My house hates me

Forget 2012. Did I miss some big 1/1/11 doomsday prophesy?!

You remember the blizzard that wreaked havoc on the airlines last week? If you lived in my neck of the woods, you were probably waiting it out inside with a nice cup of hot chocolate. Maybe you popped some popcorn and watched a movie with the family. A few logs crackling in the fireplace? For ambiance of course, because we all know that the average fireplace isn't really going to heat much more than the three teenagers vying for marshmallow-roasting space in front of it. So the thermostat was still set to keep you comfortable, right?

Of course, the furnace has to actually work for the thermostat to do any good. Aye, there's the rub.

Mine didn't, and it didn't LOUDLY.   Imagine every time the blower started up, you heard 100,000 angry bees buzzing simultaneously in your basement. Actually, make them wasps, because being a little more worried than usual is part of the experience I'm recreating for you here. So are you imagining that? Pretty loud buzzing noise you have there, eh?

Now imagine those wasps are roaring around a monstrous A380 jet engine and you'll get a better picture. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. A commuter jet then. You get the point though: it was is really damn loud.

It seems the problem may be a teeny little capacitor no larger than a flip phone.  
The good news: A replacement capacitor runs about 20 bucks. It could be worse.
The bad news: it's worse.

While I was the down there, I noticed the water lines leading to my condenser furnace had been turned off.  I sat down to ponder how that happened and realized the answer when a dream woke me from my nap (did you know your body starts to shut down at 37 degrees? Seriously not cool.).

Newly edited: The Second Kind

After you gave me her poem, the name replaced,
I said there were two kinds of women:
those who inspire sonnets
and those who don't.

And then I laughed;
the tension was too much to bear.
It's fine, I said.
I tried not to sound like a martyr
but thought,
Why have I never inspired
art of any kind?
Not even a charcoal sketch or quick haiku.

Once, I convinced myself I was a rough draft
living  in the coffee-stained pages of your journal.
On that occasion, I didn't mind --
because we were a draft
and romance can be rough.

I am aware of my own gracelessness.
Yet grace is required of a muse.
Still, consider that I have desire,
and what is love without desire?
And here is patience,
because what is art without patience?

I remember now. Again.
And the uneasy laugh escapes again.
I conclude aloud
(with melancholy, not martyrdom)
that if I had been the first kind,
I would have abandoned beauty and art
as just moments.

Moments as transient as our forever.

A Woman and her Tools

When I was 17 (that's not a typo), my husband taught me to change a tire. Necessity is the mother of invention, but Poverty is the Saint of  Do-it-Yourselfers. Poverty not only meant that we scavenged our tires from a recycling heap, but "changing a tire" meant we literally changed our tires: we took the exploded tire off the rim and put the new-to-us one on the  rims. In retrospect, this may be why we had so many exploded tires (you think?). I learned the difference between  wrench and pliers in those years, and we learned together how to change the car's struts without killing ourselves. Trust me on this kids: don't try that one at home.

We bought our tools and automobile parts from Pick-a-Part (although I don't even want to think about why people are junking cars with shovels and axes in the trunks). Years later, my uncle stopped by the family home to collect some of my grandpa's stuff and accidentally left with most of Ron's tools. I felt like I had betrayed us by letting it happen. Although I eventually boxed up and gave away his things after he died, I kept the tools that were left. The greasy hand prints were his, and attached to nearly every tool was a memory of working on a car together. Plus, I used them sort of regularly.

When I remarried, my new husband didn't understand  why  I was crushed when the marital-merging of tools made me feel like they were his tools. He used them more often and they went into his toolbox, which sometimes had a lock on it. I felt like I had to ask to use them, and  I lost a bit of independence when I couldn't leave my screwdriver in the kitchen drawer without irritating him when it didn't make it back in his box. Ron's beat-up old toolbox, scavenged from a well-used Chevy's truck bed, got thrown out along the way in favor of something newer. When I found out, I was unexpectedly taken by the feeling that something familiar and comforting had been lost. More than a decade later, it shocked me that the only physical belongings I was willing to fight for in the divorce were the tools I came into the marriage with. He could have the car, TV, bed, dressers, and house--everything but the tools.

My brother came to visit shortly after the divorce proceedings started. He's an insightful person: he brought me some of his spare tools and organized mine.  I was thrilled to have a collection started again, but after loaning them out and having  people 'borrow' them without telling me, I feel again like I have to ask to use my own tools and it's time to make a stand.  Often, I first have to make the uncomfortable call to ask if he (that's gender neutral 'he', of course) has the tool before I can ask for it to be returned. And just as often, whether the tool is sitting in my shed or he borrowed it without asking, the response is righteous indignation at the question and if he has it, at  my request for its return.

I'm considering getting a set of pink tools. Call me crazy, but I think they'd be borrowed less often. And if you're ever at the junk yard and see a woman peeking in the back of every  Chevy on the lot, it's me--looking for a weathered pink toolbox.

Yes, they make them!
Apollo Precision Tools DT9706P 39-piece Pink General Tool Set
Apollo Precision Tools DT0773N1 135-Piece Household Pink Tool Kit

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