Our Olde House: January 2025

My drone came back from the repair shop in perfect working order; this is probably due to the fact that they sent me a new drone as a replacement for the one we broke. A pretty good deal actually, it cost about as much as round trip shipping so all in all a victory. I am much more timid about flying the drone near the house, with the trees, bushes, overhead wires and occasional car driving down the road, because I do not want to crash it again. So far, wide open spaces seem to be the ticket for drone fun now.

Miss Sherry bought me a toy for Christmas and I have been trying it out. I really wanted, and received, one of those little hand held chainsaws. I have lots of tiny trees and random weeds sprouting everywhere, and the little chainsaw seemed perfect for this task. I tried it immediately and it works great. Battery powered so no cord to cut, and no spending ten minutes remembering the correct French words to make the gas motor start. When Spring has sprung my plan is to cut everything and feed it into my chipper for easy disposal.

I was using my line trimmer to cut the edges of the grass in the backyard when the line became too short for efficient cutting. This trimmer has the bump head to advance more line, but when I bumped it twice it got quiet because it had run out of line. No problem, I had purchased extra line when I bought the trimmer, now all I had to do was remember which safe place I put it in. As I sat on the couch trying to remember where I put the extra line, I noticed it sitting on the table next to me. So far so good, and another victory for laziness and procrastination.

I did not see the instructions for replacing the trimmer line at the time, even though it was sitting under the packets of extra line. I thought, how hard could it be to figure out how to replace the trimmer line, I quickly found out. Disassembling the trimmer head was easy and my first thought was to push the coil of new trimmer line into the trimmer head, even though the new coil of line was significantly larger in diameter than the inside of the trimmer head. Nope, that does not work.

I had another think coming so I took it. I stretched out the trimmer line, passed each end through its hole in the side of the head and tried to push the line in to rewind it. Nope, that does not work either. I took the line out of the head and noticed a hole on either side of the center hub which went from one side to the other. I pushed the line through the hole, got pretty even lengths on both sides and then put the trimmer spool back into the head, unfortunately upside down. I turned the spool over and pushed it back into the head, and started to spin the hub by hand so the line would rewind around the spool. That worked. The trimmer worked and a few bumps fed more line out, so everything was working. Later I found the instructions and hand crank for rewinding the line, which was a reminder to stop being in a hurry.

It had stopped raining for a few days and all of the pin oak leaves seemed to be on the ground, so I decided to clean the gutters with my leaf blower. This task of course requires a ladder to get up onto the roof. I finished cleaning most of the gutters over the back deck and was going to use a different ladder to reach the few feet of gutter left to clean, so I started down the ladder.

Well, the ladder shot out from under me and since gravity always wins I was pretty much instantly transported to the deck below. It sounds stupid, but as I sat and then fell backward onto the deck I did not know what happened; it was that fast. My right foot was hurting and was caught under the ladder, and Miss Sherry helped me up and into the house. I could wiggle all of my toes so I figured nothing was broken, and I was bleeding a little from a scrape so we decided that a doctor visit with an x-ray of my foot was a good idea. The scrape was cleaned and bandaged, but there was a broken bone that used to be connected to the little toe on my right foot. I remembered the old joke about ‘needing to call a toe truck’ but it did not seem as funny, or at all funny now.

Next stop, the orthopedic surgeon, where another x-ray showed the same toe was still broken in the same place. By now my right foot had swelled up at least one shoe size and several widths and was letting me know that I was indeed hurt. Surgery was an option, but I punted that idea and chose door number two, where we would give my foot a chance to heal naturally, using time and pain pills instead.

All in all I am ok. Healing is dependent upon me not standing or walking for a few months, so I am sitting on the couch watching the weather channel all day. As always, I have much to be grateful for, most notably that Miss Sherry got me up, to the doctors and continues to help with my recovery, and that I did not suffer worse injuries from the fall. I also learned that an extension ladder should never be placed on a composite deck surface, in case anyone else is contemplating trying this feet.