A New Thankfulness for My Father

The last couple of months I've walked in my dad's shoes. My gift to my son has been a crib. I know you guys are thinking, "Wow, I didn't know Rob did woodworking in his spare time! That's awesome!" While I appreciate the sentiment and being thought of as awesome, let me clarify. Katy's sister Michelle got this crib for her son Jacob when he was born.
Katy's parents saved it for us for the day we had a kid. So, Katy didn't like the original stain, sort of a natural pine, and asked if I could sand it down and re-stain it. Me being the man I am immediately said, "Of course baby!" Thinking this would be an awesome thing I could do for my boy. Well, after over 35 hours of work on it, I finished. I must say I wish I had taken some pictures at the different stages but didn't have that foresight. Nevertheless here it is in its finished state with a "dark walnut" stain. Note the lack of professionalism in the paint brush strokes instead of the stain blending purely with the wood as well as the clumps of stain on the rounded edges where I got either lazy, complacent, frustrated, or amateurish or a combination of any and all of the above. You may not see it, but trust me its there and it haunts my perfectionistic dreams. (Thanks for doing the bumpers, blanket, and bed skirt mom! They look awesome!)
Now here's the rub. We knew we wanted to get the baby's furniture done in an "espresso" stain. So when we were at Home Depot I decided to be economical. You see, I could have bought one quart of stain and one quart of polyurethane coating for a total of $25 or I could buy one quart of stain/polyurethane for $7 and save $18!Pretty good deal huh? Here's the problem. "Espresso" was not sold in this combo, only "Dark walnut" which it turns out is not very dark and should be called "light walnut," and "espresso" should be called "dark espresso" or "almost black, yet brown, espresso." Without this knowledge my baby's furniture now doesn't match and because the changing table looks like this:
So while it looks awesome, yours truly now gets to spend another 35 hours resanding and restaining his son's crib. This time, there won't be any clumps, mistakes in color of stain, and all in all it will probably take me closer to 70 hours to do since this time I'm going to get it right and there will be no third resanding and restaining at the Grindy home.

I said all that to say this. I respect my dad more and more with each day that passes in this pre-fatherhood journey that I'm sure will increase exponentially once my son comes into this world. The reason in this particular episode was the ridiculousness that is children's furniture. We got the changing table from Fedex in a box maybe 5 feet by 3 feet. When I came home that night I saw it and thought, "No problem, I'll knock this out in an hour." Three and a half hours later I was done with the last drawer. Let me tell you, that crap was frustrating. The pieces weren't the highest quality and thus did not all fit together as illustrated in the perfection that is the instruction booklet. Yes, I did look at it and no I'm not less of a man because if you'd have worked on this thing with me you'd have been just as frustrated and wanted to burn it all down like I did. About halfway through this adventure I was sitting there with my head in my hands, a melted root beer float on the floor next to me, and my wife sitting on the floor nearby being extremely supportive. It was at this point that I asked her to leave the room because I didn't want her to see me flip out on this inane inanimate object. Once she was gone, I said a quick prayer to calm down, and had a minor epiphany. I reflected on all the furniture, beds, toys, bikes, basketball hoops, game tables, legos, etc. that my dad built for me and realized how many countless hours he must have spent putting that stupid crap together for the love of his son, and never once complaining to my brother and I about how frustrated he got doing it. Either that, or he's an instructional genius and always got the job done without a hitch, broken/missing part, glue/tape, or problem of any kind. I love my dad, but I tend to think since we come from the same gene pool, it was the former. In any event, thanks dad. I owe you big time, but I have a feeling that debt is about to be paid off here in the course of the next 18 years. Happy belated Father's Day!
P.S. No, I didn't forget that my mom did stuff for me too. This is just a reflection on the construction of kids crap, so don't get all upset mom! Thanks for allowing forceps to pull me out, I know you won't let me forget :)