Now where did I leave that jigsaw?

God bless people who can fix things. The guys and gals who can grab a couple of nails, a hammer and a screwdriver and do wondrous, magical things with them.

I am not one of those people. When it comes to fixing and/or building things, I need LOTS of tools and LOTS of materials and LOTS of time and I generally WASTE LOTS of energy and wind up with something that looks vaguely similar to what I had in mind when I started although said item usually ends up as either firewood or what I like to call "a work in progress." I get halfway through them and then lose interest and give up. I have a lot of "works in progress." They sit around the house and mock me. "You call yourself a doit yourselfer," they say. "Hah! You couldn't saw a two-by-four in half without getting a splinter or losing a finger."

And I hang my head and sigh, because I know they are right.

They point and giggle and snicker when I walk by.

While I am a virtual genius at electronic devices (computers and such), I have very little skill at using hand tools, although I do own several hand tools and occasionally am able to produce a semi-acceptable effort when I fire one of them up. There is also, however, the very real danger that I might lose a finger or something even more useful. Whenever I plan to build something, I call Joe Howell at Upstate Carolina Medical Center and remind him that he might want to call in a couple more doctors for emergency room duty.

The tools know that I am not Bob Vila (even when I wear the fake beard and flannel shirt and try to fool them) and they mock me much like the aforementioned unfinished "works in progress."

But never fear for I have a secret weapon when it comes to do-it-yourselfing and making repairs and building stuff and that secret weapon is Poppa George, my can-do father-in-law who can building anything, repair anything and use the most basic of instruments to construct the most complex of items. The man can take a couple of pieces of lumber, some spackling compound and a Swiss army knife (by the way, the Swiss have never been involved in a major military confrontation and I don't think they even have an army, so I don't know why they need a knife; and along those same lines I don't know why they would need a knife with a corkscrew on it; what's that for, in case they get caught behind enemy lines and need to open a bottle of champagne?) and build a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house with a 2-car garage and a large outbuilding suitable for storing large lawn and garden devices or for use as a workshop.

So when I need something built and/or repaired, I call Poppa George.

My wife sometimes fancies herself as a "handyperson." She watches that goofy do-it-yourself baloney on television and thinks she can do the things they do.

I try to explain to her that the 30-minute project she sees on TV actually took about four weeks to complete and just because it's on television doesn't necessarily mean anyone can do it. "I see golfers shoot in the 60s all the time on TV," I tell her, "but I still haven't done it."

But alas, my logic falls on deaf ears.

Actually there are some things she can do that are quite helpful.

She's sort of like a mini-Poppa George. It's kind of cute in a Heidi-on-Tool-Time (remember the girl on Home Improvement) sort of way.

When I met her, her do-it-yourself claim to fame was that she could change the oil in her car, which is a useful and economically feasible skill. And it's sort of exciting having a woman around who knows how to use an oil filter wrench and can appreciate the qualities of a good can of 30-weight.

Sometimes I play the stranded motorist out in the middle of nowhere and she's the hot mechanic chick who shows up to rescue me and … oh, never mind. I digress.

But anyway, the fact that she isn't afraid to don a pair of coveralls and strap on a tool belt and can actually use power tools and such is one of the things that first attracted me to her.

When we were dating, one time she leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Baby," she said, "I'm going to make your wildest dreams come true."

And man, did she ever. She came over to my house and cleaned my gutters, painted the shutters and fixed that leaky pipe under the sink.

"One of these days I'm going to marry that woman," I said to myself.

The other day Poppa George was over at the house working on a bathroom remodeling project and asked me if he could use my jigsaw (and I know I've got one somewhere because I remember seeing it at Lowe's that day and they had it displayed in such a way that a real man with a high testosterone level could not have resisted buying it and besides, if you have a jigsaw you can make your own puzzles; I mean, think of the money you'll save) but I couldn't find it. I theorized that she must have been using it and left it somewhere so I called her but she couldn't remember where she left it.

But when you do as much handyman or handywoman stuff as we do, you're bound to occasionally lose a tool or two.

That's just one of the sacrifices you have to make for saving all that money on jigsaw puzzles.

Klonie Jordan (editor@gaffneyledger.com) is executive editor of The Gaffney Ledger.