Last night, I told my dad, who is in town for Thanksgiving and the new baby, that I have failed him. He said, "I know."

I was referring to the fact that my dad is a really great handyman. He can and does make all repairs and remodeling that needs to be done in the house or on a car. He tried his darndest when he was bringing me and my brothers up to inculcate us with the same values -- Santa Claus even helped out, bringing us various tools each year as we were growing up, a phenomenon I hated at the time, but am grateful for now (how many other 31-year-olds still use something they got for Christmas when they were 8?). But I can't say it worked on me. I don't know why, but I don't really feel competent to fix more than the least complicated stuff.

So when we took advantage of my dad's presence to present him with a broken faucet in our master bathroom, he dutifully agreed to help out, and we made a trip to Home Depot last night. We got the stuff we needed, and I actually got a really good start on things.

When I got stuck, it helped me realize why I don't consider myself good at this kind of stuff. I actually sort of do like the challenge of figuring out what's wrong with something and what it would take to fix it, and I like doing physical things, what with my professional life spent almost exclusively either reading something, writing something, or sitting in a meeting. But as I was attempting to remove the old drain from our sink, it became apparent that the nut I needed to loosen was corroded hard onto the pipe. After working on it together for about an hour with everything we could throw at it, my dad and I couldn't make that nut budge, and we were stymied. We might be able to pull it off if we had different tools, which we are looking to borrow or, as a last resort, buy.*

The difficult thing about home repairs is that sometimes you simply run out of expertise or, in this particular case, the brute strength necessary to pull it off. It gets a little depressing. Of course, once we are able to bust off that nut (somehow!), I'll have a sense of satisfaction. In the meantime, I'll be brushing my teeth in the half-bath downstairs.

* Actually, perhaps this is the nub of it all: as gracious as Santa Claus was to me, sometimes you just don't have the right tool for the job, and that makes the job either unfun, difficult, or impossible. I think of the series "Design on a Dime" on HGTV, where a team completely renovates a room for less than $1000 -- I constantly think when watching that show, "Well, sure I could build a new chest of drawers for $50 IF I HAD THOSE PROFESSIONAL-GRADE POWER TOOLS AND A HUGE WORKSHOP like them!"