OF HOME IMPROVEMENT

Dear Spike:

This week we'll start work on your Uncle Mikey's apartment. The plan is to remove an upstairs window and about a foot and a half of bricks underneath it to make way for a new door. We'll also be building a small balcony and staircase so that he has a private entrance. After that we'll blow out his closet and run some pipes for a bathroom. And finally we'll knock down some walls to make more space in the room for some bookshelves and a new closet.

"Wow daddy," you say, "I didn't know your many, many, many, many, many talents extended into the world of home improvement."

OK. Well... truthfully... that's probably not the case. And while I'm proud of some of the very minor projects we've done around the house, we've never attempted anything like this before. But we're not rich enough to hire someone else to do it — and even if we were, I think I'd still like the challenge.

If you ask me, one of the best parts of life comes when you get out of your comfort zone — when you ask yourself to do something knowing that you might not be the best at it.

To paint when you're not a painter.

To dance when you're not a dancer.

To build when you're not a builder.

Sometimes you're going to fail — and there are plenty of lessons to be learned from failure, too. In fact, there's so much to learn from failure that you can never really completely fail.

And sometimes, you're going to succeed. Not only will you exceed your expectations, you'll exceed all hopes as well. You'll paint like Rembrandt. You'll dance like Fred Astair. You build like... um... like Bob, I guess.

You never know unless you try. Sometimes that means picking up a paintbrush. Sometimes that means picking up a set of tap shoes.

And for us, this week, it means picking up a sledgehammer.

Keep you head down, little one, this might get a little bit dusty.

Love,
dad