I really hate working on my house. Conversely I always feel an inordinate amount of pride any time I successfully work on my house. By work on my house I mean fix something related to the house. Recently I cleaned my gutters, diagnosed how some squirrels were getting into my attic, and have worked on cleaning out a clogged toilet.
All of those things are things I can hire someone to do. I'm not sure why I end up doing them. I hate thinking about doing those things, but when I finish them I am very proud of myself. I feel like I'm doing something that I shouldn't be able to do. That is bizarre. If I accomplish most things I don't feel like I've done something monumental. In fact it usually means I start to think the task must be easy and any idiot could accomplish it because I was able to.
But if the person who would fix my problem is a professional I feel like I've done something. The biggest example of this is probably the toilet fixing. The toilet is very thoroughly clogged. So far I've been able to (with my wife's assistance) get a large was of cloth out of it. That allowed it to drain faster than it had previously but it doesn't seem to be the main blockage. I shouldn't be so happy about that.
Figuring out how the plumbing snake worked was fun. Why? I've put off fixing this toilet for a long time because I didn't want to do it. But 5 minutes into the process I was having fun. I'm not sure if this is a bizarre idiosyncrasy or if this is universal among men.
At first looking into the attic was nerve-wracking. I had visions of crazed squirrels jumping on my face (my uncle was I kid you not attacked by a squirrel he was taunting once and that story is comedy gold) and me falling down the attic stairs and snapping my leg in half. Nothing of the sort happened of course because my attic isn't fully of combat prepared rabid squirrels. They heard me coming up (because I was banging on the walls) and hid and waited for me to leave.
Now that I know the problem (the mesh wire around an exhaust fan collapsed in and they're coming in through that area) I am confident I can fix it. I'll wait for it to stop raining and just climb up on the roof and get that mesh back in place. It will be awesome. Hopefully the squirrels will be out for the day. After that I'll see what I can do about getting the tree the squirrels are using to get on the roof out of the way. I feel like it is way too big for me to cut down myself but we'll see how long I can ride this wave of doing things I don't think I should be able to pull off.
Again, this is a small thing. I feel weird at the pride, but I can't stop feeling it. A lesson for us all. Doing something useful is addictive even if you hate working as much as I do.
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