Tackling the Leylands
around the house
Hatchet
It’s all the Boy has been talking about for the last few weeks.
“Daddy, can we get a hatchet?”
He was thinking about buying it with his own money; he was thinking about splitting the cost with us; he was thinking about it, talking about it, probably dreaming about it.
Today, we finally got it. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to pay any of his money for it because he’s got his eye on another Lego set, but when, after buying nails, concrete screws, pegboard hooks, and other things on the list, we finally headed over to the gardening section, his excitement brought a smile to both K and me.
The highlight of the afternoon, then, was teaching him how to use it.
Independence Day 2019
Monday
The day started with a ride back up to the north of the county to pick up my car.
I’d mapped the route on Strava, and it really didn’t seem so bad: 28km with nothing too intimidating in terms of ascents. But I’m not the cyclist I was 15 years ago. My legs aren’t what they used to be; my heart and lungs labor under what would have been the slightest effort at my fittest. And so when I hit the segment some Strava user named “Cleveland St. Climb – West,” it completely kills me.
It’s really pathetic. Look at this thing:
A mere half-kilometer that rises a mere 35-meters, with an average gradient of 8%. I finish in 3:08, with an average speed of 8.7 km/h. Of all the Stava users who have tackled that climb, I am the 386th fastest.
Details from my fitness tracker show just what a trial it was for me:
Ridiculously high pulse for a ridiculously slow speed. But I’m 46; I haven’t done serious exercise in years. I shouldn’t be surprised, and I’m not. But of course, I am.
When I got home, I did to the yellow bell bushes along our driveway what the ride did to me:
Three from Saturday
Friday
In the morning, I took the repairman’s advice from yesterday and started repairing (again) our dishwasher. How many honest repair guys will tell you, “You could fix this yourself and get the part cheaper on Ebay,” after giving you a quote of $354 for the repair? Not many. To be sure, he got his $80 trip/diagnostic fee, but honested himself out of another hundred bucks or so. Or perhaps he honested himself into more, for I’ll certainly never call anyone else .
The discharge pump was faulty, he said, and it came out this morning just as easily as he said it would. “There might be one or two screws down there — I can’t remember,” he said, “but then just rotate it and pull it out.” No screws — just a simple rotation and out it came.
In the afternoon, the neighborhood boys came over, and the Boy’s new Lego set came in, so there was only one thing to do.
Sunday
Polish lessons with the Boy in the morning.
Finishing up a project in the afternoon.
Thursday
Yesterday, we bought a new piece of furniture for Papa. He doesn't have a closet, so we bought him something like a wardrobe. And the door opened violently as we were taking it out of the house (owners moving -- everything must go!) and the door broke right at one of the joints. So first thing this morning: round up some clamps from a neighbor and get to gluing.
I added "fix cabinet door" to my summer to-do list just so I could check it off.
Next, the kitchen counters need resealing and repolishing. The Boy was eager to help. He chattered away the whole time about how important it was to take care of our granite ("Daddy, what's granite?") and how we were such good homeowners to be so conscientious about everything and how it's important to spray all the sealers and polishes evenly (shortly after I told him that -- he likes to do that as it makes him feel adult) and a thousand and one other things.
Late afternoon: K comes back and sets about making another cobbler from the blueberries that are now ripening like mad every day.
And the Boy had to get in on that as well.
Wednesday
Pulled it apart, checked for clogs, cleaned out a bit of gunk, put it back together, and reinstalled it.
Still not working.
Dishwasher Fun
The dishwasher stopped draining. This was what our kitchen looked like at about ten this morning as a result. My hope was that it was the discharge hose — I envisioned hopefully a hose blocked with some something that comes out of the hose when I blast water through it from the backyard garden hose. To get that hose removed required, obviously, removing the dishwasher. And then nothing came out of the hose. Which meant that the blockage was somewhere in the pump itself.
“It’s still under warranty,” I thought. “I’m not going to mess with it further and potentially void the warranty. I’ll just call and have Lowe’s make good on the three-year extended warranty we bought in 2016.” Only, it wasn’t an extended warranty: that would indicate an extension of the manufacturer’s one-year warranty. It gets extended. Lengthened. Stretched. Increased.
Lowe’s verbiage, which I didn’t understand until today, is “Protection Plan.” The protection plan kicks in from the date of purchase, which means for the first year, you’re doubly covered. Which means it’s not an extension but a layering. And the protection plan expired — you’ll probably guess — on May 31. We had 1,095 days of coverage, and 17 days later, we need it.
The upshot of this — if there is one — is that I can now feel free to tinker all I want without fear of voiding the warranty. Because there is none anymore.
The Boy, though, loved the whole process. “You need me to get behind the dishwasher?” was a common refrain.