My week and the little things

We had known there was a problem with the garage door. A couple of times Sherry told me I forgot to lower the door when I left, but I was pretty sure I had pushed the button to bring it down. Then I noticed times when it would reverse instead of finishing its trip. The last straw was last weekend when it just refused to close.
I got out my trusty WD-40 when I had time, and thoroughly soaked all the rollers and hinges. I sprayed the top of the track on both sides, the bottom of the track, the chain, and finally the nylon gears inside the motor chassis. Nothing helped.
I decided it was a deceased opener.
Searching online, I found a reasonably-priced unit with excellent ratings, and ordered it delivered.
The box sat in the (now empty) garage for a few days (with the jealous cars outside in the heat), waiting for the weekend when I could spend the hours required to install it.
Almost home Friday, I called to see if I needed to stop anywhere. That's when Sherry told me the air conditioner had stopped cooling. It was already too late to call anyone. They had already checked, but I double-checked the breakers and settings. The fans worked, but the compressor did not run. I guessed it was either the start capacitor for the compressor or the compressor itself, but I couldn't locate the capacitor in the outdoor unit to check it. I figured it must be built into the compressor.
I called the air conditioner company we use, and left a message for Saturday morning. They knew us, so I hoped we would get a little quicker attention than just anyone calling.
My son and his family had come by, so we left to eat out and keep cool. While we were out, my son discovered his car had a flat. It wasn't just a slow leak that needed a little air--it was really flat. We went back to my house to get the compressor and aired it up (no nails in sight), but it appeared to losing pressure too quickly to trust even for a short distance. We (mostly he) changed the tire to the little pretend tire they hide under the cargo area in the back.
It's a good thing we had the compressor, because it was down to 20 psi instead of the 60 it should have. We aired it up, and it seemed to be fine.
Back at home for the evening, we kept the fans on through the night and slept pretty soundly. Perhaps too soundly. I missed the air conditioner company calling shortly after 8 am. It was only about half an hour afterward that I returned the call, but she said in the meantime she had gotten several calls (and made commitments) that might keep them from getting to us today. I told her I understood, but I would appreciate anything she could do.
It wasn't long afterward that she called back, telling me Jack was on his way to fix it. I was being lazy still, but I quickly got dressed and greeted him at the door. What a relief!
He heard the growling noise when I started the unit, and said it was probably the capacitor. It was in a hidden area I didn't know about, and was obviously "popped out" on top. While he was replacing it, I mentioned in passing that the drain a few steps away had been flowing lately. He said he was glad I told him about it, because that meant the primary drain in the house was blocked.
"There's a primary drain inside?"
"Yes, the one on the outside is always in front of a window so you'll notice when it drains and fix the primary."
News to me.
After replacing the capacitor and testing the system, he went inside to get to the primary drain. It's in the bathroom under the sink, connected into the sink drain just over its P trap. He cut the pipe and removed a section.The blockage was in the area above and inside the P trap. After cleaning it thoroughly, he re-installed  the assembly.
By this time I had agreed to an annual contract that would involve him checking all this and cleaning the outdoor coils twice a year.
While he was finishing up, I started to look over what I needed to do to install the new garage door opener. I spread the parts out on the floor, and scanned the connections of the other unit. "Big job," I thought. That's when I noticed some grass mingled with cobwebs in one corner of the garage door opening, coincidentally in front of a safety device for the current opener. As I wiped away the bit of stuff, I asked myself, "What if that was the problem with the door closing?"
Curious, I cautiously walked over and pressed the button to lower the door. It worked.
I wasn't ready to believe that little bit of trash had caused me to buy another door opener, so I tried it again.
After it had made three or four successful trips up and down, I decided I had just been too stupid to consider that it was just the safety mechanism causing the problem.
So my Saturday that was going to be long and sweaty turned out much better.
Looking back:
The garage door opener problem was just a bit of trash.
The air conditioner problem was the capacitor, a much less expensive part than the compressor.
While the air conditioner man was here, he fixed the blocked drain, possibly saving us a lot of money if the other one clogged.
Note to self:  Watch the little things. Keep them little so they don't cause big things.

It wasn’t my fault. The spider did it.

I never really wanted to mow the lawn when I was a teenager.  Nothing about it appealed to me. Mowing the yard at my house meant pushing (and pushing, and pushing) a heavy, noisy machine over rough ground for what seemed like hours. With more weeds than grass, and more rocks than weeds, I just couldn’t tell it was worth the pain and suffering. Once I was finished, the yard would still be full of inorganic debris, and what grass remained would be less visible than before I started. Soon I’d be sneezing and scratching my legs, my clothes soaked and my face dripping. My eyes would be burning from the dirt in the air, and my sweat would become mud streaks down my face.

 And then there were the bugs. They’d fly up out of the ground all around the mower and my feet. I could feel them inside my clothes, crawling up and down, biting and pinching me all over. Is that sweat dripping down my back, or is it a creature looking for a place to live? I’d slap my clothes where I can feel movement, hoping to either dry the drip of sweat or kill the creature underneath. I was pretty sure it was a creature.

As an adult, these memories apparently still drive my feelings about mowing. Now that I have my own house and yard, we put more emphasis on having nice grass to cover the ground, and the mower pulls itself over our small yard without so much effort. I use a surgical mask to filter the allergens away from my sensitive sinuses, and I mow earlier in the day, wearing a hat to reduce the effects of the direct sun. With these improvements in my mowing situation, am I happy to mow? No. I push myself out the door, knowing that the job has to be done.

Who started this idea of mowing yards, anyway? I can imagine some caveman carrying a limp wildebeest to the cave after his daily commute to the nearby herd, stopping by the cave entrance to break off the top of a weed that grew too tall. His cavelady points to another weed a few feet away and grunts, “Ungh!” The caveman drags his knuckles over to the second weed and breaks off the top. He turns to look back at the cavelady; she smiles coyly, and gestures toward more weeds. The caveman, clearly pleased with the direction this activity is taking, looks around and sees that this could take a while. He passes the wildebeest to his cavelady, grunts softly in her ear, and sets about the business of breaking the tops off of all the weeds in the area. This scene is repeated every so often until the weed breaking becomes routine, and ultimately evolves into an aesthetic form of “cave entry area cultivation.”

The Iron Age saw the invention of a crude blade on a handle, and that allowed men to stand more or less upright while cutting the tops of the weeds at about the same height. People are always looking for ways to improve things, though, and soon there were blades on wheels that turned and cut the plants uniformly. This eventually led to competitions among neighborhoods to show that one yard caretaker could make a more pleasing yard than his neighbors. The winner got the wildebeest drumstick.

My yard is not the prettiest in the neighborhood. It’s not that I prefer being looked down on by the other homeowners—it’s just not the way I prefer to spend my time. Saturdays are meant for sleeping late and reading the paper, not for fighting a losing battle with nature.

One recent Saturday, though, I compromised (I only slept a little late) and dragged myself to the lawn machinery, braced for conquest.

We keep our lawn mower in the garage with other implements of torture and destruction. Open garages are not pretty sights (mine isn’t, anyway), so I take the garage door remote with me to allow me to operate the door as needed. On previous occasions I have put the remote in my pants pocket, but I found that bending and pushing against the mower would activate the door control, so this time I clipped the remote to my belt. I touched the button after leaving the garage, and started my battle with nature. Finished with one side yard and the front, I started down the small strip of grass on the other side of the house. A few seconds later, I was startled by the familiar tingle of spider webs across both bare arms.  I reacted instinctively to Nature’s attack by quickly wiping my upper body to rid myself of any spiders and webs that I obviously could not see. Had those horrible strings been broken so I could get through? I inched forward again, and again the strings activated my nervous reaction. I gave no thought to how I looked to anyone who might see me flailing my arms in the air, attacking this unseen enemy. Finally, I was able to proceed and finish the side yard. When I made my way back to the place where I broke the web earlier, there was a sudden noise, like when I used to run over a rock with the mower. My eyes were directed down to a chewed-up collection of black plastic and electronics. I quickly checked my belt, where the shiny metal clip remained hanging, but without the garage door opener remote it normally held.

I knew right away what had happened.

The spider did it.