Handy, Part I of II

Human ingenuity to solve problems is astonishing.  Thank goodness for professional problem-solvers, i.e. repairpeople.

However at times, it can be very useful for us women to use our feminine resourcefulness to find new solutions that may not occur to an expert.

How many times have you just needed someone to zip the back of your dress or fasten the clasp on your bracelet? You know, the times when you can only zip your dress half-way up your back, then have to flop on your bed on your stomach, trying not to get your newly applied make-up all over your bedding, while resorting to some serious Cirque du Soleil moves to get it zipped?

And finding that exercise ineffective, you throw a jacket over your dress and call your girlfriend to meet you outside the party to zip it up the rest of the way.

Or you run around in circles like a dog chasing its tail, trying to get the upper hand on your bracelet clasp - before you give in and throw your bracelet in your purse to ask the same friend at your destination to help you with it.

These things are relatively minor compared to the crack in the wall you need to spackle and paint, the door that won’t shut properly or the jammed eject mechanism in your CD player.  The things your mother used to “wait ‘til your father gets home,” so he could handle them.  The handiwork.

The messy, sticky, wedged-in inconveniences that only occur within 48 hours of getting a mani-pedi.

As women in our twenties or thirties who may live alone, in these situations we have three choices: we can try to handle them ourselves, we can call our friends and relatives nearby or we can open the yellow pages and try our luck with a professional repairperson.

Let’s be honest – how likely is it a questionable repairperson would quote the men in our lives one price while quoting us a much higher price? And that repair would require pricey follow-up service if they don’t have to replace the whole darn thing altogether.

If the problem is something highly technical that the cost in hiring a professional far offsets the opportunity cost for the time it would take to learn how to fix it ourselves – or the item needing repair is far too dangerous to trust to anyone who is not properly trained, e.g. a gas leak on our stove, I suggest calling a repairperson.

In almost any other situation, especially those in which experts are not readily available, I advocate the first option.  Doing it ourselves.

Case in point is my driveway.  I live on a peculiar little street where everyone’s driveways are clearly delineated from the common territory, but there is a delicate slope from each of our drives down to the street.  I had always believed that each slope was our collective responsibility. Not just mine or anyone else’s.  On the slope in front of my place is a massive pot hole.  It’s about 10 feet down and left of my garage door.  Great.

In the three-plus years I had lived there, it had gotten worse and even my neighbor a few houses up had commented we have to get it fixed.  It damaged her axel each time she drove over it and she drives over it several times each day.  She wanted me to address it right away.  Fair enough.

It is in front of my home, so almost two years ago, I took the leadership and called the Bureau of Street Services to file a pot hole-filling request.

My kind new friend at the Bureau informed me the mayor had started an initiative to repave the whole city and surely my neighborhood was on the list.  We could count on them getting to our pothole within the next four years.

“Um…uh…thank you.  But may I request we expedite our street – not the whole thing, but just the pothole?”

“Uh, yes, Ma’am.  I will…uh…put you on the list.”

“Thank you.  May I have a reference number, so if I call to follow up, your associates can locate my file?”

He kindly gave me a reference number.  I told my neighbor it was in the works.

This did not satisfy her.  When it rained, she regularly manifested her dissatisfaction by speeding up just to drive over the pothole at top velocity and splash whomever or whatever was in splashing distance.  To hell with her axel.

When taking out trash or getting my mail before work, more than once I was just enough within her splash range to absorb most of the water.

The third time or so I happened to receive her baptism by angst, I had to be at work and needed to leave right away.  Wet and peeved.

That day, I placed a call to my dear friends at the Bureau to inquire when we could expect the city team would get around to filling the pothole.

“Yes, Ma’am.  I did not handle your request, but it appears they have made a notation in your file that the area with the pothole is your property.  You have to fill it yourself.”

“Pardon?”

I thanked him and asked for a suggestion, a referral to a pothole-filler, to anyone who knew how to remedy this.

“Miss, you did not hear this from me, but you can buy a patch yourself.  There is a product called Quickrete.  You can buy it at almost any home improvement store.  You just buy the bag, dump it into your pot hole and it’s patched.”

“Seriously?  Is it concrete, or is it asphalt?”

“It’s a patch.  It will look just like the rest of the road.”

“OK…Thank you!”

I diligently wrote it in my book, “Quickrete – home improvement store.” 

 

(To be continued next week…)