Me and a little Home Improvement: aka Domesticity & DIY (“Destroy it Yourself”) in Sunnyside, Queens
At certain times, I can concede that there may be some advantages to having a husband around. Any husband will do, be it a dull husband, a philandering husband, an ex-husband with whom one remains on tolerant terms, or even someone else’s husband (borrowed only, of course, with his wife’s tacit acquiescence).
Such wistful notions usually bubble to the top of my feverish brain when I am faced with those tiresomely insurmountable home improvement chores that tend to crop up in an apartment every so often. The successful completion of any household project these days seems to require the use of twenty-five page instruction manuals, hammers, hacksaws, vise grips, crescent wrenches, chisels, screwdrivers, pliers, stud-finders and, most unnerving of all, electric power drills and nail guns. Whereas I am old school, and would like to believe that most jobs can be successfully navigated with a pair of scissors and a roll of sticky tape.
Last summer, I had a panic attack in
Target during a failed attempt to buy a domestic drill. They looked so
deceptively mundane, lying side by side on the DIY shelf like
malevolent orange and black weapons of mass destruction. It didn’t
matter that they weren’t plugged in because Freddie Kreuger’s spirit
was dormant, waiting within all of them.
Like a nervous child on a
pony, I knew that in my shaking, novice hand, even the smallest of
these instruments of death had the potential to feel the fear and erupt
into life. With a deafening roar, the monstrous device would whip me
back and forth through aisles and shopping carts like a spiraling girl
shaped tornado, shattering ceramics, flattening old ladies and causing
toddlers to run crying to their mothers. After smashing me into a stack
of on-sale furniture, its grimly focused mission would conclude by
shooting a rapidly whirring bit into an eye socket, or, worse, boring a
slow hole right through a bronzed (slightly patchy), recently
pedicured and elegantly flip-flopped foot. And so I left the store,
empty-handed.
As a feminist, I’m more than happy to applaud the
achievements of those strangely motivated and ambitious women who sign
up to fight on the front-lines of war, climb Kathmandu, drive
submarines, work dental miracles, steer rockets into space, run
kitchens, or even countries, all by themselves. Go for it, ladies,
especially if it means I don’t have to. But we need to accept that DIY
is man’s work and in my opinion no woman – in particular this woman -
should be let within four feet of a toolbox unsupervised, if at all.
The
evidence can be found in the tortured walls of my apartment, adorned as
they are with earnestly appointed pencil scribbles, crooked paintings,
smudged thumbprints and the multiple miscalculated, mismatched holes
which now blister the pristine pastel paintwork like a form of homely
acne.
Please believe that this damage was not willfully inflicted: the
motivation was simply to make my apartment prettier. For example, last Saturday morning, I arose from my peaceful slumbers determined to
tidy the place: swiffer the floors, kick shoes under the bed, make a
Spanish omelet, shove mail into drawers, spend half an hour leafing
through US Magazine to catch up on the most recent Britney meltdown,
plump cushions and finally, finally, get around to hanging some of the
paintings that have been stacked in my closets for months gathering
dust.
How hard could it be? With that in mind, I took to my
bedroom wall, tongue out, one eye closed, hammer in hand and in less
than five minutes, committed the kind of unintentional desecration that
would make grown men sit down and weep.
It doesn’t help when
the damn nails keep bending and slipping out of the plaster mid strike.
Or when the top of the hammer flies off and hits me on the shoulder
before clattering miserably to the floor. Undaunted, I would persevere
and at last, when the picture hook is clinging somewhat askance to the
wall, I’d realize that it was the wrong size and too light for the
frame. Adjustments would be made, perhaps even an extra nail or two
applied for balance, and the artwork tentatively suspended. I’d take a
step back to observe that it’s far too low and angled at a rather
precarious slant. Nervously, I’d nudge the bottom corner upwards by a
few degrees and make a mental note to close all doors gently to ensure
that it would stay put.
A friend calls, in the midst of these
efforts and when I explain what I am up to she shouts in panic down the
phone: “Stop what you are doing at once! PUT THE HAMMER AWAY!” I look
over at the two enormous mirrors, which have been propped on my floors
since last July (the hanging of which would definitely require a drill
and a small crane) and decide to take a rain check.
Men, of course, tend to approach such tasks with the military precision normally reserved for air strikes against small nations. Where is Jack Bauer when you need him? He would stride into the living room and after surveying the site with a critical eye, deploy an arsenal of measuring tapes, wall maps, PDAs, leveling devices and other such sophisticated, tactical equipment. The end result would be pictures gracing each wall with the perfection of a Soho art gallery. Sadly, Jack is currently serving time in an LA jail for his second DUI offense, so I doubt I can rely on much help from him, at least for the time being.
Defeated, I put the toolbox away and decide to go shopping instead. My revised plan towards domesticity is to stock the fridge with tasty treats for a little supper and wine soiree for the girls later. Within minutes of entering the supermarket, my basket is full of blue cheese, stuffed olives, proscuitto, breadsticks, Camembert, pickles, roast pork, baby carrots, garlic infused hummus, tortilla chips, guacamole and boxes upon boxes of pre-packed organic spinach. Foraging for food in gourmet stores is one of my greatest talents and thankfully the fiscal carnage inflicted on my credit card is a lot more forgiving than the physical damage wreaked on the poor, beleagured walls of my apartment. Stick with what you know, I say.
