EmPossibility

Plumbing problem

The problem presented itself as an odd moment. I heard the dog drinking and knew that there’s not SUPPOSED to be water where she was. ¹ However…it did not immediately click that I should go up the hill and check on it. I assumed she’d found one of Mama’s many plant pots full of water and went on with the art of weedeater wielding.

Much later that evening, I realized I’d never gone up the hill to check it out. No better time than before the sun drops, so off I went.

The dog was drinking out of a foot-deep freshwater manmade spring.

Say whuuuuut??!!??

Yeah, you read that right. Foot-deep. Freshwater. Manmade. Spring.

Heavy, heavy sigh. Scoop the water out of the hole and see what we’re dealing with.

Joy of joys. A pregnant pipe splice. Let’s clear the gunk away, shallwe? After rinsing the mud off and cutting through

this much tape, we’re left with this:

Which, honestly? was a relief to find. The pipe had truly burst – it wasn’t one of Daddy’s Engineering Projects. After draining the rest of the water out of the hole, the repair looked to be a simple one – 3/4″ coupling, a few feet of pipe, new 3/4″ x 1″ coupling, teflon tape and a screwdriver (to tighten the clamps down with).

Simple on paper. In reality, the couplings didn’t want to seat, I couldn’t get the pipe clamps tight enough and I asked Mama more than once to just call a plumber and let me move on with my life. I did everything right, I know I did…but the water kept spewing out.

There were four separate trips to Lowe’s AND Farmer’s Hardware stores. Lowe’s had the pipe and Farmer’s had the couplings.

I built the thing from the top down first – 3/4 inline coupler to pipe to 3/4 x 1″ adapter. It leaked.

I pulled it apart and cut another section of pipe. Rewrapped the coupler in an OBSCENE amount of teflon tape and built it again.

Still leaking.

I built the thing from the bottom up – 3/4 coupler to pipe to 1″ x 34″ adapter.

Yup, you guessed it. More leaking.

It was Mama’s (Don’t call him Boyfriend, that word is too juvenile) who called attention to The Daily Duuuuuh:

Although the pipe clamps have a slot for a screwdriver, they also work REALLY well with a socket wrench.

by the rope swing on top of the bank [↩]

Wordy Wednesday: I just realized edition

I just realized I didn’t take a picture of the boys on the first day of school.

I just realized 99% of the people who read my blog but don’t follow me on Facebook won’t get the adamant refusal to get rid of the mower of doom.¹ ²

I just realized it’s noon and not raining anymore. Guess I should get outside and fix that plumbing leak and finish fixing the mower.³

I just realized that school for me starts tomorrow. Books bought: zero. GO ME!⁴

I just realized that I pretty much spent the summer breaking my own rule of “My content, my website”. It’s so much EASIER to spout a blurb on FB than it is to wax profound on a point. However…every word I’ve uttered is now THERE and not HERE. Not good if you’re a regular reader – and I do apologize. Now that I have My Precious, The Godphone⁵ I think I’ve figured a way to do both.

It’s been giving me problems. Lots of problems. But at least they’re DIFFERENT problems. [↩]
Also missing: the photo description. Adding that now, but in case you were curious, the picture is of My Daddy and My Boys. [↩]
Wasn’t kidding about those problems. [↩]
to amazon.com, that is [↩]
htc evo and I adore it with a white hot fiery passion [↩]

The Sound of Silence

The first day of school.

I pulled into the parking lot.

You may have heard me say the words “n00b” and “helicopter”.

Daniel just wanted me to slow down while he rolled out of the truck and into his classroom, but Joe wanted that personal touch.

I have work to do, but I’m just sitting here, watching the rain drizzle outside my window and appreciating the lack of blaring TV, incessant beeps and of course….

You’re welcome!!!!

~~~~~~~~~

My refusal to get rid of the Mower of Doom can be explained

with one picture:

Daddy and the boys mowing

(Also, it still costs less to repair than to replace)

I’m a freezer-cleaning failure

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series I'm the man of the house.

We have three freezers. Two refrigerator/freezers and one upright deep-freeze. As you can imagine, every once in a while something gets shoved to the back and forgotten about.

Plus, the deep-freezer is not a frost-free model. This means that at LEAST once a year it needs to be emptied and shoved out on the porch to melt down – otherwise we end up with layers of crusty frozen ice and no shelf space. And let’s face it – if I get a bigger deep freezer, I COULD get rid of the second fridge. Maybe.

The kitchen freezer is full of Mom’s stuff. It is mostly un-marked, un-dated and generally questionable. The secondary freezer is full of kid-food. None of it is destined for the trash can. The back freezer is combination of both.

The answer, then, is to toss all of Mom’s un-marked and un-dated stuff and move my stuff into the kitchen freezer, right?

WRONG, FOOL!

It’s a sin to waste food. She’ll know I threw her stuff out. Trash day was yesterday and I don’t relish the scent of food decaying in the heat for a week. Even if the cans ARE at the street.

Someone come hold my hand. Please??!!??

Wordless Wednesday: Speechless

Wordless Wednesday: Speechless, originally uploaded by EmPossibility.

Signs point to NO

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series I'm the man of the house.

This is the hole my drying rack was standing in. I was going to walk down to the creek and get a bucket of sand (instead of dirt) until I found

the hideout of SWEET JESUS!!!!! the Mousekiller. (Approximately 18-24″ long blacksnake)

Oooookay. So I’ll weedeat instead. Only…

This is my bladeless weedeater cartridge.

Not pictured: its stringless cartridge cousin.

I can’t find the replacement blades, and would need to purchase a replacement string cartridge. Oh well…guess I’ll mow. Only…

this is the empty gas can.

Since the entire POINT of today’s exercise was to avoid going to the store I can only come to one conclusion:

I’m *not* doing yardwork today.

Wordless Wednesday: dry clothes edition

You’ll never believe what I just ate…

I read about it in the Winston-Salem Journal first.

A chocolate covered kreme-filled doughnut? Nah. I’m good, thanks.

In-store display of Cheerwine kreme-filled doughnuts

A chocolate covered Cheerwine kreme-filled doughnut? SIGN ME UP.

You know I bought them. I *had* to. You can only buy them by the half-dozen (which doesn’t sound nearly as cool as six-pack LOL) in NC and SC, so my PROFOUND apologies to my readers outside the Carolinas.

Doughnuts in the box

Yeah, the kids beat me to the photo op. Sorry about that y’all. Just pretend like there are two more doughnuts in the box, okay? And that the one in the top-left corner is intact…not sporting the scar of a finger digging in and raking off the top (and then running off and hiding, cackling gleefully).

Cheerwine kreme-filled doughnut on a plate

Who puts a doughnut on a plate? *I* do. Well, when I want to take a picture of it. You don’t need a picture of my hands wrapped around a doughnut, do you? And besides, the plate is necessary for this:

Inside the cheerwine kreme-filled doughnut

Now I know how to make super-pink frosting…just add some Cheerwine to it!

So, you wanna know how it tastes, right?

The first bite was blah. Kinda normal. A bit of doughnut, a smidge of frosting. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The second bite had a bit of the kreme in it. I got a faint hint of cherry behind the chocolate.

The third bite had the bulk of the kreme. Angels descended from heaven. A voice from Above said “This is my gift to you.” Chocolate, cherry, and pastry all combined in harmony. All the world held hands and sang. It was beautiful, truly beautiful.

The glory of that third bite was quickly followed by my body screaming “SUGAR! SUGAR ALERT ZOMG HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND WOMAN??!!??”

The final bite was a repeat of the first – doughnut, chocolate icing. It was the perfect follow-up to the sugar overload.

Overall:

This is the first Krispy Kreme doughnut I’ve had where one was truly enough. A gracious plenty.

Requiem for a sofa

It was ugly. Not butt-ugly, but…didn’t go with anything else ugly. A dual-reclining heavy monstrosity that was a pain in the behind to clean under. Blue, with peach plaid striping and a pineapple in each square.

The sofa was in the livingroom when I moved back home from Little Rock. Like everything else that has happened in my life, that monstrosity was waiting for me. The armrests were the perfect height for me to rest my pregnancy-swollen ankles on and still keep an eye on Daniel. The dual recliner not only meant that I could change positions, but that Alannah could have a sleepover and they could watch TV and still have a place to stretch out and sleep.

The ugly meant that my heart was not shattered when something inevitably got spilled on it. I blotted the spots dry and every few months I would wield the upholstery attachment on the carpet cleaner, rendering it fresh-smelling and relatively un-stained (though nothing would ever completely remove the stain of my entire cup of coffee splashed across one cushion).

Me sitting on the blue sofa

This is one of the first pictures I ever let Daniel take with *my* camera. That was (is) my favorite position for reading – curled up against the armrest.

Daniel's favorite sick spot

When he was sick, Daniel liked to sit “in my spot”. (Yes, french toaststicks do make it all better, why do you ask?)

(Yes, the sofa was blue. No, I didn’t realize the difference in color tone in the pictures until after I’d started writing. Yes, I’m lazy enough to leave it. Daniel’s pic was taken with a phone cam, we’ll leave it at that.)

Alas, Mama did not love the Blue Monstrosity. It was too big, too heavy, too ughLEE, and didn’t match. (For the record, I agree with ALL of those points.) She declared that it should be relegated to storage and the “new” sofa installed.

I objected, highly. Yes, the sofa is big and heavy and doesn’t match. And my heart doesn’t break when something gets spilled. Yes, it may be YOUR house, but you NEVER spend time in the livingroom and WE DO.

I lost the argument, natch.

Daddy hauled it off one day and replaced it with a nightmare. He told me the Blue Monstrosity was safe, but wouldn’t tell me where it was. He hauled it off before I could clean it and wrap it in plastic, sealed with a kiss. (Smart man. He knew I’d try to bring it back.)

And then the accident happened, and our world was made of upsidasium for a while. We cleaned out The Big House – no sofa. We cleaned out the barn – no sofa. We cleaned out The Little House – no sofa. Finally, we made it to the garage at The Little House. There, standing on end was the Blue Monstrosity.

My heart lept for joy….until I touched the fabric. It has been out there for two years. Yes, it’s been dry…but remember, that sofa needed to be cleaned. I made calls – everyone wants to reupholster it until they find out it’s a double-recliner. Then the price doubles.

Yes, I already have replaced The Nightmare with something more family-friendly. No, I really didn’t have room for the Blue Monstrosity. That’s not the point.

Vaya con Dios, my friend. You were so comfortable, and I miss you.