Division of Labor

And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; or again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."  

- I Corinthians 12:21 NASB

My Sweet Baboo gave me a job yesterday.  She's decided to take up clipping coupons and wants some labels for the book and since I "know so much about computers", she assumed I would be just the bloke for the job.

She is, of course, absolutely right.

In a trice I whipped up a mail-merged page of labels for the old photo album that she is recycling for the purpose. I used Microsoft Word and created a PDF file with it which I printed, not only for her, but also posted for the use of my readers on my Howdy Ya Dewit website.  She has an old dayplanner she'd rather use, but I'll need to buy some plastic pocket pages for it.  Once I do get the new pages, I'll get out my Adobe Pagemaker and jazz up the labels even more with border and pictures and make it all cute.  She'll just have to remind me to buy the pages about 65 times. I think a grocery coupon book is a wonderful idea.

BUT DON'T ASK ME TO KEEP UP WITH THE THING!

I've learned that each of us has things we are good at and things which we are not good at.  If you keep asking someone to do something they just aren't good at, you are setting yourself up for lots of disappointment and frustration.  I, unfortunately, have the attention span of a jackrabbit on a date.  I could never keep up with clipping coupons, although once I spent an hour doing it and saved us something like $40 at the grocery store.

Not likely to ever happen again, though. Move on, folks.  Nothing else to see here.

That's why I have a garage full of projects I haven't got started on yet.  One day, I'll get a bug to do one and the time (which I don't have much of these days) and I'll get out there and build the six inch telescope, the box dulcimer, the canoe rack and cookie tin banjo I've been collecting parts for.  My how-to weblog is a monument to my trips to the shade tree to try and figure out how to make something myself or repair something on the cheap because I can't afford to buy it at the store.

Actually, I enjoy making things and my ambition is to build myself a greenhouse and a big workshop out back for the purpose. My wife's ambition is for me to get all my crap out of the garage.

We each have our purpose.  If I can help you in 5 minutes or so, I'm your guy.  If you want me to remember to do something later, drop me 3 or 4 e-mails and whack me upside the head about an hour before I'm supposed to have it done.

Or you can tell Sheila and she'll worry about it every day until she makes me get it done.

We each have our functions and as the Apostle Paul said, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you.'"  Well, the eye actually can say that and probably will before it's over, but that don't make it so.

I'm great if an airplane drops on your house or your septic tank explodes or you need to wrestle a water buffalo out of your pantry.  Sheila can not only show you how to cook, bake or clean anything you can imagine, but will have it pretty well cooked, baked or cleaned by the time she gets through explaining it to you. I play the guitar so most people can tolerate it (except my immediate family members who think its funny to moan and hold their ears every time I pick the thing up).  Sheila doesn't play. She rehearses over and over until its perfect.  She's the one you invite to perform special music at the church. I'm the one you stick with song service every week and a backup band of 5 or 10 kids who may or may not actually play the instruments they are holding at the time.  Beautiful music or joyful noise - pick your body part!

I'm just tellin' ya' what I think.

Tom