a Little Golden lesson Book

Lest you think that I do nothing but sit around on the computer all day, I will tell you how wrong you are.
Remember the story, The Little Red Hen?  You know, one of those Little Golden Books that you could pick up at the grocery store or at Bel Aire Drug for 19 cents?  Mine had the cover pictured above.  Later when I bought the story for Nathan, I think the cover had changed, but the story inside was the same of course.  My mom read it to me and Gary and I read it to Nathan and Forrest.

I am having Little Red Hen complex these days.  Lets face it, for the 37 years I was married to Gary, I didn't have to do much.  Need something built? Gary will do it.  Need a jar opened? Gary will do it.  Put a suitcase on the top shelf? Get a suitcase down from the top shelf?  We don't need to drag out no stinkin' step stool!  We wait until Gary gets home to do it for me then he could go on to fix the fan, or the toilet or figure out what was wrong with the sprinkler timer and garage door opener.

Hah!  I just thought of something that he did not fix:  Back in our first house, we had a worthless Eureka vacuum that had sucked up its last fuzzball.  I knew we needed to buy a new one. But Gary just knew he could fix it and messed with it for 2 days.  He got so enraged at the thing when he could not make it work, he opened the door to the lower basement of the 4 level house and pitched the vacuum to its death.  I thought, I'll be damned if I'm going to pick that thing up, HE can sweep up that broken plastic and metal carcass.
Days went by, until I caved in and did finally load the thing into the garbage can.  I went out and bought a Hoover to clean our (by then) very dirty carpets.

The well known story of The Little Red Hen casts a barnyard full of lazy ass animals who love to sit around all day talking and waiting for their meals to be delivered to them.  We all know how industrious chickens are, so we identify with Hen rather than Pig or Horse. Hen wants to make bread but there are so many steps involved, she asks for help in the jobs to cut the wheat, grind it into flour and make the dough into bread. After hearing "Not I" when asking each individual colleague to assist her, Hen says, "Then I'll do it mySELF."  And she did.
The predictable outcome occurs when the finished loaf of bread lies in the kitchen sending luscious smelling wafts out the window to the noses of the barnyard deadbeats. "Who wants to help me EAT the bread?" Hen asks.  "I DO!!" they all say to a one.  Her response, "NO, I will eat it mySELF!"  And she did.

When I have come to an impasse on getting this house done, I am trying to think like a normal person, sans Gary, about how I can do it.  I need the cabinets refinished.  I need to tile a backsplash, I need to refinish the vanites, landscape the backyard. I need to replace electrical outlets, put up drapery rods yadda yadda.
Most people would call a handyman.
I have called 4.  One says he would come back and do it in December.  X -'not I'
One says he would refinish the cabinets for $1500, this price even after I told him I already have the paint kit to do it, and I can BUY NEW cabinets for that ridiculous price!    X -'not I'
Another guy came, he saw, and he said he'd call me the next day...     ???   X -'not I'

Over the course of the last month, I decided, "Then I will do it myself" And I did.  A lot of it anyway.  I did the landscape layout by hauling and moving rock to form borders and a creekbed. In the course of this job, I had to refill the tires on the yard wagon.  For the first time, I found the tire chuck to put on the hose, attach it to Gary's compressor and put air in tires at home--mySELF.  After watching a youtube video,  I did the outlets all except one which the neighbor guy helped with.  Without help, I chose and bought the glass tile, the grout and the edging for the backsplash.  I can do this job except for making the miter cuts on the Schluter edging.
I just finished the 2nd coat of paint on the master bathroom vanity. I will rehang the doors on it tomorrow.

A guy is coming Tuesday to do the kitchen refinishing for $500.  More than what Gary would have been comfortable with, but he is not here so...  This guy will also cut the Schluter miters for me so I can get the backsplash done.

I now know I can do more than what I used to do, and part of it is that I actually learned HOW to do this stuff by sitting on my butt while watching Gary over the years.  I just never had to DO it myself.

In the end, the fresh warm bread that the little red hen made tasted so much better than if she had all the others do the work to make it for her.

Maybe I will have to make bread when the house is done.  I think I will buy the frozen dough though...