Wednesday : Manhood

Today it rained, which means no blight busting (yard work) and no challenge circle (awana). Both sad.

Instead I worked inside the new church building. I was supposed to work on paint crew but got quickly switched to another team.

I got to tear down an old door frame and put up a new frame for a window. I've had experience in neither of these so I was pretty bad at it. I used a crowbar, hammer, and power drills.

Tearing stuff down is a lot more fun than building something up.

I got to swing at that door frame with all I had and eventually it gave way and crumbled. With a little help from others of course. The steel from the door frame was put on the side of the building for a guy to take later so he could make some money.

Then we had to build a frame for a window. This involved cutting stuff and drilling stuff. I was no good at drilling through metal studs and tracks.

I felt so demasculated.

I either applied too much pressure or went too fast on the drill. I could never find the right touch. The worst was when I had to screw something in an awkward position and couldn't get enough power on the drill. I felt so weak, so unmanly, because the guy who was in charge of us, Scott, could do it all with ease.

I got frustrated. I couldn't do the simple task of screwing in a screw with a power drill. I mean, come on,  I'm 22. Shouldn't my brain be good at this by now? Shouldn't my muscles be able to do this? I had to.walk away a couple of times out of frustration.

So yeah, I was down, but looking back now I feel accomplished. I mean, not everybody does that in their lifetime. So yeah, I felt like I lost my manhood, then regained it.

So that's what I did all day today. 

We had a long lunch. The rain was so hard that the power went out so we played Ninja. It's a fun game.

We had southern cooking tonight. Rice and beans. It was hot! I didn't mind it though.

After dinner we went to the French Quarter again. We walked a bit in the rain. I also had beignets again from Cafe du Monde. Also walked down Bourbon street again.

Now I'm sitting in the kitchen wearing my "I <3 N.O." shirt, stealing power from someones charger because my phone is out of battery, and waiting for laundry to be done.

My night owl-ness can not be broken.