There are some of us for whom curling up with a good book under a blanket represents the ultimate bliss - still others would venture out to a pub and spend several hours with friends drinking into the early hours of the morning. Me - I like assembling furniture and planting bulbs. Why, you ask? Because the joy you get at the completion of the task is worth all the effort that goes into it.
Take this morning - with snow coming down hard, and the office closed, I decided to tackle the latest Ikea purchase sitting in my basement - a TV stand. No ordinary stand this, it was a real beast weighing close to a hundred pounds. But once the box was opened, and the individual pieces separated, it looked decidedly simply. About 15 minutes work, I thought, then I can get some breakfast.
About 45 minutes later, as I was still grappling with the last piece, I realized to my horror that one of them had gone in backwards. Now if you've ever assembled Ikea furniture before, you know that the only reason that something doesn't turn out the way it should is because the person doing the assembly has goofed up - I have yet to see a set of instructions that is incorrect (same with the correct number of screws and dowels in each order!) I went back to step 1 and started all over again and realized that I had been looking at the instructions upside down - so much for my theory that men are great at spatially challenging tasks! Luckily it was a simple fix and i was soon staring at a perfectly functioning well assembled table.
Gardening has its own challenges - you have to imagine a layout and then proceed to plant your bulbs so that you can have waves of different colors throughout the year. Unlike furniture, where the results are seen almost immediately, gardening requires a fair amount of patience as it will take anywhere from 3-6 months to witness the miracle of how soil, air and water act together. The thrill one gets when you see the first tiny green shoot poking its head out of the ground is worth the wait!
Take this morning - with snow coming down hard, and the office closed, I decided to tackle the latest Ikea purchase sitting in my basement - a TV stand. No ordinary stand this, it was a real beast weighing close to a hundred pounds. But once the box was opened, and the individual pieces separated, it looked decidedly simply. About 15 minutes work, I thought, then I can get some breakfast.
About 45 minutes later, as I was still grappling with the last piece, I realized to my horror that one of them had gone in backwards. Now if you've ever assembled Ikea furniture before, you know that the only reason that something doesn't turn out the way it should is because the person doing the assembly has goofed up - I have yet to see a set of instructions that is incorrect (same with the correct number of screws and dowels in each order!) I went back to step 1 and started all over again and realized that I had been looking at the instructions upside down - so much for my theory that men are great at spatially challenging tasks! Luckily it was a simple fix and i was soon staring at a perfectly functioning well assembled table.
Gardening has its own challenges - you have to imagine a layout and then proceed to plant your bulbs so that you can have waves of different colors throughout the year. Unlike furniture, where the results are seen almost immediately, gardening requires a fair amount of patience as it will take anywhere from 3-6 months to witness the miracle of how soil, air and water act together. The thrill one gets when you see the first tiny green shoot poking its head out of the ground is worth the wait!
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