Lately

This morning Derek walked into my craft room – he was on Parker duty – and exclaimed, holding P up: “This is the human form of a toad. He cries, I feed him; he falls asleep with the bottle in his mouth, so I try to lay him down, which causes him to cry again, so I feed him again…and then he calms down and falls asleep once more. He is perfectly content sleeping so long as he is in my arms with the bottle propped in his mouth. I am a human chair.” Ah, to live such a life as we have given to Parker, sounds like paradise.

During this conversation, I was working on the kitchen curtains that I bought the material for months ago. Like many of our project supplies, the fabric has been collecting dust ever since then, patiently put on ‘hold’ until we decide that it is something we want to work on. I had just finished serging some edges and held them up for Derek’s approval. He grinned and said, “they look like a temple dress,” encircling them around himself. “No seriously, look, one size fits all - all you need are some sleeves and you are set!” Oh dear, he keeps me laughing always. Truthfully, though, he is so supportive and tolerant of all my craft projects, which are more often than not wreaking havoc on our house.

Derek is catching the DIY bug himself. For Parker last fall, he built a dresser which doubles as a changing table. I love it – it’s perfect for our needs in little P’s room. And in the basement, he’s putting in a wall that will divide our great room – which was previously so large that we weren’t using it to its full capacity – into a smaller great room and an office space of sorts. We can’t call it a fourth bedroom, (there’s no window in the case of an emergency) but it will likely serve the purpose of playroom for Parker and his toys and the guest room for our occasional visitors.

Also recently on Derek’s DIY resume is the starter for our car. The story goes as follows: Last weekend we made a quick trip to the grocery store for some produce. We came back out to the car on this particularly chilly night and it wouldn’t start. No amount of jumping would help us – it wouldn’t even click in an attempt to run. So we had it towed to a local mechanic (Car-X Auto Service), who confirmed that the starter was dead and that it would cost $550 for a new part ($400 if we wanted it refurbished), and $68 for the labor. In Pittsburgh we had this awesome mechanic who would let us buy our own parts at the local Advanced Auto and bring them in for him to install, thus charging us only for labor. This mechanic in Rochester was not like our Pittsburgh mechanic, but we still decided to call around to get an idea on how much the part in theory should cost. We were shocked to hear that we could purchase it for $130-$160, depending on the store we purchased from and the brand we chose. Now, we are okay with a mark-up on the mechanic’s part, because we get that he has to charge for the convenience of having the part, etc. But FOUR TIMES the price?? You have got to be kidding me. We called the mechanic and tried to reason with him, but all he was willing to do was give us 10% off or match the price of his retail-chain competitors like Midas. Instead, we called a friend of ours who is pretty handy with cars, confirmed that he could help us install it, and just had the car towed home (I don’t think the mechanic was too thrilled with that – I can’t imagine a better insult than to have a tow truck picking up a car from his lot as opposed to dropping one off). So, $140 and a greasy husband later, our car starts again! And in the process he learned one more skill – sweet, can’t beat that.