Opposites

e: "want to do a little electrical work for me?"
me: "no"

e: (thinks I'm kidding.) gets out strange tools, walks over to where wires are sticking out of the wall in the basement, looks back and is surprised I'm not following him. "come on, I'll show you how."

I walk over and take my time getting comfortable sitting on an exercise ball while he starts explaining things. blah blah strip it like this blah blah hot wire is black blah blah turn it here

me: "what if I do it wrong, electrocute myself and set the whole house on fire?"
e: points to another, bigger wire in the ceiling "it's disconnected so you can't"

me: pretty comfortable on my seat and afraid of what other worse odd jobs might be waiting in the workshop. "ok." strip this, twist that, tighten that. wait - black is hot or white is hot? shouldn't red be hot? I shout to confirm 'hot' color - black. right. done and done.

e: "this looks pretty good, but ..." ok I messed up one small thing about the wire going in the direction of the screw that in my defense he hadn't even explained.

me: finish screwing the socket to the wall and the face plate to the socket and the result was, well, Picasso-esque.

e: undoes and redoes what I just did, but it still looks Picasso-esque. he shrugs and says "come on, I'll show you where this stuff goes. THESE go in the tool belt. THESE go in this drawer with pliers, THIS drawer is full of..."

At that point my head starts buzzing and I start to panic wondering what in the hell I would ever be using these tools for. I've made it 39 years without them, couldn't I hold out a little longer? I hate to be a girly-girl, but... but...
Actually I'm not even a girly-girl - I don't really cook or sew or hot-glue fringe onto lampshades.

Now that I can install a socket (well, as long as the power is off), maybe the sky is the limit. I managed to master the snowblower - I'm tempted to take a picture of today's effort - beautiful, symmetrical - I think I will put orange cones at the base of the driveway so no one parks on it and messes it up.

Maybe I'll soon be complaining about all the tools missing from that massive multi-drawer tool chest. or maybe not. can't tell yet.