I took a giant step out of my safe little cocoon of comfort this weekend, also known as my kitchen, and bravely trod on unfamiliar ground.
I crossed the threshold of my husband’s workshop.
It’s a crazy place; that workshop. It’s filled with every tool that you can imagine, at least every tool I could imagine if I was to waste my overactive imagination on imagining such things as tools.
Scattered here, there and everywhere are several saws; big saws, little saws and in-between saws. And in-between all these saws are wrenches and screwdrivers and drills and drill bits and nails and a couple of hammers thrown in for good measure.
Oh and I forgot to mention the wood. There is lots of wood, which is good, I guess, being there are all those saws.
My husband is perched on a stool by his workbench and I carefully make my way through all the sawdust covered woodworking stuff over to him to offer my assistance.
“How can I help?” I ask, hoping he will say, “You can’t! Go back in the house.”
Instead he ignored me, like he does when he says his hearing aids aren’t working.
“Where did I put that pencil?” he muttered. “I can’t believe I can’t find it. I just had it the other day.”
“I can’t believe it either,” I said, demurely.
With Christmas only a few snowstorms and calendar days away my husband has decided he is going to spend more time in the workshop making toys for the grandchildren.
It is a wonderful idea, born of the man’s desire to be a true Santa’s elf and express, in a creative way, loving, unique gifts for the little ones.
Impressive, really!
So where do I come in.
As it so happened Santa’s elf decided he wanted to make the three youngest grandsons these wooden rubber band guns which actually shoot rubber bands.
Did he check with the boys’ mother to see how she felt about such guns?
He did not!
But, regardless, the lumber for the guns has been purchased, but, apparently he needed another little elf in training to lend a hand with the bigger pieces of boards.
“Of course I’ll help,” I said, being foolishly impulsive like I am sometimes.
And so it began.
We hauled out the lumber, cut it to the correct length and set about laying 54 pattern pieces times three onto the lumber for the guns.
Before I knew it, I was completely covered in sawdust and quickly learned that cutting through three pieces of plywood with a skill saw is no easy task.
By the time I had cut only a tiny portion of the patterns out, my back hurt from bending over, my wrist hurt from holding the skill saw and my feet hurt just because. With all these aches and pains, I seemed to be experiencing, I was already tired of playing Santa’s elf’s helper.
“How’s that?” I asked, straightening up with some difficulty and arching my back painfully, hoping for a word of praise, or at the very least, a word of sympathy.
“You’re not sawing very straight,” he said. “And you are pushing the saw. Let the saw do the work for you.”
“When I do that, the saw doesn’t move,” I whined.
In spite of all my moaning and groaning we finally got the pieces all cut out. Now, we have to put the guns together and then, finally, do the hard part and tell the mom what Santa’s helpers have created in that workshop!
Maybe we should have done that first!