And more home repair...

A few weeks ago, after midnight, I took a shower. I take a shower every night. I can not sleep without taking a shower. It is my OCD and I've written about it before. Once in the shower, after wetting my body and hair, I discovered there was no soap. This is a pet peeve of mine because I'm the only one who ever replaces the soap. Seriously? What does my husband use to clean his body when there is no soap? He was already asleep and so I got out of the shower dripping wet and ran into the hallway to get a bar of soap.

After my shower I was walking back and forth from my bedroom to various rooms in the house as I readied for the night. I lock the doors, get a bottle of water, use my eye drops, and kiss Darcy goodnight. It takes forever because most of the time I forget why I came into a room in the first place, go back to my bedroom, remember, and return to that room to complete the activity. At some point in my travels it registered that I was stepping on a wet spot on my carpet right outside my bedroom door by the closet where I had gotten my bar of soap. The first time I stepped there I figured it was because I had gotten the soap while dripping wet from the shower. The second time I stepped there I thought it was awfully wet for just a short amount of time spent standing there. The third time I stepped there I realized the damn dog had to have peed there. I turned on the hall light.and studied the wet spot which was about the size of a coaster. It was perfectly rounded and a bit yellowed, but it looked odd. Knowing the dog had just gone out before Tom went to sleep, I got down on my hands and knees and smelled the spot.

Darcy: "You did what? Why would you do that?"
Me: "Please. We use to hold you up in the air and smell your diapers."
Darcy: "That's weird."

It smelled like water and not urine so I decided it was from me retrieving the bar of soap. I pulled out a towel, soaked it up, and went to bed. The next morning I got up and the spot was wet again and this time a little bigger. I got some carpet cleaner and a wet cloth and threw it at Darcy as I left for church.

Me: "Your dog peed in the hallway. Clean it up."
Darcy: "Yes, I saw that."
Me: "Really? Why didn't you clean it up then?"
Darcy: "I was tired."

The next day the spot was bigger, and I came unhinged. I yelled at the dog. I yelled at Darcy. I yelled at the dog some more. What the hell? He hasn't peed in my house in a long time. I worried he was old. I worried he was incontinent. I worried he was going to die. I yelled at him some more. I kept taking him outside and ordering him to pee. He kept ignoring my hysterics. I got out the cleaner and spent considerable time cleaning the spot. Later that night after my shower I felt the spot again. I ignored it.

Tom: "I think we have a leak."

As soon as he said it I knew he was right. Suddenly the thought that I kept feeling it after a shower hit me. I got out of bed and apologized to the dog. He got a toy and told me all would be forgiven if I chased him around the house. I reminded him it was after midnight and bedtime. Tom, meanwhile, had opened the hall closet and was pulling everything that was on the floor out of it so Elliot went over there to sniff and explore. The closet floor and carpet was wet too.

Me: "It's coming from our shower. How is that possible?"
Tom: "How do you know? It could be coming from the hall bathroom."
Me: "It's our shower because every time I feel this spot is either after you have showered in the morning or I've showered in the night."

He checked under the hall bathroom sink because he never believes a word I say just to rule it out. Everything was dry. We went into our shower and stared at it. Apparently our shower butts up against the hallway wall and closet. We stood there and contemplated where the leak could be. Tom decided it was the shower pan. I agreed because once a long time ago we had had a guy come out to install an insert shower over our existing. The guy refused to do it because he said our pan sucked and needed to be replaced. I had no clue what a pan even was, believed him, and sent him on his way. My husband has never forgiven me for that.

We hate our shower. We hated the bathroom when we moved in, but we made a few changes to it over the years that we are comfortable with it. The shower is our one disappointment. The only thing I love in the shower is a little sitting area that juts out of the corner. I have never sat there, but it makes a really great lift for shaving legs. Other than that the shower is a source of agony. It is tiled on the floor with these little tiles that were filthy when we moved in. No matter what we use they never look clean. The rest of the shower is tiled almost to the ceiling and again are covered with a soap scum sheen that we can't seem to get off no matter what we use. There is also very little water pressure which suddenly happened one day about two years ago. Standing there after midnight staring at our leaky shower, we both got kind of excited about the possibility of having to actually remodel that bad boy.

Tom: "Great. That's gonna cost a pretty penny."
Me: "Yep. But nothing we can do about it now at midnight."

We went to bed. The next morning my husband TOOK A SHOWER. IN THAT SHOWER. What? The leak on my floor got larger. I suggested from now on that we shower in the other bathroom as my carpet was slowly getting ruined. I also suggested drying the spot and the closet with a fan as my carpet was slowly getting ruined.

Elliot: "Which I did not do."
Me: "I know. I said I was sorry. You're a good boy."

Tom in his walk around the neighborhood mentioned the issue to our neighbor Don who happened to put in my carpeting. The two of them then appeared in my house to survey the scene. My neighbor suggested we shower in the other bathroom as the carpet was getting ruined. Uh huh. He also pointed out that the water was coming in through the wall and that we had black mold. Ugh.

They duct taped the shower and filled the bottom and then stood outside the hall closet to see if the spot would become wet. I took photos while they investigated, but got bored after a few minutes of staring at the floor. I left them to their investigation and went off to blog.

Don: "To what?"
Tom: "She writes on the Internet. That's why she's taking our pictures."
Don: "Oh, well, let me pull up my pants."

They were at it over an hour and then Don appeared in the Steelers room to announce that the problem was minor and the cost would be about $25 for the part. I must have looked very disappointed because he laughed and said my face mirrored my husband's. Apparently, secretly, we were both hoping for a remodeling job that would be brought on by need. That wouldn't be the case. The leak was caused by a valve part behind the knob that turns on and off the water and not the pan. Don laughed at the two of us and told us to let him know if we needed him to repair the valve.

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I spent a week staring at this in my bathroom before Tom got around to working on it. He did stop using that shower, but his using the other shower led to replacements of various objects in the second bathroom that he noticed while in there. He hung a hook on the back of the door and replaced the shower head pipe with one that raised the head higher so he could fit under it. He pulled off the butterfly safety decals on the bottom of the tub and replaced them with purple (our bathroom is purple and this one is pink) safety strips which promptly peeled off. Darcy and I just kept quiet.

Eventually he found the time to replace the part in our shower. While in there he found too that the valve that controlled our water pressure had been partially closed. We have no idea how that happened or who turned that valve closed, but I decided not to even try to explain it. We obviously have a ghost. The happy thing is that while I didn't get a new shower I did get a steadier stream, and we didn't have to spend $3,000. It's good to look on the bright side.

And then I proved it

I wrote yesterday's post during spring break and later that night received a text from my friend Robin who was staying at The Condo. She wanted to know if I needed some more plumbing problems (that one is coming next) and then proceeded to tell me that the shower knob in the master bathroom had fallen off and broke into two pieces when it hit the floor. She had managed to get the shower off and had even gone to the hardware store for a replacement.

Robin: "But I don't know if I should attempt to put the new one because although the man at Lowe's searched and searched for a knob that he thought looked like the old one I don't know if it will go on. The old knob looked like it had been super glued once before and the screw that is still in the shower wall looks like it too was glued. Plus the instructions say to turn off the water at the main source, and I don't even know where that is."
Me: "No. Just leave it. I'll replace it when I come up there."

I relayed the information to my husband who has become The Condo fix-it man. He made a face about shutting off the water, muttered about how easy that repair job would be, and said for sure she could do it. I couldn't remember what the shower handle even looked like, but Robin texted me a photo of it. The photo and hubby's remarks left me sure I could handle the repair job.

The last night the women were at The Condo I went back with them after dinner to take a look at the shower. Sure enough the handle was like the one in my shower. I went to the closet, got out the tool kit, and deftly removed the screw while Robin, in the background, wondered if I would be able to do just that since it looked like it had been super glued. She was impressed when I held up the removed screw.

Robin: "Oh. Well, that was easy."

With her friend Karen's assistance, I opened the new knob and took out the accompanying screw. The knob was actually for a sink faucet and the instructions, the ones telling Robin to turn off the water, were for that job. With Robin reminding me that I should turn off the water at the main source, I put on the shower knob. I tested the shower and got a tad wet when doing so.

Robin: "What is on your shirt?"
Me: "Water. I tested the new knob and forgot I was standing in the shower."
Robin: "What? You fixed it without shutting off the water?

The shower head was dripping and Karen remarked that most likely that was due from the water still in the hose. I removed the head and shook it out and hung it back up. The drip was still there so I removed the knob again and messed around with screwing it in and out. We decided removing the washer was the answer. It worked. There was one drip, but Karen and I decided it was due to water left over from my various tests. I cleaned up my mess, shut the tool box, and came out to where Robin was sitting in the living room.

Me: "See! We didn't need no stink'in man!"

The next day my husband insisted on driving up to The Condo to check my repair job since I mentioned the drip. I went along to prove my competence for the ride. He gave me props as the shower was drip free and dry as a bone. Then, because I kept shouting my new slogan, he wandered around The Condo until he found something he felt needed his attention. He felt the kitchen sink faucet was too wobbly, and he ignored my tale about how it had been looked at and dealt with by two different plumbers in the past. He worked some time on it, crawling under the sink and then announced it was a "stupidly made faucet and too high for the sink" and gave up. I told him I would replace the entire faucet at a later date.

My father would be so proud of me.

Spring Break 2016 in pictures

Use to be I spent my spring break with my kids. This year one kid slept away her spring break and the other went off on adventures with her friends. That probably would have depressed me, but instead I made my own adventures with the help of friends.

My high school friend Robin and her friend Karen came down to spend spring break in Florida. I tagged along to several of their adventures which mostly included eating. It was like being with my SIL. It must be a Hoosier thing.

The first two days they were here we had a bit of a cold front come through. We went to the beach anyway. We lasted about five minutes as the wind was crazy ridiculous. It was the first time I heard northerners say they were cold in 60 degree temperatures.

Tom's childhood cousin and her husband came over for the day from Disney to visit. We spent some time with them at my MIL's house and we had a wonderful dinner later that night. It is fun to hear stories about my husband from his past. Darcy liked to hang with us when food was involved, and she was very good at putting her phone away and joining in the conversations.

By the third day our temperatures were back in the 80's and we went to the beach. We went fairly early and had our pick of parking spots. Within a half an hour the lot was full and the beach packed so full that there were five rows of people from the water back. We were in row two and had a decent view of the water, although I was unable to photograph it without strangers in it.

Robin and Karen commented on my use of a spray sunscreen which I used several times throughout the day, insisting that stuff wasn't any good. I gave them the Hello-I-live-in-Florida-and-just-retired-from-an-outdoor-career look as they lathered on their Hawaiian tropic suntanning lotion. I was the only one who got burned.

Thursday I joined my friend SueG and her children on a boat ride out into the gulf. It was quite the touristy thing to do and after several cocktails aboard the boat afterwards we decided we should do stuff like that more often. The boat was a two hour trip to find dolphin and we were not disappointed.

We also saw a shark, cooled off with a three minute spit shower, and captured two different rainbows. I talked to several families from Indiana and ran around from one side of the boat to the other snapping pictures and trying to maintain my balance.

Friday was my friend's last day before heading north. We met for breakfast and afterwards they sat on the beach to soak it up before bidding it good-bye. We had drinks and dinner outdoors and then watched the sunset from the causeway.

 

Saturday Darcy and her friend, baked and decorated Easter cookies. Easter bunny butts, I should say.

But, no pun intended, making bunny butts proved too difficult and they ended up with more eggs than bunny bottoms. All of them were delicious.

Easter morning was not anything we had experienced in the past. Darcy slept late. It was odd not to have Madison here and odd not to have Darcy up early and excited. If it weren't for our dog hunting his eggs Tom and I might have gone into a little depression.

After church Darcy came home and played along. The entire time she moaned the loss of her sister and the loss of the "D" that usually is on the eggs she is hunting. She found them all this year and even that wasn't right as we always have one egg that we find months later. 

My contribution to Easter dinner was dessert. I made an Easter rainbow cake that turned out well and that everyone enjoyed. My SIL Julie had us to her house and we had a lovely dinner with family and a roaring game of cards afterwards.

It was a fabulous spring break and driving home Easter night was a bit of a downer as we thought of how early we all had to rise and how we all had to get back to the grind of school and responsibilities. Until next year....Happy Spring!

We don't need no stinkin' man

Last Friday after our TV viewing, Kelly left our house to venture home about twenty after eleven. Kelly use to live close by us; walking distance in my husband's eyes. Now she lives a million miles away in another city, a good thirty minutes away. She is always very busy on the weekends and thus doesn't feel she can just spend Friday nights at our house. Off she went last Friday. She wasn't gone more than three minutes when our house phone rang and her name came up on our television caller ID.

Kelly: "I've been in an accident. I'm fine. I'm down at the end of your street, but my phone is about to die. I need a phone."

Madison and I immediately jumped up and proceeded to put on shoes to head to the rescue. We weren't sure what had happened, but we knew we were needed. My husband stood and watched us as we frantically ran around the house gathering up items we thought we might need.

Tom: "What happened?"
Madison: "I don't exactly know, but she needs a phone."
Tom: "But what happened?"
Me: "She was in an accident!"
Tom: "What kind of an accident?"
Madison: "She didn't say, Dad. We'll know when we get there."
Tom: "Why wouldn't she tell you?"
Madison: "She was a little frazzled."
Me: "Who cares? Her text says she was in an accident that involved kids and she has a flat tire. We have to get to her."
Tom: "Well, we should think this through for a minute..."

We left him thinking things through and hiked out into the darkness. Kelly had sent me a text stating she was one street over. She had told Madison she was at the end of our street. Apparently, I must have been a bit frazzled too because instead of going down our road and cutting to the next street if we didn't see her I made Maddy walk the opposite direction and walk down the street she had told me she was on. It took a bit longer.

As we got more than halfway down the street I didn't see a car at all. I started to panic a bit, but Maddy was very calm. She assured me that we would find her and that no flashing lights was a good thing. We finally saw the car on the main street, pulled over on the side of the road halfway between my street and the street we were on. Her emergency lights were flashing in the darkness and she was digging around in the backseat of her car.

When she left my house to head home her car had been pointed in the direction that Madison and I had walked to get her which meant that she exited my neighborhood from one street over. She had been about to turn out of my hood and was looking left, right, and she started to go as she looked left again. Out of the darkness, on the side of the road coming toward her at a fast speed were three kids, one on a bike, one on a skateboard, and one on a scooter. They were going to hit her and so she turned the wheel to the right and went up on the curb and over the concrete drainage barrier that juts out of the side of the street. Because her car sits low she scraped the concrete putting a huge dent in the underside of her car. She hit the corner of the barrier and immediately her front passenger side tire deflated. The kids managed to stop their forward progress before they hit her. They did not speak and went around her and on their merry way.

While she appeared calm on the outside when we arrived she was attempting to call her insurance carrier by using her registration card instead of her insurance card. Madison and I found the number and Kelly spent considerable time trying to reach a human. Once the information was processed and a tow truck sent to rescue her she took a breath.

Kelly: "Thank you for the phone. You guys don't have to wait. It will be 45 minutes. I'll be fine."
Me: "Okay, then. We will head home and go to bed. I mean, really, Kelly."

I insisted we move away from the road as not to get hit since that seems to be a daily story in our newspaper: person killed while helping a stranded motorist. I went to sit in the entrance way to our neighborhood, but Madison thought it too close to the road and un-seeable for entering drivers. We stood instead by our large, concrete entrance signs and stared out into the night. Kelly told us that one truck driver had stopped in the middle of the road and had gotten out to see if she was fine. She had thought it was my husband and had yelled at him for stopping in the middle of the road. He acknowledged that he wasn't my husband and that he wanted to make sure she wasn't hurt. She assured him she was fine and he had driven off. We discussed the good Samaritan, but by this time I was looking around for a place to sit as I knew my back would start protesting after standing for 45 minutes.

There were two decorative rocks by the concrete signs and Madison and I sat down. Kelly was pacing. We reminded her that she had a beach lounger in her trunk, but she thought that a bit too much. She did remember that she had a folding lawn chair and so she dug that out and sat down. We were sure we looked a sight sitting on the side of the road after midnight.

We watched cars whiz by us and commented on the amount of traffic after midnight. An ambulance came by and stopped. We waved them on. A city police car came by. He did not stop although he seemed to let up off the gas a bit. The neighbors on the opposite corner where we sat returned home and peered out at us. They did not speak, but hid behind their car peering out from around it. We talked loudly about a tow truck and the fact that I lived in the neighborhood. They went inside.

I texted my husband to let him know that the tow truck was on its way. He texted back asking if we need anything. I suggested water, chairs, and a porta-potty. He told me to come home and tell the tow truck driver to call when he got there. We didn't do this because the insurance company had told Kelly to wait with the vehicle. My husband did not appear with any of the items requested.

We discussed all of the people killed assisting broken down vehicles. We discussed whether or not we should move the car forward into my street or backwards into the street we sat on. We wondered whether this was feasible on a flat tire or whether it would do more damage. Kelly kept getting up and going over to her car messing around in the trunk, opening doors while in the street, and staring at the flat tire. I would yell at her to get away from the car as cars whizzed past her. I made comments about someone hitting the car and us getting hit by debris. Madison laughed at both of us.

Kelly: "Do you think we should move it?"
Me: "How is the tow truck driver going to change the flat? Where will he park?"
Kelly: "I'm assuming he will park it behind or in front of my car on the side."
Me: "It all just seems dangerous to me. No one cares about a car on the side of the ride. Look at that guy. Slow down buddy!"
Kelly: "Stop yelling. If someone hits my car I'll get the insurance money and buy a better one."
Me: "Good point."
Kelly: "So? Should I move the car?"
Me: "Let's just wait until the guy gets here. He's a man. He'll tell us what to do. Let's wait until the man gets here and tells us women what to do!"

That was an inside joke in our family. My mother spent her entire life trying to prove that women were as good as men. It pissed her off to no end that she couldn't participate in sports when she was a kid because girls didn't play sports then. She was constantly giving us teaching moments. Once when my brother was young he had to testify in a case that involved his teacher and a guy who came on to school property while my brother and his class were at recess. For days my father grilled my brother on saying, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" to the judge when he was spoken to. When my brother finally got on the stand the judge was a woman and my brother, following my dad's instructions, said, "No, sir" and "Yes, sir."  She and her golfing ladies were always making fun after an incident of which I've forgotten now, saying, "We will wait until a man tells us what to do". It was a saying she and I would use often.

Kelly: "That's a good point. We will wait until the man tells us what to do."
Madison: "I'm not sure this is a good lesson that you two are teaching me here."

The tow truck driver appeared after an hour. He was a she. She pulled up behind the car, hopped right out of her big truck with an Ipad, and after getting Kelly's signature she grabbed her equipment and went to work changing the tire.

Kelly: "My friend writes a blog. Everything goes on it. That's why she's taking pictures."
Me: "Especially because Kelly always provides me with car repair entries."
Her: "Well, okay then. How exciting."

She was fast. She jacked up the car, took off the flat tire, and had the donut on the car in record time although I did not time her. As she worked we discussed the time we attempted a tire change (you can read that HERE), but realized as we talked that we had not been successful in that venture. We had had to call a man. The tow truck driver snorted.

Me: "It's probably a good thing Madison is here watching a woman successfully change a tire since we really haven't been the best role models in the car repair department."
Madison: "I've learned quite a bit tonight."

The tire had a huge hole in it and we could stick our fingers in it. Our savior finished her job and dusted off her pants. We thanked her and she waited until Kelly was in her car and moving off the side of the road. Madison and I waved her off and started walking toward home. As we got to our street someone came up behind us.

Tom: "Where's Kelly? Where's the car?"

Apparently he was done thinking things through. It was after one o'clock. We ignored him and kept right on walking. This was one time we hadn't needed a man and we certainly didn't need him now.

The Tooth King

This week is spring break here in our county and there is no school. My youngest will be home when she feels like it for me to mother and friends will be visiting from Indiana. I have decided to take a few days off from blogging and since no one has stepped up to "guest" blog I shall post old entries from my very first blog that I have recently discovered while searching for something else. I've also chosen to post entries that had to do with my father. Today is the anniversary of his death and so I thought it appropriate to post old entries that had to do with him. See you next week!

August 30, 2002

My daughter's friend Brianna has a loose tooth. Her permanent tooth is already coming in behind her baby teeth and she whines quite a bit about her tooth hurting. I stood today and looked into her mouth and wished the Tooth King were here.

My father pulled all of our baby teeth in our family. He pulled a lot of the baby teeth in our neighborhood. He pulled the teeth of my friends. He was very sly about it and very gentle. He had a system. First, he would ask to look at your tooth. He would move his head back and forth, his brow furrowed, and he would study the loose tooth while making tsk tsk noises. Secondly, he would ask to wiggle the tooth. "Just to see how loose it is." Nodding our consent, he would then reach his giant fingers into our mouth and wiggle the tooth. Then he would remove his fingers and declare, "Yep, that tooth is loose and about ready to come out." Only it was out. He would have already removed it, without our knowledge, and we wouldn't know it until we put our tongue to the tooth and discover THE TOOTH WAS GONE.  Lastly, he would hold up the tooth in his fingers while we screamed, our eyes as big as saucers because HOW DID HE DO THAT?

Of course, after the first few times of him doing this we knew the drill. Despite the fact that all I really felt was a gentle tug, I would protest when he asked to see the tooth. "Don't pull it, Daddy," I would beg putting my hand up to my mouth.

"I just want to see it," he would say in his calm voice.
"It isn't ready, Daddy," I would say. "I know it. I mean it. Don't pull it." I was sure that this time I would feel him pull the tooth and this time it would hurt like hell.
"Dammit, just let me look at the tooth," he would growl. And I would dutifully open my mouth, he would study it and feel it, and once again the tooth would end up in his hands and I would not know it until I saw it.

Sometimes he would play with us and not take the tooth. I think sometimes he knew it would hurt and so he would mess with it to loosen it. He would tell us it wasn't quite ready. He would ask to look at it again. He would admit defeat. He would look at it once more, concede defeat, and WHOA it was in his fingers. Those were probably the times I felt the tug the most, but really it never hurt. My tongue would feel the gap, I would shriek as I tasted blood, and sometimes I cried. "I told you not to pull it!" I think I was more upset that he promised and lied then I was about the pulling of the tooth. Afterwards, I always stared at my tiny tooth in his big hand. "How did you do that?" I would ask in wonder, and he would laugh and grin at me. He loved it.

He pulled all of my teeth except the one that in a wad of chewing gum in the back seat of our station wagon. If any of my friend's had loose teeth that bothered them I would take them to my dad. "Just let him look at it," I would say, knowing full well the ritual and what would happen. I thought he was amazing, magical, and wonderful. He was the Tooth King.

I miss my Dad. As I stare into Brianna's mouth, memories flooding me, I miss the Tooth King. "Brianna," I hear myself say, "Let me wiggle that tooth to see...."

Birthday Shout out #11

Another shout out to someone who reads my blog and who shares a HUGE part of my life even though we haven't seen each other in a million years. Michelle was my neighbor across the street and my bestie for years and years. She was younger than me by almost four years, and while that age difference bothered our mothers it didn't really bother us. She was my brother's age and they were friends first.

As they got older I think the male/female genes kicked in and my brother drifted toward her brothers and she drifted my way. We spent a lot of years teamed against each other, girls against boys, sisters against brothers. I'm not sure when we really started hanging out together, sometime in grade school, but once we did we were inseparable. I think most of my Indiana memories include Michelle.

We were spent many hours in her basement playing Barbies as youngsters and many hours in my bedroom playing records as teenagers. We invented games outside our house and played imaginary stories inside our houses. We could play for hours on end as both of our imaginations were great. The two of us started all sorts of "companies". We took people on bike tours around our neighborhood pretending streets were countries and telling all sorts of untrue historical facts. We started a Mickey Mouse Club and met in our garage with the other neighborhood kids were we learned how to properly hold and pass scissors or whatever that day's show had taught. We once ran away together, all of our belongings packed up, and spent hours hiding out, playing, and plotting our futures in the woods not far from our house. When we realized our mothers, who had longed offered to pack us bags when we threatened to run away, were not coming for us we eventually decided we would wait until we were older to venture out on our own and we trudged back home.

She was my right hand. She was fiercely loyal and kept all of my secrets. She was my first critic and editor listening to me read and reading everything I ever wrote. We had a special language we used to communicate around our brothers and we had inside jokes that cracked us up while everyone around us thought we were nuts. We had moments where we fought and hated each other, but we always found our way back in just a couple of days. We shared everything and anything and were with each other through all of our first life's events until she left for college to spread her wings. I can remember driving with her mother to drop her off and then driving back without her, knowing that life would never be the same.

It wasn't. She was finally out from under my thumb, living her own life and finding her way. I was still at home lost, without my shadow, and jealous she was moving on without me. She found love. I moved away. The letters we wrote gradually stopped. I kept in touch with her life through my parents, always feeling like a proud parent to hear about her success, but too proud to reach out to tell her so.

Social media and the death of our fathers brought us back into contact. While our youth and young adult selves know each other very well our older selves are learning about each other through the Internet. She reads my blog faithfully just as she always did with anything I wrote, and I have never forgotten my promise to her if ever I publish a book; she gets the dedication.

Happy Birthday Mickey Sue. Thank you for all the wonderful years of friendship. Please know that I cherish those years and am so grateful for having had you in my life. You and your family will always hold a special place in my heart and contributed to the person I am today. May your day be filled with all of the happiness and wonder you gave me.

Should I call my Dad?

This week is spring break here in our county and there is no school. My youngest will be home when she feels like it for me to mother and friends will be visiting from Indiana. I have decided to take a few days off from blogging and since no one has stepped up to "guest" blog I shall post old entries from my very first blog that I have recently discovered while searching for something else. I've also chosen to post entries that had to do with my father. Today is the anniversary of his death and so I thought it appropriate to post old entries that had to do with him. See you next week!

October 10, 2004

There is a new car commercial on television. In it a pregnant woman has just come home with a new baby seat for the car. Her husband tries to put the seat inside their little two -seater, but he just can't seem to get it to fit. He tries and tries, turning the car seat in different directions, adjusting the front seat so that any passenger will be smashed against the windshield. The entire time his pregnant wife is offering advice and opinions until finally she asks, "Should I call my father?"

 I loved it the first time I heard it because in this world there are girls who consider their fathers the end all to the be all. I was one of those girls. I knew, without a doubt, that my father could solve any problem I might run into. He fixed everything from our kitchen appliances to our washer and dryer. He fixed our toys when we were young and our cars when we were teenagers. He kept my car washed, gassed, and tuned. He knew how to repair anything and he knew what tools he needed to do just that and what type of goop he needed to hold something in place.

Watching him work was always fun. My job was either to read the instructions or hold the treble light in place so he could see in the dark. He would be chomping on his cigar, cursing, making jokes, and by golly getting the job done. There wasn't anything my father couldn't do. I believed that and getting married didn't change that belief. I never once thought of giving up on dear, old Dad just because I had a man around. It wasn't anything against my husband who is also a fix-it man himself, but there were many times he too needed my dad's help on a project. I just truly believed the man had all of the answers and was able to do everything. Just like the girl in the commercial believed. "Should I call my father?"

A week before my dad died of a heart attack I called him to ask him what to do about our clogged kitchen sink. I did this on the sly. My husband had attempted several times to fix the problem and no matter what he did the sink just kept stopping up. Like the girl in the commercial I suggested calling my father for the answer. My husband told me not to bother the man with mundane problems and kept right on trying to fix the problem...to no avail. The next day while he was off to work and I was left with still a clogged sink in my kitchen I called my dad.

He was happy to help. He told me what anti-clogging agent I was to purchase. He told me exactly what to do with the product. He told me that if that didn't work I was to call the plumber, and then he proceeded to tell me what to tell the plumber and what the plumber should do to fix the problem. It was the last oral communication I had with my father. It was also the last thing he fixed for me. The anti-clogging agent and instructions I followed to a T fixed our clogged sink.

Yes, girl in the commercial. Call your Dad!