I have been doing things around the house for as long as I can remember. My husband had 2 left thumbs. He couldn't even put a nail straight in the wall. He was a wiz on computers but when it came to fixing things that was my job. While my husband passed away 7 years ago, just a few years back my two grandsons came to live with me permanently. Ever since, there have been a rash of "I didn't do it!" and "It's not me!" home improvement emergencies that I've had to take care of.

As a child my father was very handy and I was always his helper. His favorite thing to say when something would break would be, "We can fix it ourselves. We don't need a repair person."

Let me give you a few examples: when my grandsons first came to live with me four years ago, I painted the walls and ceiling in a sky blue color. Then I painted lots of puffy looking white clouds all over, I even tried to make some of the clouds look like animal shapes. When the boys saw them they said: "Wow, look at all the UFOs!". That says a lot about my talent right there. I finished the room by adding other flying things: angels, stars, airplanes, hot air balloons, and of course a number of stars and comets. I also had to unstop the toilet when the boys were using it as a "car wash" for several of their match-box cars; I took the pipes under the bathroom sink apart, after one of the boys was trying to find out how much of a toilet paper roll would fit into the drain; and I had to fix door hinges was the result of someone--not me!--hanging on the door knobs and swinging back and forth. And of course my latest learning experience about replacing the pull chain on the light switch of the ceiling fan was, as you might have guessed by now, another "not me" event!

A few years back I had to cut down part of a tree in our front yard. Part of it had died with all of the storms we had that year. I rented what I call, "a saw on a stick". It was an electrical saw attached to a stick. I cut the tree in my front yard and once it was finished, I asked myself "What else can I cut down?" I had a lot of fun with that.

My husband was great but others didn't understand. One year my husband asked me what I wanted for Mother's Day. I told him a cordless drill. He said he wouldn't buy it for me because he said that people would make fun of him. On the other hand I always told him that I should've kept a list on all of the home repairs I did around the house because he always wanted to call someone. This way if I went shopping I could give him a bill for my work and tell him, "You owe me a dress"!

The most fun part is there are so many jobs that only a man can do. We are indoctrinated to believe that they are the authority through conditioning. But when it comes to fixing things around the house, I look at a project and I just know I can do that. For me home improvement is not about the money - it's about I can do this!