Good Enough for Government Work

So let me start with a question: How handy are you?

I’m talking about handyman duties.  Hammering nails.  Cutting boards. Pouring cement. Maybe throw in a little toilet repair, unstop some toilets, replace the whole fucking thing with a reduced flush flow….

It occurs to me that being  ‘handy’ has often been equated with being manly. 

Which is unfortunate in that I am barely handy.  And thus, perhaps, barely manly. 

I have had people say to me, “You are such a girl!” (Most often in response to my old drink of choice—vodka and cranberry juice.) (But also because some people don’t appreciate kilts!)

And I’ll tell ya—I admire a handy woman. Is that chauvinistic? Shouldn’t women be as handy as men?  Why be surprised when a female demonstrates dexterity and ability at ‘fixing’ things?  We all have the same brain.  Or maybe not.  Maybe there are male brains and female brains?  Should we be doing brain reassignment surgery? 

I digress. 

I am actually pretty good at digging holes and moving piles of rocks from point A to point B. I can mix a mean barrelful of cement.  And you show me where to hammer, and I’ll give it my best. (I sometimes miss the nail, leaving a crescent shaped mark on the surrounding wood, which is, as I understand it, a no-no.) 

There is a line, though, in my handiness. A line I am, even at my age, unable to cross. When things escalate from nailing precut lumber together to measuring and cutting said lumber, I am handicapped.  They say measure twice and cut once. I can measure three times and get three different measurements! What am I supposed to do then, triangulate?  I was no good at Geometry, either, so me cutting for construction is no good.

Now, if you need somebody to cut for Destruction, I’m your boy.  I can operate a table saw and a circular saw and a band saw and chain saw.  Need those branches reduced to four foot sections to satisfy the rules for bulk trash pickup? I can do that.  Turn old boards into fireplace starter wood?  I’m down. 

But.

When it comes to things like rebuilding a fence. There’s some careful measuring that needs to go on.  I’ll dig the holes for the footings for the fenceposts. I’ll mix the cement, I’ll position the fenceposts correctly before pouring the cement, then deliver said cement to the holes.  I can do all that.  And, if we’re smart, we’re building eight-foot sections, so we can consume precut lumber.  And oh by the way, we want to install some barbed wire, or maybe string some razor wire like they use for the border in Texas.   I know, we could hang a big Nazi flag over the front door, then people will really leave you alone.  (Okay, everything but that last one!)

See, the fence is important—the homeless have been squeezing through an opening in the fence and making themselves at home in the backyard.  So getting the fence right is important.

Which brings me to another flaw in my character.  I am totally a “good enough” kind of guy.  I am willing to settle for functional.  I do not have to have a perfect appearance.  Unless that’s a really big deal, the appearance I mean.  Like a shoddy fence job will only encourage the vandals to try some more.  It needs to be done right.  Which flies in the face of “Good enough for government work”. 

In case you’re wondering, this is not my first fence.  I was part and parcel to the replacement of the back yard fence at Ron and Jen’s on Yale in Phoenix. And I got busted on that project for my shoddy hammering.  I had to take down a section of planks because they were not totally vertical and thus left minute gaps in the fence.  Ronny was not okay with that, which is cool, because prior to that, I had not known Ronny was a “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right” kind of guy.  Somewhat of a fundamental clash there, that we were able to overcome by me adopting the same standard as Ronny.  I can do that. I can be trained, I don’t care what my ex-wives say!

I guess I needed to rant.  About quality. Right?  That’s what we’re talking about here.  About being handy, and a certain amount of quality control that goes with that handiness.  I’m old now, I should be mature enough to recognize the problem with government quality.  (In fact, when the saying first surfaced in history, it was meant to signal good quality work.) And … I haven’t heard anybody use the saying in a long time.  I’m pretty sure Gen Z would consider me hopelessly out of it if I used the term today.  Or maybe not.  Maybe the term applies more today than ever.  With government shutting itself down.  And I don’t mean just the budget fight.  I mean the federal government is lopping off huge chunks of itself.  Leading to a massive loss of front-line personnel, and the sinking of customer service. Hmmm.  WE might be settling for a lot of good enough…

I suppose 900 words about a fence is enough.  Yeah, in other words this Unblog is good enough!  I’ll update y’all later regarding the status of the fence….