My handy husband

Dennis, who often talks about how he wishes he was more handy with stuff around the house, managed to pull off an extraordinary home repair yesterday, so I just have to brag about it. Two weeks ago, when I was making a big batch of brown rice in my trusty rice cooker, which cooks rice perfectly every time, I neglected to turn the cooker so any steam coming out of the vent would blow over our sink and not under our nice, new maple cabinets. I ran downstairs to throw in a load of laundry, came back up and was answering the age old question -- "What's for dinner?" -- for the thousandth time, when I turned to see the steam coming out full blast and hitting the very edge of our cabinet. There, to my horror, was the veneer of our cabinet lifted up off the wood and warped. I literally sat down on the floor and cried. Our kitchen renovation 18 months ago was a huge and expensive undertaking, so to see a very visible cabinet warped and ruined left me beyond upset.

We talked to the cabinet company since it seems ridiculous that a normal household appliance could do this to a quality cabinet, or at least what we thought was a quality cabinet. We talked to Lowe's about how me might go about replacing the entire cabinet, which would have required not only a carpenter but an electrician since there are lights in and around the cabinet. We talked to friends and relatives who are good at this sort of thing. Finally, two nights ago, Dennis took an iron, some wax paper and cardboard, cabinet glue that he shot up under the veneer using an old nasal medicine dispenser, a block of wood, some borrowed clamps and a whole lot of chutzpah and went to work on the cabinet. Twenty-four hours later the cabinet is almost as good as new. The very slight deformation that remains was easily masked by brown furniture pencil. Unless you're looking for it, you would never know there was damage. As far as I'm concerned, that's handy enough for me. What a relief. Now if I can just stop twitching every time someone mentions the word "rice."