My wife and I have very unconventional pasts, to say the least. You wouldn’t know it to look at us. Today, I’m a burly biker type, and she’s a catholic school teacher. Growing up, however, she took autoshop where I took show choir and Home Economics. She played football. I was a cheerleader. Today, if the car is making a funny noise, I go into the house and find my wife to go look at it.
me: Hey Myst, the car is making a duhduhduhduhduh noise.
Myst: OK, get me a beer and I’ll go take a look at it.
So tonight’s challenge to draw something “Dad” was a little difficult. Everything I thought of that was obviously mine, was not necessarily easily identifiable as “Dad”. Frankly, in most households they would have been much more “Mom”. I do have a few masculine traits though. I could have drawn my razor, my golf clubs, my bike, etc. I settled on my work boots. They are a well worn testament to traditional “Dadness”. She looks hotter in them though.
Tonight’s EDM challenge was to draw something that I’ve made. It has been a long time since I actually made something from scratch. Well, something interesting anyway. I built a book case two or three years ago, but that’s just a big box with shelves. I welded a set of hearts into a paper weight five or six years ago. Lately I spend my time customizing things I buy. I busy myself hot gluing pencil cases and sharpeners into field sketch pads. But I made this back scratcher a while ago. It’s a large comb nailed to a 5/16″ bamboo rod. I wrapped some wire around the business end and slipped a piece of copper tubing over the other end to keep the rod from splitting out. I need to make a new one. I wonder if that would qualify for the 
I signed up for yet another challenge, 
Just a 
It’s funny to me that today’s EDM challenge would be to draw your favorite tool. I wasn’t exactly sure how to draw cynicism or sarcasm, or even wit. Those are the tools that I use the most to pound through my day. My beautiful young bride just yesterday said to me, “When all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.” Well, she didn’t actually *SAY* it. Some character on television said it and she pointed at me and hollered, “AMEN!” As I innocently stared at her, deer in the headlight eyes and all, she proceeded to explain to me that I am so accustomed to being mistreated by people that I am suspicious of anyone being nice to me. She went on to suggest that I find some new tools with which to challenge the world so that I would quit beating the same dead horses. I let her rant on for a few minutes until she took a breath and I said, “I’m sorry, Baby, you’re right.” This is the sarcastic phrase I use to signal that I’m not going to argue with her and that we should skip straight to the “making up.” I may indeed need to find some new tools, but today, I’ll stick with the hammer.