A Witness to Saturday Morning Moments

Ever have one of those days where things just go right?

I don't have them very often and it's probably mostly my own fault. My fault because I forget to look for the perfection in the ordinary. It's so easy to neglect the little things of life that can bring simple joy, if only I remember to look closely.

I think I may have witnessed one of those perfect morning today. It's Saturday. The weather in Nashville is absolutely perfect today. It not cold but not hot. Sunny with a few clouds, slightly breezy. The yard is finally approaching mostly dry after several days of rain this week.

Joal and I have very different ideas on what the most wonderful Saturday looks like (so what else is new, right). His awesome Saturday starts around 7 am...far earlier than I wish mine started. He goes for a walk and make his daily pilgrimage to Starbucks, where He drinks coffee and reads for a while. By the time he gets home, the kids and I are up and about (hopefully). In the life of Joal, Saturday mornings were built for tackling small home improvement and repair projects.

Of course, the boys love this Saturday feature too. It's a regular Tim-the-Tool-Man festival around here when Daddy's working on something...festival complete with arrrgh-arrrgh-arrrgh in three different male tones. It's a good thing he's a pretty patient man cause Little Boy and Big Boy are on-the-job-learners. They constantly steal tools, ask questions and say things like "Move Daddy, I can't see."

So, the project of the day today was the serious un-jamming of the sink disposal. Earlier in the week, I turned on the handy dandy disposal and was rewarded with a wicked metal-on-something-really-nasty grinding sound.

I did what I do best. I went to my three favorite fix-it-yourself websites and learned about disposals. Very interesting stuff, lemme tell ya. I did the minor cleaning out and found out it wasn't going to be enough. There was definately something deep inside causing a problem.

For future reference, it's not a good idea to wash muddy cups, bowls and equipment in the disposal side of the kitchen sink. You see, mud may can contain small pebbles...and apparently, our mud did. Small pebbles and disposals do not get along. Trust me on this.

So I did the next best thing...call in the big gun...who, in this case, is also called "Daddy". Daddy has, in less than one year as a homeowner, become the perfect home repair specialist. That's not to say that he knows how to fix everything that breaks. It's to say that he finds incredible joy in the attempting. (How very "Tim" of you, honey.) He fiddles with the offending part of the house. He mulls. He reads whatever handy relavent guide I happen to find on the internet. Finally, after much debate, he says those magic words that thrill the souls of boys, Little and Big:

"You wait here. I have to go to the tool shed to get my tools."

In come the beloved tools. Boys everywhere dive for the toybox in hopes of locating matching tool belts, in which to hold Daddy's "real" tools for even the briefest moment.

Off comes the disposal. More fiddling and mulling. More reading. I pace a little but hope it goes unnoticed. Little Boy is loosing interest (he's not into mulling much) so we dig out the fruitie snacks and he's agreeable again. The internet guide shows a service phone number. Daddy finally decides to call the service line. They chat a bit and Daddy gets off the phone and says the most beautiful words ever uttered in the English language:

"Get you shoes on, son. We have to go get a whatchamacallit at Home Depot."

Shreiks of delight echo thru the house rivalling any rendition of the Helleluhjah Chorus. Afterall, NO self-respecting Saturday morning home repair project can be complete without the requisite trip to that orange d-i-y man-land known as Home Depot.

Big Boy and Daddy are elected to make the trip. Little boy swears loudly that he didn't get an equal vote. Half an hour later, Big Boy and Daddy return triumphantly from their trek, bearing the needed whatchamacallit. A little while later, the whrrr of the newly cleaned and repaired disposal can be heard followed closely by cheering and more arrrgh-arrrgh-arrrgh! Crisis solved. Saturday morning home repair project completed and enjoyed (for the most part) by men of all ages.

The mess is cleaned up and the crew is happy. The grass has begun to grow again and needs attention. Maybe after lunch.