Mother- and Power Tool-Related

Mom’s easily the handiest woman I know; she and my Dad bought a 100+ year old farm house complete with barn, garage, inground pool and 4 acres for less than what I paid for my house (granted, it was 25 years ago). They’ve spent the last 25 years upgrading, adding on, gutting, and painting.

She visits me from time to time, bringing me perennials and usually lunch, because she thinks my fridge is barren (no comment). Here we are last summer:

And I’m posting this a day after the celebrated holiday because Mom’s a stud and worked until 8PM (probably got overtime pay, well planned). Since she opened her presents via phone with me at 8:45PM, I couldn’t risk posting day-of and having her (or chatty Dad, hi Dad) see the awesomeness that was about to greet her Mother’s Day evening.

Let me say this: she loves power tools, but her arsenal isn’t as loaded as it could be. She gets by using her steady hand for painting trim and manual (traditional) tools for makin’ her awesome, awesome garden grow. And try and imagine this: she’s sanded and painted the house’s cedar siding multiple times by hand. As in, with a paint scraper and piece of sand paper. It’s annoying and repetitive a process, she lets us know it, but it’s something that needs to be taken care of every 7 or so years and she’s probably going to disagree, but she seems prideful (and the rest of us are prideful) of her drive to do it solo. It’s kind of badass.

Next time it (and other sanding efforts) should go smoother. Literally. And figuratively. Because I bought her this baby for Mother’s Day.

Yep, that’s a Skil Octo Multi-finishing sander and not only was it a reputable brand, but it received good reviews, a good price, AND came with enough attachments and sandpaper to last her, oh, who knows how long. I tend to like this shape sander better than circular or square since it fits well into tiny spaces. She also has this thing about hand-painting the wooden fence that surrounds the pool piece by piece, and I think this will help immensely to expedite the process.

It’s not a rental backhoe (which she’s been asking for for years to make her pond deeper – a pond she’s only dug by hand to date) but I’ll have to get her one just for fun sometime.

Happy Mother’s Day.