Sue and the Gamaflunken

It was Shauna's birthday, and Sue was getting ready to bake an apple crisp, which is a fave with Sha.

It was time to peel and slice apples. I attack potatoes and carrots from time to time, but, as far as I can recall, I have never abused apples in this appalling manner. I wasn't finding it all that easy to hold on to those juicy little ***s but I was doing my best. After a few minutes, Sue finished whatever else she was doing and came by to help.

I was working in earnest, I tells yiz, but she was doing about two apples to my one.

The thing is that she wasn't trying to be speedy. She is just pretty dexterous and efficient at manual tasks such as these.

Back in the days when she was pretty well a one-woman show around the house while I had a demanding job to keep me occupied, I got used to sometimes seeing the efficiency with which she worked. I am to be forgiven for thinking  that her pace was normal. 

Then, one day I saw her chopping something or other side-by-side with her sister. Sis worked at a methodical and deliberate pace, something like I do. I have also seen others apply themselves to these sorts of tasks at the cottage. They also did it more like me and not like Sue.

Did I tell you that she doesn't try to be speedy? She just is.

Somehow, it must be connected to her perception. She is the one in this family who has a mechanical bent, although I am not sure if mechanical is the right word for it. I just don't know what the right word is.

If there's a knot to unravel or a doohickey to attach to a gamaflunken, she seems to grasp the logistics easily. I pretty well learned to not to bother wasting time trying to do it myself and now just pass things over to her right away. Although I might be able to figure out some knotty problem given enough time, passing it over to Sue saves time, energy and frustration.

They say we all have our talents, and this is one of Sue's. It sure ain't one o'mine.

Addendum: An Unplanned Case in Point from Christmas Day

We were packing up to leave Sha's on Christmas Day. It was still only just around mid morning, but the kids were anxious to get to their Dad's house because they knew that their stepsisters were waiting on them so they could dive into their festivities. Before Sue and I were packed, the kids were ready to go and headed out to the car to begin scraping the ice off the car, so that I could drive them over. That's right! We had freezing rain overnight from Christmas Eve and well into Christmas Day. 

The kids chipped and scraped for quite a while. Then the windshield wiper came apart. Darned if I could reattach the doggone thing. Fortunately, their Dad lives just around the corner, so I managed to drive the short distance without the wiper even though it was still precipitating. I hopped out while there, cleaned the windshield manually, and drove back to Sha's to pack the car with our things

After I got there I once again tried in vain to reattach the wiper. I gave it up and left it for Sue. She fixed it in lickety-split time. Even though it was the driver side wiper, she knew enough to attack the problem from the passenger side. Easy peasy.

Addendum 2: A Quick pic of my icy den window along with tree shadows.