In response to Matt’s post from earlier today about how he has accepted his masculine shortcomings and let the hired help fix things for him, I would just like to say: I WILL NEVER GIVE UP!!!

I moved about two weeks ago, which has required what I consider an excessive amount of time in an Ikea buying shit furniture that I am responsible for putting together. This, to quote a blatantly incompetent colleague of my girlfriend’s, is not among my “core competencies.”

But Matt, dear all-thumbs Matt, I soldier on. With tiny allen wrenches, and hammer bruises on my thumbs, and drawers that don’t quite glide, and shelves with holes that you hardly even notice in the right light.

Am I ready for plumbing? You betcha! Am I ready to actually accomplish plumbing? Hell no! I’ll tell you that one fellow who’s convinced I’m a bona fide construction master, by the way, is JP, who most definitely knows no better—and that’s the way I’m keeping him: ignorant and worshipful.

Last. One of the dressers I put together has to have one of the shelves taken apart and redone. My girlfriend, for reasons that apparently are endemic to her gender, has been walking around the house with a smug grin on her face. Seems at some point in my recent construction phase I made a comment about maybe trying to build something other than Ikea furniture (I said a bench), and her reaction this morning: “And you wanted to build a house.”