, and an anwar that you had to take home and put together yourself.

Put together.

We have a back porch, and Mitchell and I set up a small work space for Chrisanne, complete with a light, a heater, and her three (yes three) of her tool chests. She has three. Who has three tool chests?

Chrisanne does, that’s who.

All night long, as I did loads of laundry and picked up excess clothes and boxes in the bedroom and Mitchell made dinner, Chrisanne sawed and wrenched and drilled and banged like Santa’s little helper. Every once in a while we’d hear a small:

“Oh.” this would be followed immediately by a louder: “Damn!” And then a big, long “Jeeeeeeeesus.” afterward.

I wasn’t sure what was going on and I checked on her occasionally, but every time I’d walk out onto the porch, she'd be there, sitting cross legged on the ground with some sort of electrical tool in her hand, covered in dust shaking her fist at a screw. I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t want it explained to me.

I don’t have the building gene. It’s not that I couldn’t do it, I’m sure I could, if I had to. If I was stuck somewhere, and there was nothing around for millions of miles, and it was raining and there were angry sharks headed my way and the wind picked up, I would attempt to build shelter. The deal is: I Don’t Want To. It’s just that I plain don’t care. I don’t want to know how things are put together. That doesn’t interest me. What interests me is that they work when I get them. And when they stop working, someone else needs to fix them. I admire this particular skill; I certainly don’t mean to make fun of it. I’m grateful for it. I think it takes a very specific talent to be handy. I am not handy.

When I lived alone about a million years ago, I lived in a one bedroom apartment above what was then called Christopher Street here in Chicago. My apartment was 3 flights up and situated right in the heart of Gay Town. On Friday and Saturday nights there were more screaming queens below my window than at Elton John’s wedding. I was in my twenties though, so I felt like I was sort hip and happening. This was never true of me. I’ve never been either hip, nor happening. But that’s the way I felt, and it served me at the time.

I wanted a bookcase. I’m not a big reader, but I do read and I like to read, and like any self respecting single gal, I own several books. I decided I was going to build a bookcase. Now, mind you, never in my life had I ever built one single, solitary thing, ever. Never once. But, for some strange, unexplainable reason, I thought of myself as independent, and an adult, and this is what independent adults do.

Like: A Project.

I will have A Project.

This will be fun!

I went down to the Crafty Beaver (shut up) and asked the filthy man with the red apron how exactly to do this. He was very nice, and very dirty, and he actually pointed me toward a bookcase kit. This is one of things where all the wood is pre cut, and the nails and screws and such are already in tiny plastic bags ready for you to bolt them in. Or nail them in. Or whatever it is you do to screws to get them to stay. I bought it, and schlepped it home.

I sat on my living room floor so excited to start my Saturday afternoon project. I put on music, I got into my “work clothes” (I don’t have work clothes. I simply changed into some jeans and a t shirt I didn’t care about. I don’t know who I thought I was fooling), I made some tea and I prepared myself. It was very ritualistic. I almost said a small opening prayer, but I thought that was a bit much. Even for me. I opened the box. The instructions read like a Gertrude Stein Poem:

“The left bolt goes into the left of the left bolt where the left is left.”

What?

I remember reading one line for almost 15 minutes before I even opened a package.

But, I was determined to finish My Project. And it was going to be fun…..dammit.

I didn’t own a hammer. I didn’t own a screw driver. I didn’t own a wrench, and I certainly didn’t own a ruler of any kind. I remember hammering with my shoe, and grabbing a sink towel in order to tighten one of the bolts. I hit myself in the head more times than I care to remember, and I gouged my pinky (which I still have a scar from) with a kitchen knife. Steak knives are for steaks, not for screws. By the time I was finished, I was bloody, beaten and pissed off. The bookcase turned out fine, but I started in the middle of the day, and when I finished it was pitch black outside and I hadn’t eaten.

I hated that damn bookcase.

As a matter of fact, I gave it away the next month. I couldn’t bear to look at it. I went out to Homemakers, bought a brand new one that didn’t come with plastic bags, and had some random 22 year old college student deliver it the next day. We ended up dating for a brief period of time.

I just don’t have the Handy Skill, and I think it’s something you either enjoy doing and are good at, or you hate and never want to discuss. I’m thankful I married MacGyver. Had it been up to me, I’d still be sitting on the porch covered in dust, cursing at a kitchen knife, and sleeping with the delivery boy.