What was I Just Going To Do?

Last Saturday was the biggest party I ever threw. And it was the best. I thought last year would be unbeatable and all I wanted to do was just repeat it. And I would have been thrilled. We were worried about the weather through the entire event. But we didn't get rained out. The details of what we did and who was there will be in my other blog. I want to talk about being a geezer.

I started preparing for the party by fixing a big hole in the plaster in our dinning room which has turned into a kitchen annex. The room is too small to be a dining room anyway. The rooms in our 100 yr. old farmhouse are small and cut up with doors and windows. There are no closets except the ones I made and they take away from the rooms too. While I was patching the ceiling hole, my wife was deciding to paint the room and she snowballed the ceiling patch into carpet and other things. As we fooled with this room, time started clicking down on cleaning up the cluttered house before the party. And it was an outdoor party so the outside needed a lot of work too.

Here are some of the geezer things I did:

I would go upstairs to my bedroom and then not know what I was there for.

Every time I needed a marker on a project, a sharpie, a carpenter's pencil, anything to mark a line, I wouldn't be able to find one and had to go upstairs to my desk to get it. This went on for four days and 10 trips upstairs. I finally carried a handful of markers downstairs and put them on the kitchen table. And told my wife to buy me a ten pack of Sharpies. And every time I put my wallet in my pocket, or my phone I would put two markers in my pocket. Regardless of what I thought I was going to do.

I was always looking for tools that I had several copies of. The most common missing tools were
tape measure, utility knife, MARKERS, hammer. I got to the point that when I was working with my friend Eric I would call out to him and tell him where I was setting the tape measure so we would both know where it was, at least for that moment.

When you work with paint and drywall compound you pour or scoop out what you need then seal up the can again so your product stays clean and doesn't dry out. Well, I would pour it out and get to work and finish up and put away my working container. Then come back only to find that I never put the top back on the main container.

I was making a repair on our tiny garage building and I had set the electric drill on the back of the golf cart. I needed something elsewhere and I jumped on the golf cart to quickly go get it. My wife was walking by and yelled stop. I didn't want to stop because I was under the sprinkler's water spray. But I did stop and got wet and asked my wife what was so important that I had to stop. And I was kind of cross about it. She pointed to the area behind the golf cart where I had dragged a trail of tools, lumber, chords, lights, a boom box etc. The drill that I had forgotten was on the back of the golf cart and had gotten lodged and the cord was connected and wrapped around everything in the garage eventually yanking out the power strip and the plug. It was a mess, and I quit for the day and apologized to my wife for the next 24 hours.

I went to Nagal's hardware a few times during the last few weeks. It's a feed store, general store. They always have what we need to repair a house or barn or fence or shed. They cost a little more than Wal Mart, but it is more than worth it. One day I went up there for "liquid nails" , a kind of glue. I bought all kinds of things I needed. But after I was home and back at work I realized I didn't get the liquid nails. I had to wait to the next day to go back to Nagal's.

I was working on my hay wagon and had parked it in the shade. Then I had moved the tractor away. Later the shade had moved, I guess the sun had moved. I mean the Earth had rotated. I was in a hurry. I didn't want to go get the tractor. It was 100 degrees out. I put a strap on the hay wagon and tied it to the air conditioned pick up truck. I only wanted to move it about ten feet. There was a limb from a tree that I thought I could clear. I broke the strap and damaged the wagon. I was exhausted and hot and I said some bad words and went into the pool with my clothes on.

I had put that same tractor's battery on the charger. The tractor had been put away last season and was not expected to start. So I tried the key one day and the tractor jumped. I was excited that it had juice. So I went and hooked up cables to the truck, got some starting fluid into the intake, and got out the air hose to fill the front tires and blow off debris. When I saw a big hornet I reacted by spraying air at it. Bad idea. The next thing I knew my hand felt like somebody had stabbed it and I was howling and jumping and getting away from that tractor as fast as I could. I quit and headed for the pool. My wife thought this was amusing.

One morning before everyone was up I wanted to get an early start painting. I had about a half dozen little places that need to be painted with primer. So I went around with a can and a brush and got it all done. I was proud of myself and ahead on the day with projects. Then I realized that for the last hour I had been painting with my white exterior latex which was not primer at all. The cans looked similar. I went in and took a short nap hoping to start the day over again.

Happy mid summer everyone. LLITTY :::::+:::::