Books help (not in the ways you may be thinking)

My plan for today was to wake up, do yoga and meditate, then write about the true friends who came for my birthday.  But my street roared awake at 6.23 — drilling, shouting

“I'm weahin' my wife's undawear — it's really comftable,” one workman yelled, garbage trucks. 

And then the handyman who had said he would put the new hinge on my cabinet arrived before I'd accomplished any of it.

I'd been reading stories on our boarding school email chain. My favorite today was about the time someone and 2 accomplices stole 5 gallons of ice cream from the school kitchen and persuaded one of the boys to smuggle it onto the bus to the Boys School and give it to her boyfriend. Even with the help of friends, he was unable to eat it all so they climbed onto the roof and put it on a gutter, planning to finish it later. Unfortunately, it melted and dripped into a master's apartment and the school said that unless the culprits confessed, Dance Weekend would be cancelled. They confessed (as people always did; no one ever turned anyone else in).

Back to the present: Lacking a hinge, for weeks now the door has only stayed closed when a vase is propped under it. But, knowing how in demand those with carpenter skills are, I had told him I would wait to remove the door and bring it to the hardware store for new hinges once he was here cutting the grass and had told me he did indeed have time to do it.

But today he said he did, so I removed the door (which I knew I would never be able to get on again, that's why I wanted to wait) and drove off, with the door. The boy at the hardware store chose hinges he said would work. I came home — and realized that I had left the door at the hardware store. 

I ran to find Bill and tell him what had happened.

“Will you still be here in half an hour?”

He said he would. I apologized for leaving the door behind, saying my absent-mindedness is getting worse with age, and he said, smiling kindly,

“Don't worry, my wife's the same way.”

I drove back, came home, Bill was still cutting the neighbor's grass and Michel, who helps me clean, arrived unexpectedly early too, so we went to tidy the apartment across the hall a neighbor had kindly lent two of my birthday guests. They had left it spotless — all we had to do was put the sheets I had removed (they brought their own) back on the beds.  Michel is a perfectionist — her daughters tease her by moving chairs an inch while she is out of the room and laughing as she compulsively puts them back — and she remained behind doing who knows what (that's why I like her help, she notices things I don't!) while I went to the basement to get wine to give the neighbors.

When I emerged, Bill's truck was gone. The door was still off the cabinet. I tried to call him; no answer. I fumed for a minute or two, then decided to do it myself.  The articles on the Web made it seem very complicated — levelers, guide holes, measuring, planes (whatever they are) to align and fix horizontally, “another pair of hands to hold the door in place”...... I decided to pile books to hold the door level while I screwed in the hinges and hope for the best.

I did open and close the hinges a few times to make sure I understood how they worked and that I was putting them on the right way. And I put the centers exactly where the old hinge centers had been.

As with many domestic projects, you don't need two people. The books and my knee held the door in place while one hand held a screw and the other the electric drill. There is no doubt that putting screws in with an electric drill is satisfying. And it was even more satisfying that the books (the Little House books on one side, Swallows & Amazons on the other) and I got the job done.

True, our work wasn't perfect — but the door opens and closes now, and if anyone with carpentry skills ever does show up (that'll be the day!), he can do it over. For now, this is good enough. And as a child on Coll said when he and 2 friends had assembled a wheelbarrow for me,

“I'm surprised we had the skill set to do that.” So I am — about me, not those kids.

Door staying up, even without my allies the books. And yes, it all needs repainting but that can wait!