Accomplishment

In the time that this family has been living in two different countries, I have developed a few new skills.  I can change a downlight, pump up a bicycle tyre and pay a kid to mow the lawn.  But I have always steered away from things requiring excessive use of tools.  Until I noticed that every time I walked on it, the second step from the top was starting to sag.  Not good.  I had visions of standing on it one day and having it collapse under me.  I could envisage the layers of difficulty having a broken leg would add to our lives.  So I did what any sensible singlish woman does - block off the stairs with some garden mulch and an old pair of pantyhose, and wait for a suitably helpful man to come around.

Suitably helpful men seem to be thin on the ground at the moment.  The stairs remained blocked off, the person who delivers the milk and bread seemed to be unable to locate the other stairs and took to leaving the delivery as far up the blocked off stairs as an arm could reach.  It was time to take matters into my own hands.  I scoped out the job, realised that I would need to measure things, unscrew things, take off palings etc.  It waited another week, just in case a helpful man materialised. (Apparently he had a bad back...)

Sunday dawned bright and sunny.  Buoyed by my success with changing all the blown lightglobes in the lights on the deck, I decided the time had come.  The gym workouts seem to have paid off, because there was a considerable amount of brute force involved in undoing four very tight screws (complicated of course by me tightening them first by mistake, like I always do).  I broke every rule of handymaning.  Measure twice, cut once?  Nah.  Measure, and add on a bit just in case, cause you can always cut it off.  If it doesn't move, don't force it?  What rubbish.  When you can't get the last screw out, smash the step with a hammer until the rotten bit breaks, then get the rest of the step out.  Use the hammer to bang the screw through.  Trim the plank to fit (I even sanded it a bit!) then whack it with the mallet to get it to fit in place.  I was going to resort to outside assistance to drill guide holes (I have never drilled anything) but while waiting for a slightly more helpful man to turn up, decided to let brute force have another go.  The final screw went in just as the cavalry arrived.

The step is fixed through my own endeavours.  Not painted, mind you, but at least safe.  This life contains its challenges, but in a suitably Disney fashion, hard work and determination won the day.  I felt very proud as I walked up my stairs.