On Feeling (A Little Bit) Like A Badass

My work in progress...

Christine getting ready to make things happen.

I am not what you would consider, well...tough.

I've never changed a tire. I'm not particularly athletic (I don't snow ski black diamonds or even greens or whatever the color coding system is, and I water-skied for the first time when I was 22). I only run when chased. Heck, I didn't even own a pair of tennis shoes until about three years ago.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly wimpy either, I like to camp, particularly the sleeping outside part. I've been known to wear the same outfit for three days straight, I once worked for three months as a baker at a remote camp in Canada where I baked 300 loaves of bread a day and didn't wear a stitch of makeup. (But at the end of the summer, when my camp colleagues asked me to join them on a wilderness expedition that involved spending a night in the wild...by myself...I politely declined.)

So let's just say that I'm somewhere between tough and wimpy, but most definitely not a badass.

Until now. Now I feel a little bit like a badass...I'm not gonna lie.

The impetus behind this new state of being is a jewelry fabrication class I started last week with Christine. Said class required me to raid Bryan's tools in order to obtain a saw, files, various pliers and hammers, and other sundry things that posses functions I've yet to discover (they look fierce though). I also have, wait for it...a toolbox. In my first class alone, I wielded a torch, blazed copper until it reached a menacing shade of cherry, and then beat the heck out of it with a hammer against an anvil, which produced a sound both agonizing and oddly satisfying.

And friends, I can honestly say that after three hours of this action I felt a degree of calm the likes of which no amount of yoga has ever produced.

I'm not sure what this says about me, but I'm going with it.