Gutter Mahem

I woke up this morning to find that it was raining. I went outside to find our rain gutter coming off the second story of our house. Ouch. In younger years I would have climbed right up there and secured the thing. But I am not so nimble these days.

I waited for Kit Kat to come home from school to help. Then I got out the big ladder and had Kit Kat hold the bottom for me. I climbed up two stories. When I grabbed the gutter, the water in it ran down my arm. Great. Then my right leg started cramping up.

I quickly wrapped duct tape around the huge bolts that hold the gutter. Then I banged the two bolts in. They felt secure. There was one more bolt I could not reach. Oh well. Too bad. I tossed the hammer and duct tape down to the ground, yeling for Kit Kat to look out. Then I came down.

Kit Kat had a good idea. I should call our handy man. He usually takes a few weeks to schedule me in. We can get him to inspect all the gutters and make sure they are permanently attached to the hosue. Yep.

Attack of the Drain

Momoko found out that the drain in the kids' shower was backed up. Oh great. They are supposed to inform me of such problems. In the old days I would just hire a plumber to deal with it. But now I like to be scrappy.

I had the kids clean out the bathroom. Then I put on a pair of shorts and showed the kids how to get drains unclogged. The first step was to close off the overflow opening in the tub. I tried putting some duct tape over the thing. Turns out I needed to remove the cover and tape it up.

Then I got the plunger and went to town. Little Kat helped out by holding the duct tape tight against the overflow opening. I knew we were in business when the plunger pulled up some black stuff from the drain. We did a test and found the drain to be working.

I like showing the kids how to take care of business like unclogging a drain. They got to learn this stuff on the job. Next time, maybe I will let them do the dirty work as I watch. The best news is that I don't have to take a day off from work and wait around for a plumber who will charge us the $$$ to snake out a drain.

String to the Rescue

The other day I drove the family to a buffet. There was a strange noise coming from the back of my car. I got out to investigate. It turns out that some of the plastic that covers my bumper was hanging down. The sound was the plastic scraping the ground. At that point I just bent the plastic back up towards the car. I thought I would fix the thing permanently later.

Well I forgot about that until today. I drove the cats to lunch from work. A coworker asked if there was something wrong with my car radio. No. It was the bumper cover hanging down and scratching the ground again. When I got home, I decided to fix the darn thing before school.

I got two pieces of strong string. Used the string to tie the flapping plastic to the brace that holds the bumper. Then I wrapped a couple pieces of duct tape around the string, just for safety. Now this thing will stay up as long as I still have a bumper attached. I used this string trick on my last car. The fender by the wheel was hanging loose after running over something. String kept it tight until I sold that car.

Great Blizzard of 2010

Early in the morning of the last snow fall, Little Kat went out to play. He measured a whopping 22 inches of snow in the yard. And all the snow had not fallen yet.

The power went out on us. We had a little propane cooker. I figured that in the future we should stock up on propane. We are going to get a new shed some day. I could choose to have the shed in the corner of the yard, with a big supply of propane. Nice.

During the storm we sheltered in place. I used duct tape to seal the windows in the basement shut. Little Kat put up some reflective shiny material in the windows to keep out the cold. Grannie Kat advised us to fill the bath tub full of water. But the water leaked out twice even though the stopper was shut.

There was no light in the kids bathroom. They came to take a shower in me and Momoko's bedroom while we still had hot water. They got a taste of how the broke down shower in the house works. Only a little water trickles out when you turn the hot water on. Weak.

I still got a lot to say about living through the blizzrd and power outage. More on that later.

Shelter in Place

Our snowfall and power loss was a significant event. So I plan to be blogging about it for some time. When the power first went out, the goal was to keep the house warm. Little Kat got the duct tape, and taped around the doors to close the gaps. Who knew when the power and heat would come back on.

We had previously purchased a propane cooker. It is a portable small thing. But we wanted some hot food while the power was off. I bought some propane in a bottle as well. After reading the directions, we found out you could not use this cooker indoors. Drat. We already closed off all the doors. And I did not want to open the doors and make the house colder.

There was hot water left in our heater. Everybody took a 5 minute shower shortly after the power went out. That felt good. The water heater is powered by gas. However I was not sure whether it needed electricity as well to run. Most of our phones need power to run. But we kept one of the old ones that works off the power that comes in on the phone line. That became our new incoming phone line.

We decided to do most of our work during the daylight. Had to conserve battery and flashlight power for the dark. There was not that much work to do during the day. We got a full game of Monopoly in before the sun set. Next time I will talk about the massive snow levels we got.