Tuesday, October 24, 2006

'Tis the Season to be Jolly!


These are three of Santa's elves. They were riding shotgun in his sleigh last December when it took friendly incoming somewhere over Iraq. They are shown here rejoicing over not having to manufacture toys all year at the North Pole. Upon hearing of the unfortunate demise of the three elves, George Bush phoned the polar workshop and said, "You're doin' good work there, Santa. And I know it's hard, hard, hard."

Sidebar: What with the melting of the (northern) polar icecap, Santa's workshop is currently under renovation for the installation of pontoons.

Thus the Holiday Season thrusts itself upon us, outfitted in the trappings of ghosts and ghouls and 672 lb. pumpkins. From this day hence until the 1st of January, 2007, we will be swept up in the arms of festivity, tainted only by the slightest traces of gluttony and avarice. The coming of Halloween signals the need to get that Thanksgiving planning under way. And we have .... Bookworm and I .... we have.

Noapologies and her partner are coming for Thanksgiving dinner, plus her parents, plus a couple other fine ladies. That will be turkey for eight. I can handle that. A quick check of my photo files indicates I did exactly that last year, in this house, and for the same folks. Dangerously close to establishing a tradition here.

Christmas? Daughter Kelly and grandson Morgan are scheduled. No one else is solid so far. My ex-wife of forty years ago is NOT on the Xmas guest list this year. There's always something about it that just doesn't quite work out. Nuff said about that! Oof! I hope Erin and Jessica will show.

Back to Halloween! When I was a second grader at the Smyrna School, the school had a pageant(?), play(?) on Halloween evening. There may have been between 10 and 12 students ranging through the first eight grades. I was the only second grader (a status that remained unchanged until I hit the eighth grade, where I was joined by the school bully, Norman Kruse, he having failed backward by a grade or two over the years). I had two important contributions to the evening's program. Firstly, I had memorized the poem about Lil Orphan Annie ("And the Goblins will get you if you don't look out!"), which I recited with a heart full of terror at the prospect of screwing it up. And secondly there was a scary play of some sort where I played the part of the policeman who came onstage with a billyclub (broom) and clobbered the evil guy (eight grader Jim Booher) and dragged him off stage by his collar. (Is that the source of the police term 'making a collar'?) I lifted his shoulders clear of the floor and he sort of scrabbled himself off stage pushing with his feet. Afterwards, the 'big boys' disappeared into the dark and tipped over a few outhouses. The next morning, their fathers brought them back to town and made them tip the outhouses back into place. Trick or Treating was not a concept we knew of.


Wednesday, October 11, 2006

I am needing a haircut ....


The leaves are 'turning'. Long nights are coming. Neither Bookworm nor myself are fond of the winter season. Our one cross-country ski trip to Montana (many years ago) was our singular gesture towards winter-shaped activities. A winter-shaped activity - in my view - is any enterprise where you go out into the cold, dampish world and cause your unguarded body to exceed your God Given speed limit.

So today I am going to get a haircut. It will not ward off the advance of winter. BUT! When I have a fresh haircut, I look like I'm going faster than I looked like I was going before the haircut. A good ten mile per hour difference. So I can stand still on a pair of skies and look like I'm going cross-country at 10 MPH. I think. Maybe.

Actually it's a vanity thing having to do with looking as young and spiffy as possible on an evening when Dr. Bookworm is hosting the KUUF Worship Committee monthly meeting. Mostly 'ladies', I believe. Therefore, as a valued property of Dr. Bookworm's, I need to appear as though I were still gaining in value.

Actually, it's just that I'm overdue for a good clipping. And Gary (my barber) needs to make a living. And I am part of that scenario. He has been cutting my hair for maybe a quarter of a century. And today he does it again. Takes ten years off my 'look'.

'Actually' is one of Allie's favorite words [surely you didn't think I would write a whole post without mentioning him?]. When he returned to us Tuesday morning, he came proudly bearing his ticket from the Corn Maze out t'wards Silverdale. And I remarked, "So your Mom took you to the Corn Maze, ay?"
"EC-chewely it was Muu-Muu. EC-chewely it was my Mom's Mom."
This morning he arrived with an alien monster embedded in the flesh on the backside of his right knee.
"EC-chewely, Grampa, it is so little it can not be seen with the naked eye."

Allie does not use contractions when he speaks.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Blessing the Critters


This Sunday past, the Kitsap Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship conducted its first ever (as far as I know) Blessing of the Animals. Bookworm decided that grandson Allie should bring his beloved kitty 'Pumpkin' to the fledgling event. To this end, she bought a collar and leash for the cat and pledged that she would 'build' a cat carrier to convey 'Pumpkin' to his/her momentous meeting with the Unitarians. In the couse of nailing down the arrangements for Sunday morning, I mentioned this building project to Allie's other grandmother.

Saturday afternoon Bookworm and I motored to the outback of Port Orchard to lunch at the Victorian Rose Tea Room. During the drive, she began verbalizing some of her carrying cage construction plans .... something to do with towels(?). Over the span of a lifetime, I have had several occasions that required containment of a cat. I was seldom successful. So visions of Pumpkin loose in the Fellowship Hall ... possibly pursued by ferocious canids .... led me to propose that I buy a cheap carrying cage. Bookworm seemed happy to be off the hook -- and on the way home from lunch we stopped at PetCo and bought a nice carrying cage.

Later that afternoon Bookworm called the other grandmother to finalize something or other and LO!, 'other grandmother' had also gone to PetCo and bought the exact same carrying cage.

Come Sunday morning we met Allie and his Mom at the Fellowship for the 11:15 service. Turned out Al was the only kid at that service ... and Pumpkin was the only cat -- in the company of a baker's half dozen or so dogs. The service was sparsely attended by other than the pet owners present ... which was a bit of a downer. [NoApologies, your folks were there.]

All in all, I enjoyed the event (and the 'singing' of one of the dogs). Allie paraded his cat up for the blessing and he and Bookworm went forward to say a few words in memory of our old dog Dakota.

My favorite moment came when the lay leader asked if there were any guests present who would like to introduce themselves and Allie bounced to his feet, faced the congregation, and - with a gesture towards her - announced "My Mom!" I really appreciate that he is aware of the procedures and at ease with taking the responsibility on himself to see that she was introduced.

We do have to speak to him about not trying to start two-way conversations with the Minister while she's in the middle of her sermon.


Tuesday, October 03, 2006

A Burning Issue


I am duly aware that there are a double handful of burning issues in today's news that cry out for a touch of my attention. I am also duly aware that these burning issues will get a big touch of attention from the likes of John Stewart, Keith Oberman, and the late-night talkshow hosts. So I am inclined to let all these appealing targets wander over into someone else's shooting gallery. And I will address a personal smoldering issue that I feel certain no one else will touch upon. Not even remotely.

Poltergeists in the Plumbing or Hey, Maw, I never saw it comin'!

I have noticed, over the full course of my life, that plumbing is a delicate assortment of checks and balances and that they slightest touch to any part of it can have serious consequences.

Plumbing is the natural home of poltergeists. When there is no damage to be done elsewhere, they retire to the relative peace and quite of good a p-trap or shower drain, or loosely rolled garden hose (even). And ill will befall any who disturb them. That was me. I disturbed them. Ill befell me.

The toilet seat on the small downstairs bathroom fell to wrack and ruin. The seat part came totally loose from the hinging part .... broken loose.
The hinge fasteners going down through the porcelin were magnificently corroded. I knew there were easily removeable plastic fasteners just out of sight on the other end of these bolts. In my imagination.

Turns out these plastic fasteners were encased in corrosion generated by the metal bolts and had become, so to speak, 'one with the bolts'. A zen sort of oneness .... impenetrable. I sweated and swore for a half hour while uselessly wielding various screwdrivers and wrenches and pliers. A lot of pain, no gain.

Idea number 2: lie down on the floor so that I can see the plastic fasteners and using the arm not being laid upon to cut the plastic with my very sharp box-knife. Fifteen minutes more, a lot of sweat, breath rasping, absolutely no progress. So I decide to get up. Oops!

I am jammed between the wall and the stool .... I'm in an 's' shape and my butt is against a box of who knows and I cannot wiggle my way back out. I can't lift myself because I'm laying on my lifting arm and it's flat on the floor. After much flailing around with my free arm, I manage to get a pressure grip on the far side of the stool and lift enough to get my down-arm into action. Extraction was a success from there.

Now I'm running into hour two and everything is right where it was when I started.

This story is much longer than I thought and I have to get me downstairs and prepare Dr. Bookworm's evening repast for when she gets home at 7:20 after a seven client day.

Okay - back again. At this point my highly skilled back is against the wall and my pipefitting manhood stands in serious question. What, I ask myself, would a 'days work for a day's pay' navyyard pipefitter do in an emergency like this(?). And I answered myself, "Time to break out the hacksaw!"

It's easy to say 'time to break out the hacksaw' .... six words, mostly one-syllable. It's quite another thing to actually 'break out the hacksaw'. This line of action presupposes that you have some foggy idea where the hacksaw is. I presupposed it would be in the toolbox ... it being a tool and all you know. It wasn't. So I backed my car out of the garage so's I could launch a frontal attack on the misc storage area established therein.

Ten minutes of unstacking boxes and prying through things, finally produced my trusty, rusty, probably second-hand in the first place hacksaw. With that in hand, I made a second foray into the bathroom and proceeded to hack the heads off the bolts. Sounds easy in the telling. Ain't in the doing. I had to get enough 'play' in the bolts to slip the blade in between the porcelin and the underside of the bolt heads. More grunting and groaning and swearing and finally the sawing began. Normal hacksawing is kind of done in the open with a certain high-spirited free movement of the saw back and forth. This hacksawing was in a different dimension. A pinched and cramped and blade-jamming dimension.

But eventually there were two PINGS! and two bolt heads had gone flying. And I could barely breathe anymore. Wheeze, wheeze, wheeze! The piteous sound of victory over a water closet.

I quickly installed the sparkling new white toilet seat and was so flushed with success that I trotted up to the master bathroom and replaced the old showerhead and repaired the gizmo under one of the sinks that makes the plunger/stopper work.

I do not know where I went wrong. I don't know where that plumbing poltergeist was sleeping when I apparently awoke and irritated the scurvy devil. But he rose up against me and smote me mightily .... the very next day (Saturday).

In the evening hours, Dr. Bookworm retired to her bath and, on completing that sojourn, pulled the plug. Sitting downstairs where I was enjoying my dinner of pasta, I heard a strange and suspicious sound issuing from the little bathroom. A sloshing, wet sort of sound. I was up with a bound (and forgetting to breathe) and dashed to the bathroom door. Gadzooks!

From beneath the hard-won new white toilet seat, water was pouring out onto the bathroom floor and beginning to run out onto the hallway rug. I tore through the house looking for my squeegee mop .... found it finally .... then another search for the bucket .... didn't find it and had to select a substitute. Then spent twenty minutes mopping and removing the water trapped in the bathroom. Breathing hard again.

The poltergeist had struck back with a vengence. Complete plumbing blockage. He won, I lost.

On Sunday, the Roto-Rooter man came to make what was bad good again. The Roto-Rooter man is likely expensive on his normal workdays .... but he is into the financial stratosphere on Sundays. He dug down to the septic tank and pulled the cover where he could put in his Rooter. The Rooter went in about 24 inches and then set up a dreadful shrieking .... causing rooter-man to yank it back out with a puzzled look and the statement, "Gee, don't know what that hit ... it can usually go right through a big root."

So he got back on the shovel and started digging out the pipe leading to the house. The problem was quickly uncovered. Two feet beyond the septic tank the four inch plastic drain piping had collapsed .... collapsed and pinched flat. So $60 per quarter hour rooter-man drove back to his homebase and got replacement piping and fittings. He fixed it all in two hours and forty-five minutes beginning to end and the bill was $669.

That is the work of the Devil. Or at least of his agent, the Plumbing Poltergeist. It was a hard fought game and though I seem to have eventually won ... I was definitely in over my head.

Never touch your plumbing. Ever.

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