Slightly Off the Mark

I'm not as active as a volunteer firefighter as I used to be, because over the years my body has been beat down pretty good ... by doing yard work.

Other than a couple of back injuries, I've never really been hurt on that hazardous job. Firefighting, I mean. Yard work, now that's the task that leaves me moaning on the ground, and not in a good way.

You ever try to mow with this stuff on?

With firefighting, you wear tons of protective gear, which changes the most likely medical problems to heat stroke and heart attacks. With yard work, you wear shorts and a tank top, and in some cases hold a can of beer. In addition, with firefighting you tend to have the topic of safety going on in your mind:

"Say, I'm in zero visibility, crawling over a burned out floor, shoving a metal pike into the ceiling when I don't know if the electricity is still on." It's just an example. I've never pulled a ceiling while crawling on the floor, so don't sweat it.

When I'm doing yard work, I have other topics on my mind:

"I wonder how long I could let this grow before the lawn police arrest me?"

An action shot.

But the biggest reason for this seeming paradox is that fire just doesn't give a darn about me, while Mother Nature hates me.

Oh, yeah. Mother Nature is a vindictive bit ... being. She hears me complain. I complain a lot.

"It's too cold." "I hate bugs." "That's not rain: It's a cloud of pollen!"

Once, as I was mowing in the front yard, one of our trees bent down and beaned me with a limb. It had nothing to do with me not paying attention. It's also the only time in my adult life that I did a full somersault.

But recently I learned a new twist: My furniture is in cahoots with Mother Nature. Much of it is wood, after all, an increasingly expensive resource that doesn't just grow on trees. I'm always shoving furniture around, banging into it, and of course sitting on it. This axes of evil (see what I did, there?) recently tried hard to do me in.

I was mowing in the back yard, near the lilacs I've horribly neglected. If you were a lilac and your caretaker doesn't trim you or keep other trees from growing up in the middle of you, wouldn't you be upset? I don't know, either.

As I pushed the mower around one of the bushes, it reached it's driest, deadest branch out and clobbered me in the arm.

The evidence.

The above photo is my arm, just so you know. Now that I think of it, maybe this is what the far side of my forearm always looks like--I usually can't see it. But no, my wife takes great joy in pouring peroxide on my fresh wounds, and when they're old I don't scream like that.

The very next day, I noticed the TV remote was missing. (Just hang on, it's connected.) No big deal: It can always be found by sweeping a hand between the cushion and the inside of the couch's side. We put it on the arm, it slides down, and Bob's your uncle.

(That's just an expression: I don't mean to offend anyone who actually has an Uncle Bob.)

Now, the couch is only a few years old, and we really like it. It has two recliners, something that's always seemed like rich luxury to me, but boy, am I glad for them--especially on bad back days. But when you recline and unrecline and plop down on something all the time, there's bound to be some wear and tear.

As near as I can tell, a nail popped loose and just hung there, between the side and the cushion. Waiting. For me.

I swept my hand down there, just like I always do. What happens when something suddenly stabs into your hand? You withdraw your hand, don't you? Which I did, but the nail had already embedded itself into my finger. I'm pretty sure it bounced off the inside of a fingernail.

I'll spare you the photos.

Have you ever bled so much that you couldn't stop it even with pressure, elevation, and cold? It was just a finger, for crying out loud, which is exactly how I cried. Out loud. Luckily no one was home, but that meant I had to do the peroxide thing myself, and it's not nearly as much fun that way.

Two injuries in two days, on the same arm. And what swung that nail out to grab me? That's right: the couch's wooden frame. I got even by bleeding on it, but still. Also, I hurt my back again jumping halfway across the living room while waving my hand wildly, and later I had to clean up that blood.

Luckily I'm used to cleaning up my own blood.

Don't doubt the connection: The truth is out there ... and in there. Mother Nature is out to get me, and there's nowhere to hide. Today the couch--tomorrow the bed.

There's a thought to sleep on.

When I'm going to give blood, I prefer advanced notice.

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Our car just hit 100,000 miles--and its fifth birthday, at the same time. I've become a big believer in preventative maintenance, so I brought it in for all that hundred thousand mile stuff, including a change out of the cabin air filter that I didn't realize cars had until I researched it. Hey, we all have allergies--even the dog.

Spark plugs, radiator flush, tire rotation, oil change, fluid checks--We have a lot of driving to do this summer, and I want to take care of the car that's taking care of us. Especially since we can't afford a second one. Some of you might remember that a few years ago our Ford Focus fell victim to a young gentlemen who thought the answer to being sun-blinded in heavy traffic was to cross his finger and hit the gas.

So we bought a Ford Focus, which we love even more. But five years and six digits is middle aged by car standards, so we had to give it a colonoscopy, check its cholesterol level, and start it on some acid reflux medicine.

Turns out we also need new brakes. This is no surprise--so far as I can tell, the brakes have never been replaced on the Escape, which we bought when it was about two years old. Anyone who's ever done a lot of driving on the interstate knows that, no matter how defensively you drive, you're going to have to work those brakes! It's almost as bad as driving local roads at dusk and dawn, when the deer are out.

Also, I recently had to brake for a turkey. 

 This is not a complaint, because let's be honest: I've been going through my own 100,000 mile problems in recent years. I've had to get my fluids checked, some of my spinal column needs replaced, and my paint job has been fading. Sometimes the car and I sit around, sipping Metamucil, and complaining about kids these days and their oversized pickup truck tires.

Besides, it's an incentive to push my writing career harder. According to my estimation, to pay for this work I need to sell at least three hundred books, or four thousand short stories, or take a part time job washing cars at the dealership.

Or I could do all the car maintenance work myself ... but I'm not sure our medical insurance would cover that.

Remember when your utilities were gas, electric, water, and maybe phone, and the idea of having the world at your fingertips and a screen in your hands was something for rich people or science fiction characters?

No, me neither. But I got a taste of first world stone age when our internet went out at the beginning of this month. How great is it that Mediacom convinced me to get my home phone service through them, then told me I'd be out for two weeks after both it and our internet went dark? It's so great, it makes me want to just injure my back and lay there, unable to use the internet or talk on the phone, or move. That's how great it was.

And that's the irony of it, that it failed at a time when I was flat on my back and could have used it most.

(Truth in advertising: It actually hurt to lay flat on my back. I was in more of a fetal position.) 

 But there's a bright side: By the time the pain eased enough for me to do anything at all, I worked on writing or--wait for it--reading. In the week and a half or so we've gone without, I wrote a submission outline for my newest novel, and got halfway through a final polish on the manuscript. I'm also halfway through the first novel I've read all summer.

That's the good news. The bad news is that when I do do internet stuff (and we all know there's a lot of online do-do), I often ended up using my phone. I didn't think twice about it until I got a notice that, 25% into the month, I'd used up 75% of my data. For you older people, that's like gossiping on a party line until the other users start yelling for you to get off the phone.

That's why I'm stealing the internet you're getting this from right now. *ahem* Borrowing. It's also why I'm not online as much as usual, even though I'm still limited in other things I can do. First world problems, yeah, but I'm paying for my first world stuff with money I earned by helping other people with their first world problems.

And when I called the people providing me with that first world service, who out of fairness I shouldn't name, they said a serviceman would be right there, in about two weeks.

Thank you, Mediacom. Thankyouverymuch.

Basically I'm telling you this because the service guy is supposed to be here today (they moved it up three days, so why am I complaining?) I don't want to vent on the repair guy, because it isn't his fault, so I'm venting on you. There. Vented.

How things go today will determine what kind of mood I'm in tomorrow ... but either way my smart phone won't be very smart for the rest of the month, and I suspect M******m isn't going to reimburse me for that.

"I feel like something's just crushing me." Kidding! This was taken after my sinus surgery.

When I opened my Blogger account this morning, I found that all my visitor stats had disappeared. (They popped back into existence a few hours later, having apparently undergone some kind of existential crisis. I've been there.)

One would be tempted to blame Blogger, or the internet in general. However, in the last two days I've broken a brand new pipe wrench, a washing machine, a copper water pipe, a vent hood, my back, and the entire water supply to my house. Can't speak for the new water heater: I haven't advanced to the point of igniting the pilot.

So for the moment I'm not prepared to blame anyone else for stuff going wrong in my  vicinity.

On an all-too-related note, you might not be hearing from me for a few days.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

I love January! Said no one, ever.

Okay, some people actually do love winter, which just goes to show you: Northern Indiana needs better mental health screening. I used to take part in winter activities, but I was young then, and young people just haven’t learned that being miserable isn’t an adventure.

When I was a kid, I loved sledding, snowball fights, and not having to pay the utility bills. Well, I liked them … I never did warm up all that much to winter. Then, one day when I was about fourteen, I came in from building a snow block fort to discover my hands and toes had themselves become snow blocks. My cheeks had taken on a white, Frosty-like sheen.

My face cheeks. Get your mind out of my insulated underwear.

Thawing out involved a process not unlike being stabbed with a thousand white-hot pins and needles, and from that time on I couldn’t stay in cold weather for long before the affected parts started to feel like they’d been shotgunned full of rock salt. It took all the fun out of it.

Today, my favorite wintertime activities involve a book and a cup of hot chocolate. So January does have an advantage: I can catch up on my reading. But that doesn’t really make up for the gas bill.

I had to exchange the plug on my old dryer with the plug on my new one, which I bought for $25 at my mom's church. In other words, electrical work. There were plenty of online guides on how to do it, but here's the rub: They all explained how to replace a three point plug with a four point plug. But the dryer I bought is actually older than the one it's replacing -- I had to replace the newer plug with the older plug, not the other way around.

Very, very carefully, I took the old new plug apart, matched it with the connections on the new old plug, and put them together exactly as the old new one had been put in when it was new, not old. I double and triple checked, and then, making sure not to touch the dryer or any metal as I did so, I plugged the unit back in.

No sparks, explosion, fire. No singed mustache.Happy and incredulous after only a few hour's of work, I turned the dryer on to make sure it would actually dry stuff.

Nothing happened.

No power. No idea why.

SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK

In honor of my son-in-law coming over to replace the toilet in my house—as far as I know, the old one was original equipment—here’s the story from a few months back, about what happened that led to its retirement.

The best possible advice about home improvement comes in two simple words:

Call. A. Professional.

Okay, that’s three words. I screwed it up, just as I screw up every attempt to fix my home’s ancient and decrepit pluming. It’s a story old as time, just like my house.

I used to be smart about it. I used to rent. Sure, there was the possibility of an uncaring landlord who wouldn’t fix something, but at least it was on them, and not me.

But nooooo …. I had to buy a house.

My first attempt at home repair was to replace a leaky trap underneath my kitchen sink. A trap is the little curvy thing that keeps sewer gases from coming up, and also serves as the last line of defense against permanently lost wedding rings. My trap was of metal made in the 18 something’s, which was now no line of anything.

I didn’t know plumbing metal could get brittle. When I couldn’t get the couplings to turn, I hooked on a wrench and gave it a good, hard pull. The trap exploded in my face. It was a trap!

That’s not a metaphor—it literally exploded in my face. You’d think, after rinsing out my eyes and bandaging the cuts, I would have recognized that as a sign. But without money to pay a professional I persevered, which is to say continued failing.

Fast forward 23 years.

A faint sound coming from the toilet turned out to be a small leak of water, constantly going down the drain. There are far worse places the water could go, but it was still a waste. I looked into the back of the toilet, where all the fun innards are, and realized the easiest way to fix the problem would be to just take all the mechanical stuff out and replace it in one piece.

The very definition of “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.

At the store, I found exactly what was needed: the whole thingamajig, almost totally assembled and ready to be plugged right in. It even said on the box the two most important things you want to read: “Fits all toilets”, and “easy installation”. It could be installed in minutes, the packaging explained, which I automatically expanded to hours.

My wife checked the first aid kit and retreated to a safe position that was close enough to hear cries of pain. In truth, she’s better at this stuff than I am once she’s tried it the first time, but this particular job she hadn’t done before. I should have just left it to her, anyway.

At first the dog, who wasn’t around last time this happened, followed me around with wagging tail. After the first hour of hearing me talk to myself and read instructions out loud Bae continued to follow me, but kept his distance and wore a puzzled expression.

The first thing you should do is turn off the water to the toilet. Modern toilet installations have a valve you can turn. Mine was installed in the early 1900’s by a blind kid and two drunken monkeys. All untrained.

After some searching in the basement, it became clear I’d have to turn off all the water in the house, and fortunately there is a valve for that. Afterwards I marched back upstairs, emptied the toilet, and watched it fill up again.

Another trip downstairs. Yes, the main water line was turned off. Maybe it was water still in the lines? I opened a downstairs tap. Nothing came out. Upstairs, I flushed the toilet. It began filling again.

Another trip downstairs. Carefully following the maze of piping revealed that there was a way to isolate the toilet after all, by turning two different valves. Unfortunately, that shut off water to the furnace, which uses hot water radiators to heat the house; the water was back-feeding from the radiators into the toilet. Apparently it never occurred to the two drunken monkeys that the toilet might need to be fixed during winter.

An hour in, and the new packaging had not yet been opened.

You have to reach under the back of the toilet and unscrew stuff to take the internal fixtures out, something I didn’t know until after opening the instructions. The day before I’d hurt my back shoveling snow, so curling up on the floor of my miniscule bathroom was a new adventure in pain. (It was at about this time that the dog started keeping its distance.)

Still, removing the old stuff turned out to be easy once I figured out how. The biggest problem was that all the water in the back didn’t drain out until I disconnected the water line, then it all came out at once. Not to worry: I always have a stack of towels waiting. Better water than blood.

Then I took a closer look at the instructions for the “easy” installment of my new whatchamacallit:

There were nineteen steps. Nineteen.

And get this: The stuff that was all together, so that all I had to do was put it in? It had to be taken apart first. Yeah. There were three individual whojamadiggys in the package, and one was a little setup of two washers, and two plastic nuts, already connected to a long, curved plastic … thing. They all had to be separated. One rubber washer turned out to be two washers, which were apparently made one inside the other to save money. It didn’t say how to separate them. By then I was ready to use a chain saw.

Next week: It gets worse.