Putting it together

So I had to put some furniture together and was about to ask my wife to take care of the kids.

"Can you take Sam?" She said.

Sam never liked me using the drill. Ever since we could remember, Sam found blenders and drills intimidating. They were too noisy.

Plus he would get in my way - disrupt my flow. I had a lot of furniture to put together so I can get back home and spend real time with the kids.

As I was finding a way to get out of this burden that was thrust upon me, I recalled another bloke who told me how he often gets his THREE kids to help him out in the yard.

"I can do this." So I told myself. I'll just have to find a way to keep Sam out of my way.

So I set up some toys and some cardboard that Sam would play with. And he got started with rolling a ping pong ball through the Ikea box tunnels. That lasted no more than 2 minutes.

"What you doing daddy?" and "I don't like the drill - it's too noisy!" were met with my

"Uh-uh!" and "Don't touch that!"

Eventually I realised I could not convince him to play with his toys. Sam wanted to play with what  daddy was playing with.

Is it really possible to have the boy "help" me?

It took me some time to find out he was good at finding bits for me.

I'd ask him to get me a short screw, and then 5 more while I got the first one in. And then 8 dowels for the next step. What a champion! He was really useful. And then there were the nails. I'd set up some nails - tap then partially into place so they don't move and they're straight. And then he'd go back and hammer them in for me.

And the drill. I got him to press the button. He didn't like it at first, but I showed him how to make it turn both ways. And then showed him how to drive a screw in. 

At age Three and Five-Sixths, Sam proved to be really useful. As useful as this new drill I got for my birthday. And Sam was not scared of drills anymore.

So that morning, we finished putting together a wardrobe (80% done from previous day), a bedside table, a study desk and chair.

I'm looking forward to retiring from house DIY and mowing at a ripe age of 40.

Here's to starting

There are so many excuses you can make for not doing what you said you would.

For a long time I chewed over writing a blog.

WHY would any bloke in their right mind (who is not a stay at home dad or a poor writer or unemployed) subject himself to this?

Here are all the reasons to NOT BLOG:

1. It takes time. Time that a father of 2 boys does not have in great abundance.
2. It takes commitment. I'm an ideas man, I start, get bored and I stop. Cricket, rowing, kung fu, guitar, dancing, investing... you get the picture.
3. I'd rather go to sleep, read a book, go cave or play with my wife.
4. I sit at a desk all day staring at a screen and that screws up my back enough already.
5. You can go and have a good yarn to whoever you want to talk to!

Here are all the reasons TO BLOG:

1. I feel like I'm connecting with someone out there
2. To tell someone helps you reflect and collect your thoughts
3. I have a crappy memory and it helps me remember things
4. Writing helps me break out being brief and unintelligible (typical traits of an engineer so I've been told)
5. To be able to go back on it some time later and say - hey, I've made progress on writing and opening up
6. There must be other blokes out there who can't sleep, sick of books, who does not actually have a physical man cave yet and his wife does not want to play with him that night.
7. There are blokes who don't want to open up and talk about stuff - may be they need to see someone else have a go first.

And that's why. 

So cheer to my mate at work, the Pope for getting me on this one, Challenge #2: start a blog.