Randomness

Sheila left today to go pick up Ben in Columbus. I was gonna go but she and a friend of hers wanted to stop at the high-dollar mall down there and get some things. So I'm at home.

I have some time not used from work so I took today and tomorrow off. I was planning on going and getting Ben but you see how that worked out.

I was driving north from Chicago towards Waukesha, WI a couple weeks ago and saw this guy driving next to me. No biggie. I see lots of guys driving next to me. But this guy was about half again as large as I am ( and I'm a big guy) and he was completely naked. Not what I was wanting to see at that time of day. Or any time of day, actually.

We got moved into our new house and out of the old one. It's taking some time to get settled in but you all know how that is. The night before Thanksgiving we're getting ready to sit down and play a game and Sheila goes downstairs to change the laundry over while we wait for Isaac to get out of the bathroom. Isaac comes out, Sheila's not up yet, I send Hana down to get her.

Hana calls out that I need to get down there. Sheila is standing in the laundry room crying. "I just cleaned this floor two days ago!" I mean she's bawling. And I really couldn't blame her. There on the floor, in the middle of the floor, all over the floor, is everything that went down any drain upstairs. Sink, shower and toilet. It all came up the toilet and shower stall that are in the basement. NOT a pretty picture.

So the game is off as I get the kids and we start with the rubber gloves, picking up...well, you know. sss.....stuff! Nasty. The kids are gagging and hacking, and all they're doing is holding the bags while I do the pooper scooping.

We get most of it up and I set to work seeing if I can clear the drains. 30 minutes later I decide it's a lost cause and it'll have to wait til I can hire a plumber.

Hana asks how soon the plumber can get there.

"Friday morning, I hope," I say.

"Friday?! What'll we do til then?"

"Well, if you just have to pee, you can go in the toilet. Just don't flush it."

"What if we have to do more than pee?"

"There's a bucket in the garage with some cat litter in the bottom. And there's toilet paper out there."

Hana: "Are you serious? You want me to squat over a bucket?"

Isaac: "Maybe it should be called bucket paper."

Sheila: "Maybe I should go buy more cheese."

Preston: "Can Nate come over to play?"

So Hana asks me why I don't just call a plumber right then and get them out here quick.

"It's the night before Thanksgiving (sounds like a poem, right?) and there's no plumber around. If I were to call one now, or before Friday even, I might as well buy him his own boat. Just go down to the dealer and tell him to pick out whichever one he wants. Nope. It'll wait til Friday.

So Friday comes and then the plumber comes and two hours later he's gone and the roots are out of the drain and the sss...stuff is flowing much better and the bucket was summarily disposed of, and without EPA approval either. And life goes on.

We do foster care, right? Move into a new house, need a new inspection. Fail the new inspection. Don't have GFI plugs near the sinks. For those of you not in the know, or who don't care about such things, GFI stands for Ground Fault Interrupted, or something like that. You've seen them and newer house have them within a certain distance of where water is or would be. The idea is that the outlet has a little breaker on itself and it will trip if it senses some sort of change. I don't know how it works really, but I do know that if your outlet boxes are not already grounded then the GFI outlets won't work.

How do you know this, John, you might ask.

Experience, my dear. Experience. Experience I gained when I tried to change the old outlets to the new GFI outlets so we could get inspected. Four screws on the outlets sides, six wires coming into the back of the box. Can you figured out the possible number of combination's of wires to screws there are? And I was smart. I labeled the wires so they would go on the right screws. But the GFI is different. Now what. Maybe I should read the instructions. Nope, doesn't help. The GFI keeps popping it's breaker.

So I call a friend who's an electrician and beg for help and mercy and he comes right over. He does a quick perusal of my situation, plugs a few things in, moves some wires around and says, "Your boxes aren't grounded."

"So what's that mean?" I ask.

"The GFI outlets won't work. I mean, I can get them to work, but they won't do what they are supposed to do, plus it's illegal, and you'll fail the inspection if the inspector plugs his tester in the outlet, and I wouldn't do it anyway."

"So what do I need to do?"

"We need to run three strand, or grounded wire, from the circuit box up to the three outlets you need to change."

So that's what we do. Or I should say, that's what HE does. I'm not much help since Electricity and I do not get along. Nope, Not in the least. We did get along, once, but the last time I tried to do any rewiring we had a blackout from Michigan east to Massachusetts and as far south as Virginia.

While we were getting the last things out of the old house, we put some things in the new shed. As we are walking away form the shed, I hear a lock snick closed. I turn around and Hana has just locked the shed. "Do you have the key to that lock?" I ask her. "Sure, it's right here," she says and holds up her keys.

I say okay and keep walking. Couple days later, in the ensuing plumbing catastrophe, I'm needing my tools. I remember they are in the shed. I tell Isaac to get Hana's keys and bring me my tools. Isaac never comes back. So I go looking for him. He's out there trying to get the lock off. Seems he can't get the keys to work. So I give it a try. Nope. Not gonna happen. S0 I holler to Hana to get out there. She points out the proper key, the one that we had been trying to get to work all along, and says "That's the one."

"But it doesn't work," I say.

"It worked before," she says.

And we go round and round.

I finally walk away in disgust.

Yesterday I come home from work and I bring my tools into the house to fix a shelf. Hana says, "I thought your tools were in the shed."

"They were," I reply.

"I thought the shed was locked."

"It was."

"How'd you get it open?"

"With a new type of key."

"Really?"

"Really. It's called bolt cutters."

Now I just need a new lock for the shed.