The Dangers of DIY

Wanna save a little money?  Do.It.Yourself!

Sometimes that works.  Sometimes it doesn't.  A case in point:

Answering the ever-annoying RINNNG!!!! of the telephone yesterday I was greeted by a sing-songy Edith-Bunker-like female giggle ~ giggling which alllmost masked the roar of the heavy male bellow in the background.  Piecing her little bits and snippets together with his occasional "TELL THEM.............." interspersed among the general "#$*%!*@%#@**^+#$^ " I managed to  discern what had happened.

It seems that this household had been having trouble getting their laundry dry, so, as anyone would reasonably expect, the handy husband of the house decided to D.I.Y.  Off he went to Lowe's to buy the latest  "AS-SEEN-ON-TV" gadget, the one that cleans out your drier vent, putting an end to laundry day woes.

As soon as he got home, he got right to work.  First step:  pull drier away from wall.  So far so good.   Carefully following the directions, he ran the wire brush through the wall and up the drier vent.  Noooo problem.  But right after that, things started to go south.  Still following the directions, he tried to pull the brush back out, but Uh-Oh.  It wasn't coming back out.  It just wasn't.

One can spend only so much time on something that doesn't work and clearly isn't going to.  So, as any handyman would do, he grabbed his fishing pole and stuck it into the black hole in hot pursuit of the wayward brush.  You can probably guess what came next.  The fishing pole lost sight of its task, allowing itself to become distracted by the brush, and the next thing you know, they are in solidarity.  Two comrades, united in purpose, out on strike.

And that's when Mr. DIY conceded defeat and called for help.  Or more accurately, hid his own face and had his wife call for help while he lurked in the background barking out instructions.

As things turned out, there was no budging that pair.  They are there to stay.

So Mr. DIY's next project:  Reroute the drier vent.  This is a simple process of another trip to Lowe's for a mile or two of drier vent ducting, and some circular saw blades; then cutting a hole in the wall, another one in the ceiling, and another in the attic; finally cramming the ducting up between the studs in the wall and out the roof, capping the hole and sealing around the vent to keep the water out when it rains.

A quick calculation revealed that the $85 he saved on the cleaner covered a good part of the supplies from Lowe's, and didn't touch the cost of the rerouter.  That bill hasn't come in yet.  But it will, because Mrs. DIY, a little (or a lot) poorer and a little wiser is, at this point, a little gun shy. Sure, she knows her hubby is handy, but she doesn't want him touching this one.

Takeaway:  The next time you get an urge to save some $, well....make sure you can afford to.

HELLOOOOO......???

RINNNNG!!!!

Me:  This is Mary, how can I help you?

Caller:  I need to schedule a chimney sweep.

Me:  I can do that for you.  Where are you located?

Caller:  In Harrisonville.  South of Belton.

Me ????:  Um, I have never heard of that.  Could you be more specific?  Which direction?  Towards Morgan's Point?

Caller ?????:  Ummm......No, south.

Me:  I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with Harrisonburg.

Caller:  NO!  Harrisonville.

Me:  Oh, sorry, I'm not familiar with Harrisonville.

Puzzled silence....

Sounds like we'd come to an impasse.  I really did not know what to say next.  So I prompted her:

Me:  We cover a wide area.  Waco, Temple, Gatesville, Killeen, Copperas Cove, Harker Heights, Lampasas, but I don't know Harrisonville.  Are you maybe over towards Little River, Academy, Holland?

Caller: Well, we are about 30 minutes from Kansas City.  Do you know where Kansas City is?

Me:  Uh.....Kansas?  Missouri?

Caller (light beginning to dawn):  It sounds like you are too far away.

Me:  Yeah, like in Texas.

Caller:  Well, I googled "chimney sweeps near Belton" and you were the first one that came up.  OOOOHH.... I guess I should have googled "chimney sweeps near Belton, Missouri."

Me:  Yeah, that would be good.

Caller:  So all these other ones that are listed, are they in Texas, too?  Temple, Round Rock, Georgetown?

Me:  Yes, ma'am, all around here.

Caller:  Well, never mind.

At Home At Home

It has been raining for three days now. The grass is starting to look, uh, a little weedy and unkempt. But I'm not complaining. There can never be too much rain for me. Anyway, I figure we are starting to make up for what we missed this past season. With the year-long drought, we only had to mow two or three times all season, and now that it's raining and the grass is growing, well, summer is well on the way out. Pretty soon the grass will be in hibernation for the winter, so maybe this is all for the best.

Though the Man of the House has been down with a mini-version of the flu or something the last couple of days, he was all set to suit up and get back to work this morning; but dark and early, before we were even up, the phone rang. It was our first client, 25 miles away, with the weather report at her house: torrential rain. Shortly after that we had a call from our next client, 25 miles beyond the first one...same song, second verse.

I got the picture and decided to call and re-schedule the whole day's calendar, though I did wait an hour or two, until I thought they might be out of bed. It can be an exercise in insanity, trying to schedule clients in a way that maximizes time and gas usage; fortunately, everyone on today's business is flexibly retired, so it was easy to move the whole schedule, intact, to another day. Hopefully a dry day.

So my Man ends up at home, on his fourth day of leisure, our fourth day at home alone together. Wow, I don't know when might be the last time that has ever happened. "We" have lots to do:

• the usual household chores ~ never any vacation from those;
• pumpkin cookies to make ~ with only two of us here, the vast majority of those, enough to last all year, are going in the freezer;
• red chicken soup, an old family favorite, for lunch;
• radio talk shows and tv, of course;
• a week's worth of laundry to fold, and the once-a-month (or less) ironing;
• books to read;
  
• a constantly ringing phone to answer ~ weather like this suddenly makes everyone think about heating up the fireplace;
• oh, and tonight, NCIS! It is M's favorite show, the only one we watch with regularity, and we watch it with IM in place, the better to bond with M.
  

All in all, a great day to stay home.

And The Winner Is...

I thought the squirrel call from Pascagoula, Mississippi was pretty funny. But there has to be some kind of prize for the call we got this morning...

Right away, like I always do when the phone rings, I noticed the caller ID: "NC call." In this day of cell phones, sometimes the guy down the street is calling from another state, so I didn't really think a whole lot about that. And then the caller identified himself as a soldier in North Carolina. Hmmm.... well, perhaps a little unusual, but we do occasionally get phone calls from all over the country, so still not unheard of. But the conversation that followed.... Definitely one of a kind!

After establishing that he had indeed reached the chimney sweep, he informed me that his fiancee lived in an apartment complex in Copperas Cove and was plagued with a cat problem. ????? Surely I didn't hear him say cats??? Surely it was just our bad dreadful connection. I turned up the volume on the phone. I plugged my other ear with my finger. I concentrated on his voice and listened intently. And sure enough, he kept talking about cats...?!

I still thought I must be "mishearing," and after awhile of this I tentatively asked, "Are we talking about...CATS?" I wanted to ask him if they were coming down her chimney, but the customer is always right, so I refrained. Finally I said firmly, "This is the chimney sweep." I thought that might jar something loose, but no. He pleasantly agreed and let me know that he had seen "Animal Removal" on our website. AHA! Now we're getting somewhere.

I took the opening and just as I began to point out that "Animal Removal" refers to animals, usually dead, that are captive inside of chimneys, I heard him drawl, "Oooooohhhh, I'm reading on down the page and I see that. I'm sorry I wasted your time." Whew! That was easy.

But instead of hanging up, he continued, "Do you have any idea what she could do about the cats? There are five strays forever wandering around her parking lot, and she is deathly afraid of them, and she can't go to work, because they are out there just waiting to pounce on her."

All I could think of was the obvious: How about calling Animal Control? His reply, "I've already done that. They said she could come and get a cage, and after the cat is caught they will come and pick it up." It may take awhile, with one trap, to catch five cats, but good, bad, or indifferent, that's the way it works around here. I can personally vouch for that. Do-It-Yourself animal control at its finest. Not a good solution in this case, though; she doesn't actually seem to want to do anything herself. Her involvement seems to be limited to calling him, wherever he may be, and he is a little too far removed to participate in any significant sort of way.

My next suggestion was the other obvious: Didn't you tell me she lives in an apartment complex? Tell her to call the manager and let them deal with Animal Control. His answer to that was, "Yes, I guess I am going to have to call the manager."

I replied, "Yes, I guess you are, and good luck to you!" That's what I said.

What I wanted to say was: So...I'm catching on to a problem here, and it isn't the cats. Are you sure you want to marry this woman? There you are, doing your duty, halfway across the country, and she is calling you to deal with some stray CATS?! What is she going to do when you are halfway across the world in Iraq? She may have to make her own phone calls then, and do ya think she can handle the stress? You want my advice? Perhaps you should reconsider and find yourself a girl that's not scared of cats.

For my part, I may consider changing my phone number. :-P

As I relayed this little story to C the next day, she offered one more idea: Take a can of tuna a few houses down the road, and leave it on the porch. All in all, that sounds about as good a solution as any.

Notes From the Chimney Sweep

The song doesn't say, does it? But in case you have ever wondered what happened to that crazed Mississippi squirrel that brought on the revival in that sleepy little town of Pascagoula, wonder no more. I think I may have cleared up that little mystery.

Spring is often a busy season for a chimney sweep, but not for the reasons one might expect. Gone are the winter requests to cure a smoking fireplace or to inspect or rebuild a chimney after a fire, and we get a few calls from those organized souls who want to get a jump on next fall’s heating season by cleaning their chimneys ahead of time, but a lot of our spring calls come from people who have discovered animals and/or their nests in the chimney: usually an assortment of birds or squirrels, less frequently a raccoon, or perhaps a possum. At least on one occasion, we were called by a homeowner whose house was suddenly infested with flies; and then there was the time this chimney sweep was called upon to ascertain that the stench in one house was caused, not by a dead animal in the chimney as surmised by the owner, but by a package of fish rotting on the coffee table in the living room. Really. The chimney sweep seems to be the go-to guy when people just don’t know where to go, and, as I say, spring ends up being fairly busy.

So when the phone rang a few days ago I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear, “I saw you on the computer. I know you get birds and things out of chimneys, but I have something much worse than a bird!” followed by a tale of woe, poured out, if you can imagine, in a frantic voice with a serious Southern d-r-a-w-l.

This poor young woman’s house reeked so badly with the odor of something dead and decaying that they could barely stand to stay in it, and after looking everywhere they could possibly think of to look, they concluded that a squirrel had died in the chimney, a not at all unheard-of event in the world of chimneys and fireplaces. She had called to see if we, or anyone we knew, could take care of such a problem for her, going on to tell me that she had called the “wildlife people” who had someone that took care of such things, but, alas, they were unable to locate him.

Even in her misery, she was so very polite, as Southern belles are wont to be, and I found myself wanting to help her. Almost. Such a job is always distasteful, to say the least. I started to ask where she was located, but before I could get the question out, she asked me if the job could be done for free… That made me laugh and I told her that there would certainly be a charge. If anyone could be found to do it.

And then, “Are you in Alabama?” Alabama? Uh…no. She explained that our area code was only one number off from an area code that she knew of in Alabama, so she thought maybe we were there, close enough to come to her rescue in…. Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Relief! I no longer felt bad for not figuring out how to help her. Being in central Texas ~ the part she missed when she found us on the computer ~ I couldn’t if I wanted to. So, I wished her well, expressing hope that she would find someone to take care of that for her. And in that lovely, lively, eager Southern voice she assured me, “Oh, I will! Even if I have to pay them!”

Ah…

Well, in any event…one Squirrel of Mississippi Revival fame: Found! And now you know...the rest of the story.

A Bloggy Woggy

It's the Season of Sweeping, there's no time to think,
There's no time to write; I can't play, eat, or drink.
There's phone calls and schedules and things to remember,
There's clients and Xmas to fill up December.
There's shopping and cleaning, and chimneys on fire
At homes where they thought that our price was too higher.

I'm worn out and ragged, it's getting old fast!
I don't know how long I'll be able to last.
I'm tired and tireder; the pace is too quick;
I lack the endurance of good old Saint Nick.

Just us and we're tired. We're waiting to see
If we can hang on, just till February?
Only two months to go till the chimneys cool down
And then, then at last, we can go out of town.

What's that, a vacation?! Can that really be?
We'll visit our boy at W. P!
It's Plebe/Parent Weekend, and we'll spend some time
With our boy, where he stays, on the taxpayer's dime.

And then we'll come home, all rested and new,
And next thing you know, the next year will be through.
We'll be back in the trenches, just sweeping away,
Madly awaiting our next chance to play.

So there ya go, girlfriend, all I can do:
Your own bloggy woggy. I wrote it for you!

The Season of Sweeping

It's the Season of Sweeping, and I don't have time to live!