Our Olde House: September 2024
One of my goals of retirement is to eliminate or reduce tasks I do not want to do and at the top of this list was cleaning the cats’ litter box. We have two cats, and they seem to tag team the litter box so it always needs to be sifted. Notice how I said ‘was’ cleaning the litter box, because now I no longer clean it. If you were thinking that I sold the cats or delegated this task to Miss Sherry you would be wrong for at least two reasons; first, I do not attempt to delegate nasty jobs to her, and second, we are still married. Anyway, I bought an ‘Automatic Litter Box’, which cleans the litter after every use. After I assembled the new box and plugged it in, we all took a moment to look at our new arrival. The four of us seemed skeptical at first that two of us would use it, but after several days of gradually removing the litter from the other litter box, we have success. I cannot properly express how much more joy and less anxiety the two of us have in our lives since we no longer have to sift the litter box. I can only imagine that the cats enjoy always having clean litter too, but so far they have been too cool to say thank you.
I found a job I should have been able to do in five minutes. All I needed was a couple of plastic gutter parts, a hacksaw and a screwdriver, and of course one ladder. However, after being attacked by ants, and narrowly missing being attacked by red wasps on my first trip up the ladder, I realized that my five-minute job had turned into a two-day job. I decided to climb back up the ladder this time with wasp spray in my hand. No wasps visible at the top of the ladder so I moved to the gutter. When I was taking the gutter apart so I could add the corner piece, I got a weird Oompa Loompa feeling; I looked up and saw a red wasp staring at me. I apologized to the wasp while I backed up, putting him at ease; then I sprayed him, which put me at ease. As I finished the job another red wasp flew up onto the roof and landed; fire two at this wasp. The task at hand was finished so I went down the ladder before any more wasps came back.
When the hydroponic garden on the side of the house was removed there were a lot of rocks and some small pieces of broken concrete left behind. This area did not get covered by sod because we ran out, and that has given me an opportunity to remove the rocks and add some dirt before we get more sod. As I raked the dirt to remove the rocks I also spread it out to slope away from the house; I added some dirt to make a more level path for the big lawnmowers to get into the backyard from the front yard. I could have had three cubic yards of dirt dumped on the driveway, but then I would need to wheelbarrow ALL of it into the backyard before our two cars could use the carport again, and that would never happen fast enough. Instead, I purchased twenty bags of dirt at a time, one hundred in all, but I left the dirt in the pickup truck until I was ready to unload it into the backyard. It took four weeks but the carport and driveway were never blocked by a pile of dirt.
The grass in the backyard now has a lot of edges that the big mower cannot cut, and it takes forever to cut the edges with my small mower and toy line trimmer, so I bought a decent line trimmer. The new line trimmer is battery-powered which I prefer to gas because it turns on and off with a switch; it is also quieter, does not need to be filled with gas, and is lighter than the gas models. It can really tear up the long grass on the perimeter of the lawn and has plenty of power to tackle the occasional vine trying to grow across the grass. It works great, but it is not fun after five minutes of use so I stop for the day after fifteen or twenty minutes.
Our new refrigerator is smarter than me and taunts me every now and then. When I opened the door last week the chime made a different sound; the chime goes off if you leave the door open too long, but this was a funny tune. The temperature displays for the refrigerator and freezer were correct and there were no blinking lights on the display panel. There is an app for the refrigerator on my phone, I know, how goofy can they get, but I looked at it anyway. The app tells me how many times the refrigerator door is opened per day in addition to other life altering information, but this time there was a small red dot next to the Notices and Updates button, great. I clicked on the button and sure enough, a new software update for the refrigerator was available. I downloaded the app to my phone, and then updated the refrigerator software from my phone; no more funny-sounding chime. This is pretty goofy even for the South. I doubt I need any more phone apps to help with my appliances, but I do need to head for the couch and download a napp for me.
