Month: August 2022

DIY Victory. Huzzah!

I successfully replaced the flange, drain, and stopper in one of the bathroom sinks yesterday. Before details are parsed out, some entities are owed thanks.

  1. The builders who constructed our house seventeen years ago, because they used standard fittings.
  2. The plumbing industry for establishing clever and simple plumbing solutions that even fools like me can fix.
  3. Hardware stores for carrying parts as needed.
  4. Youtubers who put together excellent how-to guidance.

I’d been planning this job for a few months but was intimidated because, plumbing. It’s right up there with wiring and electricity for me. Fed by sitcoms, movies, cartoons, and cliches, my imagination is well-stocked with visions of what could go wrong for someone who isn’t mechanically proficient, like the guy who looks back at me from the mirror.

Nothing did go wrong, though. Yes, it was work. Two hard parts emerged. First, unscrewing the flange in the sink from the drain. Those puppies had been wedded together for seventeen blissful years. Separating them was a stinking challenge. I needed to hold onto the vise grips and keep the flange from turning while somehow reaching beneath the sink and turning the pipe to unscrew the flange. I needed another set of hands.

Enter the partner, my spouse, aka, K, the wife.

I set up a heavy-duty screwdriver in the hole where the popup lever connects the stopper to the plunger. Yeah, these are the technical terms (*snark*). I don’t know the true terms. With that rig in place, I, um, gripped the vise grips and held on tight. Then I had my wife turn the drainpipe below, using the screwdriver as a lever. I felt tremendously satisfied when that worked.

The other aspect was that we have designer stuff in the bathroom. I wanted to use the original plunger because its design matched everything else in the bathroom. But the lever wasn’t compatible, forcing me to find an imaginative solution for a hybrid system that worked. That, brothers and sisters, consumed about forty minutes of my seventy-five minutes sweat soaked endeavor.

When I finished, I went into the other room. My wife was reading on the bed. “Done,” I said. “Come see.”

“Hang on, I’ve almost finished this book.”

“Really? That has priority over my DIY success?”

“See this tear?” She pointed at her eye.

“I’ll see your tear and raise you my sweat-soaked shirt. It was hot in there, and cramped.”

“I’m almost done. I just have a few more pages.”

I went back alone and admired my results. With one down, I’m purchasing more replacement parts and doing the other two sinks this weekend.

Don’t get cocky, I tell myself.

I won’t, I reply.

What can go wrong?

4

Rendezfloof

Rendezfloof (floofinition) – An agreed upon meeting place at a specified time between or with animals.

In use: “The meal rendezfloofs were not at the food bowls. No, they preferred to meet her when she selected a can or bag, and then shepherd her to the actual eating site, telling each other that they were providing security that she needed because she was carrying rare and precious stuff: their food.”

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Saturday’s Theme Music

When they finally broke through to the other side and the dust cleared, they found a material world with many boulevards of broken dreams. No matter; it was Saturday, August 27, 2022. They had that going for them, if nothing else.

It’s overcast in my swath of the world. Though the day advanced with the sun cresting the eastern mountains at 6:31 AM, the sun’s warmth is remote and oblique. 18 C now, we expect 83 F to be the temperature’s peak. Night will take over at 7:53 this evening, when the sun ‘moves on’ as the world turns.

For music, The Neurons are plying the morning mental music stream with a song from Peter Gabriel. Named “Blood of Eden”, you might expect it to be an energetic, uplifting, hard rocker. Surprisingly, it’s not. (Yes, you correctly detected snark. Good for you. You must have already had coffee.) I’ve always been a Peter Gabiel fan. This 1983 song was another one which prompted me to listen carefully as my brain asked, “Wait, what’s he saying?” The Neurons restored the song to active presence in my mind after overhearing an older man and woman chatting over coffee. He said in response to her reply, “She said that she can’t afford the insurance.” And while my brain remained engaged on its task, The Neurons took up that line and hooked it up with the “Blood of Eden” lyric, “I cannot get insurance anymore. They don’t take credit, only gold.” That’s just how The Neurons play.

My coffee is at hand. I wasn’t always a coffee drinker. Didn’t start that until around fifth, sixth grade, while visiting a friend’s house. We had the same first name, Michael, although he was a Mike. People habitually said, here’s Michael and Mike, or M and M. Mike used to have coffee with a lot of sugar and cream. I only drank it this way a few times, always at his house. When our compasses took us in different directions, I quit drinking coffee and didn’t resume until I was twenty and in the military. Even then, I was only an occasional imbiber of the black brew, usually on midnight shifts. I became a regular drinker when I went off shifts and became the Training NCO. My boss would come in each morning and say, “Let’s go get coffee.” That’s where the habit really developed for me. That was at Kadena on Okinawa, after I’d been there a few years, so I was twenty-seven. My relationship with coffee blossomed. By the time I reached Germany a few years later, I was identified as a hard-core coffee drinker.

BTW, the coffee was bought at an Army & Air Force Exchange Services cafeteria upstairs from the command post where I worked. It cost ninety cents.

Stay positive and test negative. Take care of your family, community, tribe, and self. Here’s the music. Cheers

2

The Writing Moment

He was enjoying himself. He was working and revising, either the third or fourth draft, although an incomplete draft. The ending was tentatively written but he needed to reach that point, had to bridge yet the first huge chunk — four hundred pages — He had an urge to rush it but there was a lot to still be told. Patience, he kept telling himself. Patience.

Yes, he was still learning the story. The story fascinated him, and he was having a good time learning it. Someday, maybe he’d know the whole.

1

Pasflooferine

Pasflooferine (floofinition) – Animals, including birds, who enjoy singing. Although some species are specifically known for their singing abilities, pflooferine isn’t defined as a species or genus, but as a individual characteristic.

In use: “Jade was a pasflooferine of the first order, singing just before dawn so others would get up and feed her, singing to be freed from the house at midnight and then singing again outside the bedroom window to be let back in, even singing a sad lament when she found her litter box not up to her standards.”

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Thoughts That Run Through Your Head When You Release A Book That Was Hard To Write

I know all of these things. Think most writers do. ‘Writer’s butt’ — the ache of sitting too long, massaging lines, sentences, paragraphs, intentions, plots, and so on — strikes on too many days. I often feel like I can’t do this and think about giving up. Just live a normal life, right? Not think about plotting, pacing, characters, endings, and beginnings. But the itch remains. There’s a story. Write it. Finish it. Move on, and torture yourself again. Isn’t this fun?

K.M. Allan's avatarK.M. Allan

Usually, when I release a book, I like to do a bit of tongue-in-cheek post about the thoughts that run through your head, such as:

I did have thoughts for what is now my third book release too, but they weren’t so funny. Why? Because this was the hardest book to write.

And it wasn’t because I was writing it during 6 COVID lockdowns that spanned 290 non-consecutive days. Or the hell that was months of homeschooling. Not even the mental and physical toll of three postponed surgeries, one major surgery, one unsuccessful surgery, and a follow-up surgery I’m still yet to have, made the book hard to write (although none of those setbacks helped).

This book was…

View original post 903 more words

4

Friday’s Theme Music

You ever think about changing your calendar? I wonder how it would affect us if on each New Year, our first day was 365 (366 for a leap year). Then the days count down, like a Julian calendar in reverse. Today, instead of August 26, 2022, it would be something like Friday, 128, 2022. Then you’d think, oh my goodness there’s only 127 days left to this year. Your conversations would be interesting as people suggesting having a celebration on the 120, and you reply, “Is that a Friday?”

Today’s particulars aren’t notably different from yesterday. When I awoke a few hours ago, the temp. was 61 F. We’re up to 20 C now. Sunset is expected at 7:55 PM after a sunrise of 6:30 AM. Our high will be about 93 F. No clouds in the sky, and it’s blue. Air Quality is 2, so pretty darn good. On the news front, the GOP has shifted targets from the DOJ and are no longer chanting about defunding the FBI. Now they want to defund the IRS. Their cycle, from the false statements of the former GOP POTUS to their continual insistence that the 2020 POTUS election was stolen to some who lost claiming they won (yes, I’m commenting on you, Laura Loomer), to verbal attacks on different government departments seems to be about sowing discord, distrust, and confusion, which destabilizes our government, polarizes our politics, and disrupts our society. So no changes in the news, other than, oh, yeah, flooding, fires, droughts, baseball, football, and other sports. But yea, people cry, Lake Mead’s water level is no longer falling. We’re saved!

From reading news and reflection on my dreams and daily activities and routines, The Neurons feted me with John Lennon, “Watching the Wheels” from 1981. Do you remember when he was gunned down? I surely do. Anyway, The Neurons have “I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round, I really love to watch them roll,” repeatedly playing in the morning mental music stream. That’s how my mood is, to some degree. Moods, like so many things, are a spectrum, so I’ll be sliding along to something else sometime, and then probably back again, and off again, and so on.

Yes, I have my coffee already, and I’ve eaten brekkie — waffles today. Now I’m contemplating the cats washing themselves and contemplating their fur, ears moving as a car passes, a bird breaks cover and tweets, caws, or screeches, pausing as a far dog barks and a prop plane drones closer. Stay positive and test negative and so forth. Here’s the music. Sing along if you will. Cheers

3

Floofing Hour

Floofing Hour (floofinition) – 1. A period, which may be more or less than an hour, when an animal displays annoying or irritating behavior.

In use: “The floofing hour, when the cats came in demanding food and attention, was debilitating as everything was stopped to attend the floofs.”

2. The time(s) of a day or night when the quantum portals are open, enhancing animals’ skills as well as allowing them transport between dimenstions.

In use: “For the less adept floofs, the Floofing Hour was posted on the Floofnet, accessible to any animal at any time, but the more developed creatures were telefloofically connected and knew the time with a simple thought.”

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