My Shelf

Today I made a Shelf.

That was my task when I showed up to the museum this morning: “This high table needs a shelf underneath it halfway to the floor to store all these fancy display lamps. Feeling handy?” Sure... I assured her that I could cobble something together, assuming beauty was not paramount. Thankfully, the table stands in a corner of the already disorganized tool shop, so the shelf’s potential aesthetic merits would likely remain unnoticed in any case.

So, building a shelf. No problem. I have spatial reasoning skills. I get along with drills for the most part. I’ve watched Mom create a picnic table and a swing set from a pile of wood, neither of which are in danger of collapsing any time soon. (In fact, their monumental sturdiness is sure to grant them heirloom status someday.) Growing up, I always assumed I inherited woodworking genes, and now was their chance to express themselves. Why, just the other day I took apart a mini-golf hole with a sledgehammer and a crowbar and felt satisfyingly Tool Time. On the other hand, that was destruction, not construction.

I stood in front of the inferior table for a while in what I hoped was a “thinking” pose. I stood in front of the shelves of wood for a little longer, then took inventory of the tools at hand: a cordless drill, baggies bristling with used screws that looked only vaguely similar, a battery-powered chop saw mounted on a Rubbermaid-style plastic base, and a portable table saw too small, and with too short a cord, to be useful for its intended purpose. Finally, I decided that my plan of action would likely include some sketching and measuring. While investigating the shelfless table's dimensions, I concluded that its original creator had been no more a master carpenter than I was. It was a solid piece of furniture that served its purpose, but its legs were haphazardly spaced and lacked any supports to ensure their verticality. Well, my Shelf would give it support! No longer concerned about defiling the already-cobbled table, I began to cut my wood.

And I did it: It took all day, but I did create a Shelf! It fits snugly between the diverse legs with clearance below for plastic storage bins and above for fancy track lights. The surface is what appears to be part of a repurposed chalkboard, which is supported below by rows of sturdy beams. Those fancy lights won’t fall off any time soon.

And now, I feel unusually successful. There now exists a newborn Shelf in this world because of me. Hopefully, years from now, people I will not have met will take that Shelf for granted, putting things on it and taking things off, because of me. Tomorrow, when I drive down the hill to work, I can gaze across the lake, through the trees, to the museum, and know that it is a better, more efficient place because of my labors.

I think I’ve finally graduated from Legos.

Weeding the ScienCenter

I am a natural disaster. I am the sudden, unpredictable obliteration of an entire habitat. There was a healthy patch of clover between the ScienCenter mini-golf course and the brick wall of the building. Now there's not. Now, instead of lush greenery and bulging purple flowers, there's a strip of dirt, ugly and bare and hot and dry. Not only do the clovers vanish with a few waves of my callous hands, but also the spiders, centipedes, aphids, bees, wasps, ants, and all the other bugs that fly and crawl and dig become immediately and inexplicably homeless. Some are scattered into unfamiliar lands by clinging desperately to the doomed vegetation. Spiders skitter several inches up the newly exposed wall, then halt in disbelieving bewilderment to survey their unrecognizable homeland. Worms and centipedes writhe fiercely in silent panic until they find shelter under ragged clods of the freshly scarred earth. I've never seen insects run so fast.

I am as abrupt as an earthquake, as destructive as a hurricane. I am environmental annihilation personalized. I am one unit of humanity playing out humanity's instinctual duty to raze nature. My strip of former clover could be a miniature subdivision in its infancy, all ready to pour concrete roads and driveways and basements.

When that deed was done, I went to the other side of the building to plant geraniums. That reversed my conscience.

Mostly.

Amazonian at Work

The other day I was called “some kind of Amazon woman” at work, while hefting 40 pound bags of dirt (and manure--just because it’s composted doesn’t make it less messy--first one to develop a tear-proof manure bag gets an A+ and a lollipop), apparently making the bags look like the world’s filthiest (and least comfy) pillows. I took it as a compliment. Later, when I was called over to help another lady, she squeezed my upper arm before allowing me to load her dirt. An elderly couple even tipped me $2 for transporting a single bag from the shelf to their cart a foot away to their car idling on the sidewalk (the cash was in two $1 gold-colored coins featuring George Washington, the first in a presidential series, so it’s one tip I won’t be spending). There have been plenty of other puzzled looks and comments upon my approach, from “But you’re only as big as I am!” to “But I thought they’d get one of those big strong men to help me...” Thanks to the wealth of muscularly underdeveloped female gardeners out there, at least I can skip going to the gym.