Wrinkly Bits
Not everyone is born with the ability to fix things, and I am one of those. I’m not mechanically inclined and don’t see Part A fitting into Part B and eventually fitting with Parts G, H, and I, if I am patient and look at things logically. I have mastered wine-bottle openers, but I’m not an oil changer or a plumber although I can change lightbulbs, if they are the normal, screw-in type, but these fancy-dancy ones with switches and such leave me in the lurch. (I still haven’t figured out what a lurch is, so if you have an idea, let me know.)
My ability maxes out when I turn on my Microwave, which has fourteen buttons, plus zero through nine, to set the timer although I never remember if they are seconds or minutes, so always have to test it out. My first Microwave, vintage 1972, had two buttons, labeled “On” and “Off” with a 15-minute timer and button to open the door. It worked fine until about 1998 when we moved into a house that already had a Microwave and I (mistakenly) gave my old one to a teacher who had two kids and didn’t have anything remotely akin to a Microwave. They probably still have it as it was one of those energizer bunny machines that keeps plugging away. I mastered that Microwave easily enough, and could do anything from warming Cole’s baby bottle, to making hot chocolate, or baking lasagna, if I was in a hurry. I couldn’t grill steak, bake cookies, or make soup which needed to be steeped all day, but it worked for what I needed. I reheated twenty-six years’ worth of cups of coffee in that Amana Microwave, but now, I have no idea what eleven of these fourteen buttons are for.
The stove isn’t much better than the Microwave with its 16 buttons, when all I need are two dials and a button. I need to set the temperature and the timer and punch the “Start” Button. I suppose I could order a stove manual over the Internet for additional confusion, but that seems like overkill. Another annoyance is that all the names of the buttons are black on black, so I get to guess which is which. I don’t know anybody who can read instructions when they are written black on black, but again, maybe it’s just me.
We came home from our trip and, of course, there were a couple of issues that had arisen over the time we were gone. While I looked at them as unsolvable with the answer “Call the handy-guy,” the Cowboy looked at them differently, and said,” Yippee, I get to fix something!” And off he goes. Two lightbulbs, easy peasy. A door lock was jammed, that took some doing but it’s fixed, and won’t dare jam again. The oil in the truck, John Deere tractor, lawn mower, Gator and boat all needed changing. Oil in the truck, not a problem, switch it out. Done! But the others? I could probably learn to do them, but I’m not gonna. The boat was more difficult, because it seems (I only know this second hand) that the old oil system requires that it be pumped out and that takes a specialized pump which we have, but it’s not cooperative, so now we are waiting for a new one. I don’t even know where the oil is located in the boat, so I’m no help. And today he has a whole bunch of boat parts lying on a tarp and he says, “All is well.” We’ll see when the oil pump comes.
Cowboy says we should take one problem at a time, knock it out, and scratch it off the list, then add another, and my list seems to grow longer every day, yikes, by the time I get planted in the VA cemetery, the list will fill up a loose-leaf notebook. Maybe that defines my life, oh well, I think I will make a cup of coffee in the fancy coffee maker, (it only has six buttons) sit down on the front porch, look at the mountains and ask for inner peace.
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