My Own Worst Enemy

I have a tendency to make life more difficult for myself.  This is ironic on all sorts of levels; it's not as if I don't face enough challenges in a regular week.  Case in point: two weeks ago, on a Tuesday afternoon when JT had a good hour of homework ahead of him, I decided this was the day when I could no longer deal with the loose leg on my table.  That day, I'd had enough of the creaking.

So, I upended the table in an effort to make the repairs.  And one tightened leg led to another.  And another. And another.  Pretty soon, what I had hoped would be a 10 minute chore was now an hour long event.  At one point, sitting on the floor in my work clothes, I announced that I was uncomfortable.  JT looked at me, and calmly suggested that I go upstairs and change clothes.

From the moths of babes and all that......

Before the repairs were completed, I succeeded in damaging one of the corners of the table; for a bit I feared that I had completely broken the piece where the leg attaches.  I called my father for help.....he lives 2000 miles away, of course, and could only offer long-distance phone advice.  It says a great deal about how well he knows me that rather than suggest that I was incredibly stupid to have undertaken this project in the first place, he instead suggested solutions.

One of those solutions worked and the table was ready to be righted.  For this task, I had the good sense to realize that I needed another adult, so I recruited my handy next door neighbor.  And a few hours after I started the chaos, we were back in business.

I've thought about this afternoon a great deal since it happened.  I've thought about the ways that I make my life harder than it needs to be.  I wouldn't say that I've learned my lesson.  But after 42 years of living this way, at least I'm thinking about things.  I'm going to call that progress.