Monday, July 30, 2007

My hair

As I leaned my head back into the sink, I airly said, "Don't feel constrained by what the last hairdresser did." The girl smiled, "Don't worry, I know exactly what I'm going to do." I closed my eyes and she started shampooing.

Later, afterwards, I looked in the mirror. I vaguely remembered saying that I wanted a trim and the shape brought back. I tend to wake up one morning and decide that my hair needs cutting. This sudden realization comes after two weeks in which the only thing I can coax my hair to do is a pony-tail. I remember that my hair used to behave and look almost elegant. I could really see about getting it cut.

It turned out that my stylist had left the salon for another one. The new salon was less convenient in every way possible. So I stuck with the old salon and asked to be booked in. When I've decided to have a hair cut, I need a hair cut in the next forty eight hours. I didn't have time to look for a new place.

Last time I had seen the girl who was about to cut my hair, she had still been an apprentice. She had straightened my hair incorrectly. I didn't think it was possible. Now she was waving scissors around my head. My danger alarm needs new batteries. I decided that in the months since I had last come in contact with her, she must have improved, substantially. Nothing warned me for what was about to occur.

I went in with shoulder length hair. When I put my glasses back on, I had chin length hair.

I'm still in shock.

It's the most vicious trim I've ever had.

Last time, a hairdresser hacked off all my hair, I was nine. It was a cut. It was also the last time I've had a bob. I was inconsolable. My mother, trying to stem the flood of tears, told me, "You haven't lived until a hairdresser has ruined your hair." I decided then that I had crossed that one off the list and I was never getting my hair cut again. Ever.

I would get it trimmed, but never cut. It grew and grew and grew. I gave up on the grudge just before my hair reached my waist. It was too heavy. I had it cut. However, my hair remained below my shoulders. It was safe at that length from crazy hairdressers with scissors and stupid ideas.

Over time, I became more adventurous and the shoulder barrier no longer seemed important. I started trusting stylists again and my hair would frequently get cut shorter than my shoulders. It went longer and shorter and different colours. It came in close proximity to my chin and went below the shoulders again.

Last time I went to have it cut, I wanted it cut short. The hairdresser looked at me and said, "You're not ready." I trusted him. He cut it shortish.

Now my hair is short and that trust is broken. I was not ready for this. I didn't ask for this. I asked for a trim. The annoying thing is that so far most people love it. My shock is subsiding and I'm wondering what to do about the new length. I've realised that my mother lied or I've lived twice. I'm being more mature about it this time around. I'm giving it a chance. I'm not hating it right away. I'm going to give it a few weeks. Then I'm going to start encouraging it to grow with a vengeance.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Gremlins

This morning, I had the solid proof that I needed. Gremlins had definitely moved into my apartment.

When I had originally lost my bracelet, I was upset but I put down its disappearance to my carelessness. I knew it was somewhere in the apartment. When I told my mother that it had gone, she put my mind to rest, "You're always losing that bracelet." This is true. I decided then that I could stop pulling my apartment apart and it would show up. I am still waiting for one silver bracelet to reappear on my dresser.

The next item that moved was my salami. I was making lunch and went to grab my meat out of the fridge. It was gone. I rummaged through the fridge and started to panic. I had changed the garbage yesterday, perhaps I had . . . . I stopped myself. There was no way I had thrown out half a pack of lunch meat. Utterly confused, I pulled open various cupboards and looked down the side of counters. Then in desperation, I pulled open the freezer - voila. Salami. I was dumbstruck.

Then the other day, I went to make lunch again. This time tuna. It was the only meat suitable for lunch that I had in the house. There was nothing else. To my horror, I could not locate the can opener. It wasn't in any of the places that it could possibly be. In a last ditch hope, I rang my friend, "Did I take the can opener camping? and more to the point, do you have it?" Only good friends can deal with being accused of stealing your can opener at eight in the morning. She had not seen it. It was and still is gone. I had PB&J for lunch.

My marking pen is still MIA but I haven't checked under all the furniture to see if my cat has quarantined it somewhere. I know she has adopted the bath stopper. It was last seen flying down the sitting room with my cat in hot pursuit.

Then this morning, one of my shirts went missing. Panic-stricken I searched high and low for it. It finally emerged. It was hanging behind one of my dresses on my door. Due to the organized nature of my wardrobe, there is no way it should have ever ended up where it was. (and I am serious, my wardrobe is organised, thanks to forest fires in Australia.)

That's when it came to me, Gremlins. I have been invaded. Perhaps if I'm nice to them, they'll reveal the location of my can opener.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Shirt Making IV

"Ow, owwww." I whipped back my hand yet again. Steam is hot. This steam suddenly whooshes out of the iron and gushes upward towards my hand. Like Henry and the elephant.

Sewing is really two skills. The skill of keeping the machine steady and going in a straight line and the skill of pressing. Pressing is the real key. Clean, crisp seams make all the difference. So once again, I lowered the iron on the fold, determined to get the line of sewing on the edge of the fold. Sewing is strangely precise, a 1/16" out in either direction and you notice it. No one else will, but you will. And forevermore, when you wear the garment, you'll see the mistake.

For the first time, I got to use my clapper. This was rather a let down. Rather than clap the fabric with all the force you can muster, you just press down and slowly drag the clapper down the seam. Between my fire-breathing iron and my clapper, my fabric was soon making folds similar to a piece of paper folded with a nail. This is nerve wracking. If you get the line wrong, you can't get the fold back out.

I soon discovered that shirt making is a one shot deal. The needle pierces the fabric so that ripping out the stitching and redoing it is not an option - the fabric is already punctured and will show the old line. However, cotton is not slippery, so I have been able to dispense with pins. I am trying to avoid using pins as they too mark the fabric.

I had run out of fabric so I bought more tonight. This was fine until I realised that it too had to be washed. Currently, I am stalled until the fabric dries and I can cut out the new pieces. I'm left wondering why yet again I am doing laundry at ridiculous times of the night.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Shirt Making III

"Oh no," I stared at the table in disbelief. They had to be kidding. Normally, when I make a pattern, there is lots of fabric left and I convince myself that I will use the bits to make wonderful other things. This time I could barely fit the pieces on.

"What's wrong?" The voice came down the other end of the phone.

"The pieces won't fit on my fabric," I wailed. This was not good. This never happens. This must be what happens when you a) wash the fabric and b) lengthen the arms.

The voice was concerned, somewhat. "So what are the ramifications of this?"

"Well, I'm going to have to shift the pieces around." I stared glumly down at the layout. There is a reason that cutting out is not fun. Even omitting the fact that tailor tacking follows cutting out.

"So you're not going to have to make a miniature size shirt?"

I wished once again that you could send glares down the phone. Or howlers - this comment deserved a howler by owl post.

"No, it means that I'd better look at the instructions and see how you're supposed to lay it out."

The laughter and derision coming down the phone made me realise once again how fortunate I was in my friends and family.

I changed the topic into more neutral waters and kept playing with the pieces. Then it seemed as though I had finally gotten it, I drew my breath in sharply.

"Did you get it?"

"Um, yes, er, no, wait a second, let me move this a fraction this way, and smooth this one out, um, um, ah-HA! YES! It fits! Oh, this one is off the end, no it doesn't" Suppressed muttering followed.

"That was a wide range of emotions in a very short span of time."

Welcome to the world of tailoring. It's like a theme park, apparently, the more you scream, the more fun you're having.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Shirt Making II

The first thing we were instructed to do was to wash our fabric. I have never done this. It always seemed like too long to wait. Here I was ready to attack the fabric with scissors and you wanted me to wash it. It was not happening. So in my previous sewing life, I happily pinned on the pattern pieces and away I went.

Now, I'm trying not to cut the corners. It will make a better product in the end, I tell myself. The first time, I got up the nerve to throw my three lengths in the washing machine, they were all busy. As I looked incredulously at the machines, I exclaimed, "Who, I mean really, who does their laundry at ten o'clock on a week-night?"

The next night, I went down and there were free machines. I threw the fabric in and after some time, pulled it back out. I brought it back upstairs and started on the painful and long process of ironing it. We will gloss over the fact that I was ironing lengths of cloth past ten o'clock at night and that I finished the job off this morning before 7 this morning. I'm working on a tight schedule.

I am happy to report that I did not burn myself with steam, although the iron was doing it's best. I found out that the best part about ironing the fabric was that you got to know it a lot better. I found a nub on one length that I now know to avoid. I discovered that they all iron relatively easily. And then I discovered that one length would wrinkle if you looked at. One second it was perfect and then you picked it up with kid gloves and it would turn into a nervous wreck and bang, wrinkle city. The thought of handling it to make a shirt fills me with fear.

However, the biggest problem I discovered was when I tried to deal with one of my shirts that I had washed with all the lengths of fabric. Fine enough but do you think I could iron it properly? It's "ironed" but it's not crisp. I have discovered that I am about to embark on a shirt making class and I can't iron the finished product. This is a problem.

Shirt Making I

I am taking a tailored shirt class. This seemed like a good idea at the time. I wear shirts and I sew. How convenient would it be if I made my shirts? I decided it would be very convenient and promptly signed up.

My brother wears shirts. He has a relatively decisive idea on clothing. This makes him a good shopping companion. It's quick. Wide-eye and a shake of the head is no. Pursed lips and a moment of thought normally results in a yes. I tend to try the whole store on. He can limit it down to about two pieces that match before you go anywhere near the changing room. I like to look in every store. He approaches the threshold of the store and then makes a well-informed decision. "I don't think so." So I dragged him off to help me choose fabric and buttons for my shirt.

Afterwards, in a moment of generosity and to thank him for services rendered, I offered to sew him a shirt if the class went well. Ever supportive, he demurred. He hadn't seen any fabric that he had liked. I pursued it, puzzled that he hadn't seen anything he liked. There was one that I was positive he would have liked. What about the light blue one with the light brown check? Yes, he agreed he had liked it but not as a shirt. So I sketched it out for him. Imagine it with jeans. Suddenly he could envision it. Weeeelll, he said, if you're offering.

At our first class, we covered pattern alteration. Darrell emphasised one point that I had missed. Do not make a tailored shirt for free. They are too much work. Charge for them. Charge $150. There was no way my brother was going to pay when I had pushed him into agreeing. He was more likely to back out even faster.

After the class when looking at the fabric, I causally mentioned to another student that I wanted to make this fabric into a shirt for my brother, to wear with jeans. She thought I was joking. "Haha, as if you're going to make a tailored shirt for him to wear with jeans. All that work."

I started to get worried. What had I missed? What was so difficult about making a tailored shirt? I knew there were the fine points to getting it right. Then I realised that there was a lady in the class because she could not get it right. And she had worn a shirt she had made to class. It had looked fine to me.

I was mentioning this to a friend who knows nothing about sewing. His reaction was like everyone elses, "Those have to be a lot of work!" I just glared at him. What did he know anyway?

I'm re-evaluating the convenience factor in making your own shirts and working on the snob factor. I'm determined to figure out how to match the placket. It will be a lot of work, but then, shirts are a lot work, you know.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

"Spare Time"

When I was in school, I tended to have about a gazillion things on the go. Essays, presentations, assignments, however many part-time jobs I was juggling and whatever organizations I had had gotten involved with. Two things happened: I learned the value of lists and I stopped doing my hobbies. Hobbies had to go. There was no time. Hobbies were for the holidays. It took me a year to make a skirt - from the drafting of the pattern to the time I actually put it on and it was good to go.

When I started work, I realised that I had evenings. It was a long time since I had had evenings free. Sometime in grade school, homework enacted a hostile take-over over my free time. I started digging out my old supplies. Sewing was one of the first things to get resurrected. I had lots of free time and there was no need for lists anymore. Lists were for when your brain couldn't cope with everything you had to accomplish and was trying to forget it as quickly as possible.

Within a short space of time, I had finished one dress, started on another, had to mend a shirt by sewing ribbon around it by hand, and signed up for a tailored shirt class and joined a sewing group.

Not realising exactly what else I had going on, I also joined an Ultimate team.

Then my thesis supervisor called me. The end result was that I agreed to help co-author a paper.

Last night at my sewing group, we agreed up on our new challenge for the coming month. One skirt, with three elements.

All of a sudden, I needed lists. I needed a list for what I had to do. I needed a sub-list to list what had to be accomplished with each task. I needed a planner again. I learned many things in school. I learned how to solve an equilibrium model and draw phase diagrams. I learned to read and absorb books quickly, and then rip the author's argument to shreds. I learned how to crank out essays and carry a tonne of books.

But the most important skill I learned was how to panic. I'm good at it. You panic. Then you panic again and then you freak out. You realise that you can not accomplish everything in the time you have to do it. It is not humanly possible. So then you have a total freak out. Then you write a list. And suddenly, it seems almost manageable. Not quite do-able but not worth a total freak out. So you down grade to panic again. You start attacking the list. You cross things off it. Then it hits you that you've finished the least important thing first. Then stress hits, the good kind - the kind that makes you work efficiently and diligently.

Tonight, good stress will kick in. Things will get done. Something will have to give. I'm going to phone in sick. I don't have time for work.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The Tale of Mrs. Tiddy-Winkle

The path ended under a big rock. The grass was short and green, and there were clothes—props cut from bracken stems, with lines of plaited rushes, and a heap of tiny clothes pins—but no pocket-handkerchiefs!

But there was something else—a door! straight into the hill; and inside it some one was singing—

"Lily-white and clean, oh!
With little frills between, oh!
Smooth and hot—red rusty spot
Never here be seen, oh!"



Sunday, July 15, 2007

Calamari

I put my book down, removed the cat from my stomach and got up from the couch. Pausing for a second, I decided I was still queasy and the feeling that a heart attack was eminent in the somewhat distant future remained. I resolved not to dismiss nutrition labels quite so freely in the future.

For dinner, I actually made a real dinner. One that entailed effort and thought and a bit of planning. As always, the planning left a lot to be desired. I have had in my freezer a bag of calamari rings. The only way I know to cook them is to deep fry them. The three necessary elements of defrosting the calamari, having oil on hand and the time to cook it had never coincided until tonight. Idly looking in the freezer, I remembered that I had them and that I had time to waste.

I'm developing a habit of looking at the nutrition labels. Right now, my big concern is sodium. There's a surprising amount of it in a lot of things. I once did not buy premade dinners due the obscene amounts of sodium contained within the tiny package. Since then, I haven't even bothered looking at them.

So I turned the package over and read about calamari. One line made me pause but I decided it couldn't be that bad. I dug out my cast iron pan with the tall sides and started heating up the oil.

If you ever decide to cook calamari rings, it's quite simple. You heat the oil. A simple trick to know if the oil is hot enough is to drop a small lump of butter in it. When it starts bubbling and looking like it is frying, then the oil is hot enough. Of course, using a thermometer is smarter. I did both.

To prepare the calamari, you defrost it. Mix together flour, salt, pepper, and I used a bit of chili powder. Lightly flour the rings and then drop them into the fat. Jump back as the fat will spit. When the rings float and are brown, then they're done. It takes about two minutes. Pull them out. The best way to drain them is on a cooling rack over a baking pan. Sprinkle some salt over them.

I decided while I had the fat going, I'd do fries too. Fries are done when they too float and are brown. I added a salad to the side and dinner was done.

Normally by now I would be tucking into something sweet. The thought of more food makes me feel rather sick.

I should not have disregarded the one line on the nutrion label:
Cholesterol . . . 85% of your daily recommended value.

And I deep fried it too. With fries . . . .

Sea to Shining Sea

I dug through my drawer yet again. Where was it!?! I paused and dig a mental check. Where had I last worn it? When had I last worn it? I was searching for my AllMaple Girl t-shirt. It was red and it said AllMaple on it. It was my most Canadian shirt and I wasn't leaving the house without it. I couldn't leave the house without it. I had to wear the Canadian uniform - jeans, a red t-shirt and a long sleeved white t-shirt. On Canada Day, you have to wear the colours. Ah-ha, I had put it in the other drawer. I pulled it out in triumph and put it on. I was ready to go. I was wearing the colours. Later in the day, I would also wearing the flag but that was much later.

I am the child of immigrants. My family is new enough to Canada that we choose to be here, we choose to believe that life would be better in Canada. Being of the Anglo-Saxon background, the culture shock wasn't as great as for other new Canadians. Other immigrants have a harder time adjusting to life in Canada. We also assume that they have a harder time adjusting. We accept them as Canadians but at the same time, we view them with a slight suspicion. Would they form their own ghettos and refuse to assimilate or would they become like us? We can't define us but we know it when we see it, we think.

Canada Day in Ottawa was packed with people. The city closed down the street in front of the hill and it was packed with people. The patriotism, for Canada, was high. The uniform of jeans with red t-shirts was everywhere. And then I saw her. I stared for a brief second and then a massive grin spread across my face and I continued on, feeling that this was truly Canada. I had spotted a Muslim teenager. Her dress, which came to her wrists and her ankles, was white and her headscarf was a brilliant red. She too was wearing the colours.

I imagined that as I flung clothes all over my room trying to find my red t-shirt, she too had been digging through drawers trying to find her red headscarf. We had both come out to join the throngs and to prove that in wearing the colours and being there, we were proud Canadians. Within the constraints of our own narrow cultures, we had expressed ourselves as Canadian and a desire to be here.

Through-out the day, I spotted others to whom the definition of acceptable or normal clothing differs from my own but who had made an effort to declare themselves to be patriotic Canadians. And in our differences, we had something greater in common. The belief that Canada is a great country and worth believing in. It was worth digging through drawers to find the correct colour combination and taking to the street to stand on guard. No matter the background, we are all Canadian.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Carrot Soup

Soup is an art. In theory, soup is easy. A few ingredients past their prime are thrown in a pot, boiled and then served in a bowl. In practise the right balance of flavours is difficult to achieve so that all the right taste buds are sent tingling as the soup passes over the tongue.

I made soup yesterday and today. Once again, it's not right. I make vegetable soup on a somewhat regular basis. In particular, I make carrot soup. Carrots tend to get to a stage where they are no longer appetizing as carrot sticks but they aren't exactly bad. So they become soup. My soup tends to lack depth.

I have learned that carrots and orange are a pleasant combination. As well as the water, you dump in some orange juice.

I have learned the trick of the potato. A natural thickening agent, if you boil the carrots up with a potato or two, when everything is blended and added back to the pot, you will get a thick creamy soup.

I have learned that you can't leave out the stock. You can try but the soup will definitely lack the necessary depth of flavour.

However, I think the real secret is the bacon. I didn't use bacon this time and it shows. You throw in your butter, onions and a strip of bacon and fry it all up in your soup pot. Then you throw in your other ingredients and the water, boil it and simmer it. Don't forget your stock cube! At this point, I normally get bored so I stop.

The next day I throw it all in the blender, put it back on the stove and try it again. Once again, disappointment. Not quite there. I have the consistency down. My soup is a wonderful consistency, it coats the back of the spoon and feels like proper homemade soup. This is good. The colour is fantastic. Bright orange with pepper bits.

Now the taste . . . today's soup was brought to you by the flavour curry. In principle, I still think this is a good idea. I think with bacon it would be better, it might get the undertone that is lacking. My gut feeling is that carrots might just not have a lot of natural flavour and there is a spice out there that would do the trick.

Soup is an art. One day I will be the master of carrot soup. It's a good job it's healthy. Unlike, the candy recipe, I'm trying next.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Fleeting Coolness

My sixteen year old cousin left this morning. She was staying with me. Before she arrived, I had lots of ideas - I was going to be the cool older cousin. She's an only child so we've adopted each other as the sister we never had. We were going to stay up late, painting our toe nails, eating ice cream and cookies and gossiping. I had told her that within reason, whatever she wanted to do was fair game.

This was before she arrived.

They arrived on Monday straight from England. My aunt and cousin were clearly tired by the time that dinner was finished. My uncle and aunt left for their hotel. I turned and looked at my cousin. She was pale and she was just functioning.

"Right," I said, "bed."

I bundled her into bed in no time flat. I felt like my mother.

She's a fussy eater. I knew this. I had forgotten that she didn't like milk. She announced that she would have water for breakfast with her toast. My brain freaked out. She's young and she's growing. She needed milk. I pulled open the fridge. I had yogurt.

"Right," I said, "do you like yogurt?" I got the daily calcium dose into her. I felt old.

We got ready to meet her parents at the hotel. She pulled out a pair of walking sandals and announced she hadn't worn them yet. I looked at her.

"You've never worn them?" Right," I said, " we're taking band-aids."

Through-out the day, I doled out the band-aids. I wondered when my purse had turned into the carry-the-kitchen-sink-bag that mother's carry.

She bought a pair of shoes. They were skater shoes. They were black with a checkerboard design on the side and pink detailing. She's been looking for ages and ages and ages for just the right pair. I thought they were hideous.

The day flew by and by the time, we arrived back at the apartment, it was time to once again bundle her into bed. In the cool cousin department, I was not doing a good job. I

As we went back to the hotel this morning, I looked at her new skater shoes. "They're growing on me."

"I'm glad," she replied. "I like them so I don't really care what you think."

I smiled.

"When I was your age, I wore green mascara."

She wrinkled her nose, "Ugh."

"I liked it" I took a breath,

we looked at each other and in unison yelled, "and I don't care what you think."

She makes me proud. She's my cool baby cousin.

One day she'll be as uncool as I am. She too will wonder how it happened.

The Blue Tent

My family has two tents. The blue tent and the orange tent. They are both 30+ years old. The orange tent is a big 'ole canvas tent. I grew up knowing that if it rained, you never touched the tent or through that one finger spot, the entire tent would become flooded. These are the tents my father went camping in as a child.

My grandmother hated camping. I'm not too clear on what the actual objection was. I have a feeling that it has something to do with the civilization level. She tried hard and if the stories are true, then the camping expeditions were something else. Rumour has it she managed to bake apple pie on a camp stove. As each child moved out of the house, they were lent the camping cooking equipment until everything was unpacked.

I am the one left holding some of the camping cooking gear. I have the cutlery. It is mixed in with my normal cutlery. No one can tell the difference. That's because it's better than most people's normal cutlery. It's Oneida.

One of my previous roommates lost some of it. I was aghast. "You don't understand, " I wailed. "I"m the first, the first, person to lose some of it. I can't give back an incomplete set. " After countless camping trips and at least three moves, I was the first one to lose spoons and forks. I haven't given it back. I'll give it back when I've completed the set again.

So when some of my friend suggested we go camping, I was apprehensive. I assumed they threw their sleeping bags down on the ground and toughed it out. In the camping spectrum, I wasn't even on the chart for the level of hardcoreness. Then I found out that they had an inflatable mattress, which they inflated via the car. Suddenly I was game, this was no more hardcore than I could deal with.

I rang up my Dad and asked to borrow the blue tent. This was Dad's boyhood tent. He had always felt that my brother and I should have done more backyard camping as children and that we never fully used the tent as we should have. He seemed surprised that I, one of his children, of my own free will wanted to use it. "Talk to your Mum."

The forecast was uncertain but rain was certain. One of my friends was unsure of the waterproofness of my tent. "Are you sure it's waterproof?" she asked full of concern. "I'll ring and ask, " I said, "but no one's ever complained in 30 years so I'm assuming it's good. If there was a problem, I would have heard about it long before now."

So I had a quick conversation with my father.

"Is it water proof Dad?"

"Well, after eight hours of torrential rain it leaks."

I reported back that it was fine.

Later I was talking to my brother who passed on the news that Dad had brought up my camping trip. This was not good news. Things only come up when he's not happy. I held my breath. My brother started telling the story it seemed as though my Dad was worried about all the things Dads get worried about. Mum anticipated the problem and tried to calmed him down, "Don't worry, she'll be responsible."

Dad looked at her in amazement, "huh?" and a pained expression came across his face. They waited for the outbreak, which wasn't long in coming.

"And Kim's friend, oh what's her name . . . "

pause and then a huge intake of air, and then full of indignation, he let it out:

"asked if MY TENT LEAKED!!"

I enjoyed telling him that the same friend had taken a picture of my tent with my camp cot. She said that she had to have a picture as she would never see that type of tent again - it was the type of thing you only saw in musuems.

"Pah." He replied.

"Oh, and it doesn't leak Dad, but things do get a bit damp."



Before it rained.

Monday, July 02, 2007

When muscle isn't enough

I have a power drill. Most of my male friends do not. This tends to make them feel slightly emasculated, as though not only should they have a power drill but they should have a reason to use a power drill. They seem to assume that because I have one, I have a use for it. The fact that I offer it to them freely to borrow also annoys them. You get the feeling they feel that they should be offering to lend me their drill and even more, that they should be offering to come use their power drill on whatever I need done. The problem is that I don't actually have a use for my power drill.

Mine was a Christmas present from my uncle. The males in my family believe that there is a tool for every job. It doesn't matter what sex you are, if you use the wrong tool then that's a travesty. I obviously wasn't going to buy myself a drill so someone had to step up to the plate. So my uncle gave me the drill and all the bits. My father carefully instructed me how to use it and supervised the practise holes.

The drill sat in its box until my father came to visit. I asked him to put a shelf up for me. I got out my drill and its bits. He asked for the screwdriver. He put it up with muscle power. Suddenly, I realised, I had a power drill because I am a weakling. The cool kids don't need drills. I haven't had the heart to explain this to my male friends. I think it would crush what little ego they have left.

Generally, when you want my father for something, you head to the garage where he's lying on his back with his arms in the air under a car. Last week, the weather finally cooled down. I was in a frame of mind to attack my treadle machine. I realised that I could get the metal frame off of the wooden cabinet. The next thing I knew I was lying on my back with my arms in the air going at the screws with a screw driver. My cat was a bit puzzled but decided if this is what we were doing right now, then she'd better get comfortable. So she curled up next to me. I got the first screw out with muscle power. Alright, I can do this. For once in my life, I can be a cool kid. The next one wouldn't budge. I should have known my coolness wouldn't last. I attacked them all in turn. Some would move, some wouldn't.

I decided it was time for the big guns. I got out the extension cord and the drill. I dropped the extension cord down with a thud and plugged it in for the extra two feet of cord I needed. I started to feel a bit ridiculous. Back on my back with my arms up in the air, a la mechanic, I held down the trigger. The motor whirled and nothing happened, and then the screw started to turn and out it came. One by one, they all came out via a mixture of drill assisted by screwdriver and more drill, until the last screw. This one the drill was damaging more than turning. After swearing at it, hitting it with the hammer and going at it with Vicegrips, a la mechanic, I phoned my grandfather. I explained the problem and the fact my father wasn't home. My grandfather thought and told me to try and screw it back in to break whatever was holding it in place. So I hung up the phone, and went back at it with the drill. This time it came out.

In slight disbelief, I lifted the cabinet off the frame. I had used my drill and no one had gotten hurt. I had actually found a reason to use my drill. I had accomplished what I had set out to do. And I didn't feel like an uber feminist or anything of that nature, I just felt a warm glow that I could weld a power drill. I knew it couldn't be that difficult. Next time I offer to lend my drill to someone, I'm going to offer to come do it for them. It's the done thing when one has a drill.