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.).

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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My roar may be a meow.

I'm not going to lie. I get a thrill when I successfully fix something around the house, especially if it's something that seemed daunting to me when I considered trying. Being single has been educational: I've learned to use a propane torch, sweated pipes, fixed a dishwasher and a washer and dryer, wired lights and doorbells, and deconstructed (then reconstructed) a box spring that was too tall for a stairwell. I just purchased my own multimeter and electric receptacle tester; I purchased and own my own circular, jig, chain, miter, and hack saws; and I literally carry the scar of someone who has learned, through trial and huge error, how not to cut her finger off when the protective plate for the electric hedge trimmer is broken.

The cycle of concentration-frustration-elation (wash, rinse, repeat) as I figure out how to accomplish some household fix-it task is similar to what I used to feel when I did coding or computer hardware troubleshooting. I enter some weird time-tunnel; everything stops until I figure out the problem, and when I come out of the vortex after that "aha!" moment, I realize what felt like an hour was really a day.

In the end, I glean a bit of knowledge that will be with me forever, whether I want it to be or not. Seriously, someday I'll be taking a written driver's license exam and my mind will freeze on "traveler wires" and "ground" when I see the words "red" or "green" and "light." Useless knowledge tends to lodge into the most inconvenient ledges of my brain.

My kids and I play a game at dinnertime. I ask them what they've learned that day. If they say nothing, they'll (almost jokingly) be required to go gain a tidbit of knowledge to share. They'll come back with a new word, some random trivia, or most often, something surprisingly hilarious. It's because of them that I know farts have been clocked at 10 feet per second and that Leonardo Da Vinci is credited with inventing the scissors. My input to this game lately is all about household stuff.

Mom: "Today I learned that the R-value marked on insulation is a measure of thermal resistance!"
Kids: "uh. okay. What's thermal resistance?"
Mom: "The resistance to heat flow."
Kid: "Cool mom. Did you know crocodiles can't stick out their tongues?"

I feel their pain really. Because you know, I really could have gone my entire life without knowing this stuff and still have been perfectly happy. Although I may feel victorious when I 'get it', the truth is that I'd rather someone else do it and leave me to the things I want to know.

I'm taking this opportunity to make a list, just for the hell of it, of things I never particularly wanted to learn. I may be setting the feminist movement back a few decades, but I never said I wanted it all.
(grammar nazis beware: the following list is not parallel)

I never wanted to learn

• to fix anything on the car.
Although female mechanics are cool, I wouldn't mind just sticking to changing oil and the rogue flat tire now and again. Even those, I would have been happy to hire out.
• what my dishwasher's guts looked like.
• what my dryer's guts looked like.
• how to bypass the door sensor's wiring on my washing machine.
• how to read a wiring schematic and use a soldering iron.
• how to cut open (and then patch) a ceiling to access the plumbing for an upstairs bathtub.
• how to replace a clogged disgusting u-trap for said bathtub.
Some things are just plain gross.
• to fish a dead possum out of a pool when opening it.
Did I mention that some things are just plain gross?
• how to clear ice from a gutter at 6 am in -2 degree weather
• what exactly is in the crawl space behind the basement.
• how to run a water line to the refrigerator across the room from the sink.
• landscaping.
Really. I don't want to know anything about keeping up my yard. I want it to just magically look beautiful and well kept.
• how my neighbors would react if I chose to let my yard return to its god-given state.
It's not pretty (both their reactions and the yard). I don't recommend trying this one if you like your neighbors.
• how to rip out a preformed shower unit and put in a new one on a minimal budget.
I don't actually know how to do this yet, because I'm still in the 'reading everything ever written about it' stage. Likewise with:
• how to tear out an upstairs bathtub when it requires going through walls.
• how to beg for help from knowledgeable friends when I get myself in over my head; and hoping they don't feel used for their arm mass.

Although I am woman (hear me roar), it's empowering enough to know I can learn this stuff if I have to. I'm also woman enough to say that if I someday live happily ever after with a man enjoys doing these things, more power to him. And I'm not sexist: if you're a woman looking for room and board in exchange for handy woman work, give me a call!

Until the phone rings, it's back to figuring out what to do with the neutral and how to wire the travelers when converting two 3-way switches (each controlling the same two lights) to one single-pole motion-sensor and one regular single-pole switch.

But...did you know that Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie were named after the policeman (Bert) and the taxi driver (Ernie) in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"?

P.S. Measure twice, cut once is a nice truism. Unfortunately, some of us were apparently born without the ability to use a measuring tape accurately. I can measure eight times and if I'm lucky enough to come up with the same measurement twice, what I cut will still be wrong. A better ditty: measure twice and let someone else handle the saw.