what a frickin' day!

Amongst other things, it has been a comedy of errors today.

So, I have had this hot and cold thing going on since my last wasp sting. At the start, I was always feeling cold, while the arm that was stung was hot. I was wearing polar fleece sweat pants and my old and heavily patched quilt-lined muskoka dinner jacket all the time. Now, over the last couple of days, I suddenly feel hot and start sweating. I have also been sleeping pretty hard, but it is tough to wake up. Today, I said bye to the boy before he went to wait for the bus from bed. I did not get up until 8:00.

Then I was up and moving and cold. I made a coffee and put on the dinner jacket then went to sit outside. I was hot. Took off the jacket, I was cold. Fine. Then I went to finish closing the pool. Every tool I brought was the wrong one. Pliers, too big. Socket driver, too small. Drill, wrong bit and dead battery. I knocked the huge and heavy filter off its base. And of course, you cannot just slide it back on, because the base just keeps sliding. So, I grab two points that look like they will not break when I lift the huge and heavy filter to put it back on. Miraculously, nothing apparently went wrong.

Then the phone rings. I trot back to the house and answer. It is the wife. The boy texted her and said he had thrown up at school, can I get him? Yeah, sure. I just need to put everything away. Off I go.

Halfway there I feel queasy. Now, the boy has vomited on and off for the last couple of days. Maybe my hot-cold thing is a bug I may have picked up from him. That is funny. A bug. Get it. Ha, ha, ha. I was stung by a wasp. One way or another it is a bug. Ha, I kill me.

Anyway, the queasiness passes. I get the boy. He sounds and looks like crap. He tells me what happened: He was eating lunch and half way through his sandwich, he knows he is going to ralph. He sets off running down the hall. The principal is in the same hallway and stops and asks what his rush is.The boy responds: I need to go puke, unless you want me to puke on you, you might want to get out the way. The principal graciously stepped aside and waved him forth. I  thought that was funny. At least he got his school photo done before he went to heave.

We get home, he takes it easy and I go to finish with the pool. This year, we decided to put the tarp and leaf net on separately, in the hopes of being able to get the leaves off the tarp without spilling them in to the pool like often happens. Even though we are replacing the liner next year because it has many nicks in the liner from the tree that fell on it, it is also an emergency water supply for the toilet and such if we have a power outage, so it still is getting covered.

So, I cable up the tarp, put it on and the cable is too short. I forgot one end got mangled and I had to cut some off this past spring when we took it off. Try as I might, the two ends will not go together for the crank lock. Okay, I will get the other length of cable and make a tie-down for the leaf net and splice the leftovers to the tarp cable. I set up the leaf net the same way. What?! Too short too. It should not be, but it is. I also ripped off a grommet loop off the leaf net. Yay! So, I can trim and splice the cables together and cinch the tarp and net together and risk a crap load of leaves in the pool or I can figure something out. 

I figure something out. I make loops on all the ends of the two cables with crimps and get some heavy gauge electrical wire. I make a loop on one end of the wire and weave it through all the loops of the two cables and then run the free end through the wire loop and then cinch it through the crank lock. Voilà!

I am eager to do more. So, I decide to work on the gate I put in. I decided I need to swap the gates and put the bigger gate on the 6x6 post and the smaller gate on the 4x4 post. Also, I decided it would be better to have the gates open out to the front of the property as it would be better and allow me to store gear or equipment more easily behind the fence or to dump firewood that would be stacked at the back later. Also, I would be able to park a car there and close the gate as well. I take everything apart and put the big gate on. No real problems there. Then, the small gate was just a bugger. The 4x4 post is moving a lot. I wedge it in with various techniques. I finally get the small gate on and the hasp catching properly. However, the small gate is sloping towards the other gate and just does not line up as well as I would like. It is out of true.

I am very frustrated by this point and decide to leave it for now. Why? Well, I had to bust the screws off the hinges for the small gate because the original installer did a pretty hack job. They used the wrong screws, put them in at many different angles, no two went in at the same angle, and some were somehow bent. Anyway, I got that done, banged the broken screws in to the wood. But now, I will be short screws. I used five or six different types of screws. I even had to use some heavy-duty masonry screws. I am trying to do this without expense. I will still have to get a couple of pieces of hardware and I am short material for the gate on the other side of the house, so I will be spending some dough, but as little as possible is the goal. As you all know, I am raking in the penny, from this blog; plus I am a cheapskate.

Anyway, since I was using different screws, I needed different bits. Every time I picked a bit, I picked the wrong one, and I lost a bit somewhere in the grass. Tons of fun. I am sure I will find the lost bit with the lawnmower next time I cut the grass. Also, the batteries for the two different drills I have are getting old and crappy. All but one cannot hold a charge for more than a week. So, I was running on low power most of the time. It makes it very hard to screw in heavy gauge screws when your drill is running at less than half speed. To top it all off, even though I was in the shade, somehow the sun was beating directly on the top of my head making me sweat. You know, the sweat that just gets in to your eyebrows and then runs in to your eyes. I hate that. So, so much! That is why when I saw the gate sagging in a most peculiar way, I gave up for the day. I may have to set the gate out of square to the post, as I think the post has picked an out of plum position to settle in.

Kind of like me today. Now, where are my fleece sweats and dinner jacket. blbbl