Fencing

There I was, in the back yard with a hammer in my hand. Was it the fifth time? The twentieth time? I have lost count. I have built or repaired things, or repaired things that I have built so many times since we bought this house that I have no accurate tally on the number of projects I have found myself involved in over the years. My wife likes to describe it in terms of the pounds of wood and other materials that we have attached or affixed to our property. This last one wasn't quite a ton, but it took a couple of station wagon loads from Home Depot to make it work. That and the cracked windshield. In my exuberance, I shoved one more two by four into the back end of our car, and it bumped the windshield just hard enough to put a nice new starburst pattern on the passenger side. Such are the hidden costs of do-it-yourself.
But yesterday, when it was time to build a fence, it all happened like I knew what I was doing. My mother-in-law stopped by and marveled at my abilities: fence posts set, cross beams cut, joist hangers hung. I certainly gave the appearance of someone who knew what he was doing. I thought about the time that I have spent, before I owned a home, working with tools. There was my stint as a modular office furniture installer, and definitely the days I spent pounding nails wherever my dad told me to on our cabin when I was just a kid. So much of what I did at those times was about projecting the right appearance, making it look like I knew what I was doing.
Yesterday afternoon, when I stepped back to admire the thirty feet of new redwood that helps block our view of the dingy duplex behind us, I felt a little proud. It wasn't perfect, but it looked like I knew what I was doing.
Now if I could figure out how to make it look like I can fix a windshield.