Neither a Borrower Nor a Lender Be?

Who said that? I think whoever it was, they were an idiot. Let’s consider the items in my garage. I’ve spent at least a large part of the last four free Saturdays that I’ve had working in my garage. I have so many things in there that I HAVE to clean it out if I want to park our two cars in it before the snow flies. I go through this ritual every fall. Usually I find a way to stack everything so that the cars fit. I stack the leftover lumber and sheetrock from my latest project. I shove the tools, paint cans, and other supplies in the corners. But, we bought a new car this past spring, and it’s slightly larger than the one we sold. So, stacking and shoving isn’t really an option anymore.

As I have spent time organizing all of the “stuff” I’ve collected I’ve discovered some interesting statistics. I have twelve putty knives. I have four unopened bottles of insect spray. I have multiple jigsaw and scroll saw blades, still new in the packages. I have five caulking guns. I would like to say, in my defense, that none of the twelve putty knives is an exact duplicate. Two are also plastic. But hey, I probably could’ve gotten by without a few of them. All of these items have been in boxes, home center sacks, or lying on the top of my table saw in piles for months. Lately it’s been harder for me to find just the tool any of us have been searching for.

Admittedly, I’ve had some huge projects and very little time to put things away. The impending winter is a good taskmaster. I now have some fairly inexpensive shelves (made of some of that leftover lumber) and pegboard on the walls. I also emptied an old cabinet that contained a hodgepodge of items; it is now filled with small power tools and some of the things that you can’t hang on a pegboard hook.

My neighbor, who spends a lot of his time helping around my house, happened to stop by about a week ago, when I was out sorting through all of the drill bits I have (I didn’t bother counting those!). I’ve always allowed this neighbor of mine, and many others to borrow my tools or anything else they needed. In fact, he has my garage combination. (He’s one of only two in the neighborhood who do though, because while I believe in sharing what I have, I also am not stupid.) My neighbor just stood in the middle of my garage, looking around at all of the tools and things that are now so neatly organized. He spied a piece of MDF leaning against a wall. I saw his eye and asked if he wanted it. I was just going to cut it up and use it for firewood. He replied that would be great. It looked like it might be perfect for a scout project his wife was working on. He said, “I need to measure it though to see if it would work. Do you have a tape measure I could borrow?” I pointed to the FIVE hanging on the pegboard and we both laughed.

I heard something this weekend from a very wise woman that sums up my feelings: “Accumulate less and share more.” I really feel that way. I'm pretty good at following the sharing part of it. (Heck, I have a tile saw that's been sitting in another neighbor's garage for over a year now, and was just borrowed by another neighbor. I never saw it in between.) And when I heard my feelings put so succinctly, by a woman that I admire and respect, I was glad I’d been cleaning up my garage and donating items to charity. Now onto the items in my house, like the bazillion pens and pencils I have in my office! Because if you can't find it, how can you share it?

Little S#@T's and Poker Chips

I recently placed an order with one of my favorite needlework shops. As I chatted on the phone with the owner, we were kidding around, and after a particular remark of mine, she said jokingly “You’re a little S#@T.” It was a little term of endearment. The funny thing about that is I haven’t had anyone call me that since I was little. My grandma used to call me that. Not the mac’n’cheese grandma, the other one. Of course, she called my little sister that more than me, but that was to be expected. She’s a redhead. I’m not. (And, don’t eMail me about how unfair I am to introduce stereotypes into my blog. My red-headed, little sister would be the first to admit she’s often a little s#@t.)

I didn’t spend a lot of time with my grandma after I was about 12 or 13. We moved further away from that set of grandparents. But, what time I did spend with her was really memorable. No, we didn’t bake cookies everytime we were at her house. She wasn’t much into cookies. I’ll have to tell you all about popcorn and Cheese Wiz another time, though. We played lots of games. Grandma was always finding new, fun things in magazines to entertain us when we visited. She tried really hard to make things fun, and to bring things down to our level. For example, Grandma had Grandpa cut the legs short on an old wooden card table. She recovered the top with green felt. We could then sit on the floor, indian-style (NO, this blog is not politically correct, but I do give credit to a people when they were the first to invent a particular way of sitting on the floor), and play our games, or have our lunch, etc.

I remember that during the cooler months, we would often go out to the silver airstream trailer, parked on their property. That seems exotic – “their property.” Let me explain a bit: they lived in a small, mobile home, on five acres in the hills of Fallbrook, California, with the “immigrants” that came over the US-Mexican border hiding in the hills, and the snakes. They had a deck built around the mobile home, and a small yard with lawn, that was fenced. Just outside their door, there sat the Airstream. I don’t think they really used it much, except to stash “company” and to get away from each other. Anyway, one day when we were out in the Airstream, Grandma taught us to play blackjack and poker. I thought those chips were really cool. I think I must have been around 7 or 8. Grandma had her mug full of her drink of choice, and we had our rootbeer. The breeze blew the curtains in the airstream as we sat around the little table that would convert into a bed at night. And, when I made a particularly surprising play of the cards, she’d call me a “little s#@t.” Not many people have such fun memories of their grandparents. I feel sorry for those people.