Nothing In It; Being the blog of Elliott C. 'Eeyore' Evans (hosted at his domain 'ee0r.com')

This post is titled:

Me Am Grownup

Sharon and I visited my family this past weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday. Usually when you go back to your childhood home, it's difficult to maintain the feeling of adulthood you have in you own home and day-to-day life. This weekend, the day after Thanksgiving, I got to help my father with some home improvement and feel like a grown up partner in the endeavor.

He wanted to replace the fold-out wooden stairs to the attic with some new metal stairs. In theory, taking out the old stairs and putting in the new ones are something either of us could have done individually, but in reality there are some tricky bits that make a it a two person job.

We managed to get the old stairs torn out and mostly broken down, and the new steps installed and fully operational, in just one day. He had thought it would only take a few hours, but my estimate of a full day's work was more accurate. We had no injuries, and no fights, even when I managed to break a fairly important fastener. I broke another fastener, too, but it wasn't an important one.

Anyway, if we'd had more time I would have been able to help breaking down the rest of the old stairs for the trash and putting up new molding around the opening. He can handle it now that all the heaving lifting is done, but it would have felt even better to help complete the clean up.

It felt good to work on something as a team with my dad. When I was young, he was always taking care of odd jobs around the house, and I was always a little too clumsy to be trusted around anything important with a hammer. It feels really good to know that I've grown up enough to help get important things done.

Hopefully, the whole thing doesn't fall apart, tearing down the house around my parents' ears.

2009.11.30 at 12:00am EST



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