Tag: repair

The Hotel Dream

Several memorable aspects emerged from this dream. My wife and I, younger folks, had bought an older place. Having moved in, we discovered it was a hotel and we had several guests. I knew them; all were male salesmen, white, with short black hair, wearing suits, with very broad shoulders. They looked like ex-offensive line men and I knew one had been. Right after I realized they were in the rooms, they began checking out. Turned out there were three.

The first salesman checking out forced me to realize that I didn’t know what was happening. Scrambling to catch up, I went through the small hotel. Dinghy wallpaper was hung, which I declared needed to be replaced. At least three stories were found. The rooms were small and the halls were tall and narrow. Several cats were present. I began taking care of them while inventorying the hotel. It was dilapidated, with a strange, brownish carpet which was bare in many spots. The salesman was ready to go and needed to pay and get a receipt. I found a system hidden behind pieces of paper taped to the top of them. The paper were notes to staff about how to use the system according to the header on one, but all were blank.

I wrote out a receipt longhand for the guest, thinking through all the line items a receipt like that should have. He was comfortable with that and prompted me, “You also need the date.” I then signed it. Holding up a fat tome, he mentioned he had a paperback book that was in the room and wanted to take it with him. I told him, “No charge,” because we had bought it used at a Goodwill for a quarter.

My wife, who’d been wandering around the place rushed over, urging me to charge him, complaining, “That’s why we’re losing money.”

I told her that I didn’t think a quarter would break us. We argued about little things adding up. I noticed that the carpet’s edges were green.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, I need to organize a checkout system. I removed the papers from atop the system and found a small gray system. Looking very old, it was turned off and didn’t seem to be attached to anything. I decided not to use it but just do everything by hand myself. The second man showed up to checkout. This went better, but he had to tell me when he arrived because I had no idea.

I realized by this point that the odd carpet was withered grass. Finding a spray bottle of water, I began walking around, spraying the grass to encourage it to grow back. As I did, I discovered petunias and tulips springing up in full bloom and called out to my wife, “Hey, look, we have flowers in our yard.” I was thinking as I did this it would be lovely to have a lush green lawn as my carpet. This lawn was full of weeds. That didn’t worry me; I would pull the weeds. Since they were inside, the weeds shouldn’t return as long as I kept pulling them when they appeared and watered the grass. Many parts of it were already green and restored. I would let the flowers stay.

At this point, the third man arrived to check out. Since I was working on the carpet-lawn, I told her to check him out and explained what to do, which she did.

After that, a very slick-appearing man in a uniform appeared. He introduced himself as ‘the major’ and showed me so beautiful shiny blue things which he’d acquired from foreign countries. He wanted to display them for sale in my hotel. My wife was instantly against that, telling me, “Don’t give him any money.” I informed the man that I wasn’t paying anything or giving money or security in any form, no security deposits, nothing, and that we would not be liable for his objects. He seemed to be agreeing with that. Then he sat down and put his legs up. His feet were replaced by prosthetics. I asked him if that happened in the war, and he said, “Yes.”

Dream end.

5

A Repairing & Painting Dream

I was in a place of business. What business? I knew in the dream but that knowledge wasn’t transferred when I awoke.

We were fixing up the place. I’m not certain if we were preparing for visitors or if we were selling the place and moving out. That seemed uncertain, like it was possible that both were happening. We were painting the place a soft white in some places and a pale blue in other areas. I was directly doing or organizing most of the work and explaining to others what had been done, what’d failed, and what needed to be done. Walking around, I pointed out places where damage had been painted over on the walls, especially on the wall to the right, by the corner, and ceiling, telling them, “That needs to be redone. We need to fix it before it’s painted, because you can see the damage, and if you can see the damage, it’s probably worst underneath.” All were nodding and agreeing.

Later, I changed clothes and walked to my car to leave. My new clothes were a light blue shirt with tan pants and jacket. When I reached my car, I realized that I didn’t have the key fob; I’d left that in my other pants. Irritated with myself for overlooking the key fob, I stood and debated about what to do, as if there was a choice, right? Accepting it, I began walking back.

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Cosmic Construction

I don’t know what woke me. The wind was imitating a full-throttled gas leaf blower outside the window, hammering the house walls with whatever it could find to fling (yeah, that’s how it sounded). One cat was on the bed, and the wife was restless.

I think, though, it was pain. I’d somehow rolled around while I slept, ending up with my mending arm and hand bent underneath my weight. The hand was crying, and was too stiff to straighten at all.

I massaged it and listened to the wind beating the world, wondering what it was doing to our garden, trash can, roof, and everything else. After a bit of that, I adjusted my hand in a safe space elevated on a pillow and settled back into sleeping mode.

The dream slyly crept in. Someone said, “Yes, we have the body before us. We can see the injuries and damages and know how to repair them. We are sending thousands of cosmic construction teams to the area.”

My wife tapped me awake. “It’s really scary outside. The wind is blowing hard and steady.”

“I know. I hear it.”

My Fitbit said, 5:25. I was miffed to be awakened and eager to return to sleep. The dream still had my thoughts entangled. I pictured the cosmic construction teams and their work. I imagined them with nano-sized machines up beside my bones, muscles, and joints. Hard hats on, they’re looking around and chatting, tapping their feet, arms crossed, assessing damages, deciding on a plan. Then the word is given and they go to work.

It was an amusing, yet wonderful and reassuring thought, that somewhere in me, cosmic construction teams are going to work.

0

Floofpair

Floofpair (floofinition) – 1. Repair done under an animal’s supervision.

In use: “The photographer’s camera had malfunctioned, and as he worked on it, a red fox shaded up to his shoulder to conduct a floofpair.”

2. Two animals who are always together.

In use: “The elderly little brown dog – five pounds, soaking wet, on a heavy day and the twenty-five pound Norwegian Forest Cat were an odd floofpair, but ate, slept, and played together all the time.”

3. Domestic assistant from a foreign country who is hired to help with animals.

In use: “When he left Nicaragua and settled in the states, he’d not planned on life as a floofpair, but the arrangement of going around and tending people’s animals while they were away was a satisfying life.”

7

Screwed

I finally did it!

I finally fixed my Roomba.

The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner had become quieter. Its softer noise made us suspicious, so we conducted a paper test. The Roomba failed. Then I removed the collector, got down on the floor, and confirmed that the brushes weren’t turning. Bummer.

That was months ago. I began looking into repairing it, but then, I thought, maybe I should buy a new one. They were on special at Costco and seemed pretty damn attractive. The display models lacked the scratches and wear and tear plaguing my current beloved Roomba. The new ones had that great new Roomba smell, too.

I read reviews and comparisons, checked prices, and thought, and thought. Eventually, I decided the old one probably only has a couple thousand miles on it and deserved to be fixed. Besides, it now felt like part of the family. I reminisced about the time that poor sick Lady had decided she’d piss on the Roomba, and how you just need to pick it up to send Quinn through the pet door with a sonic boom. I wrestled with what I do with it if I got rid of it. Taking it to the Goodwill seemed wrong. I refused to even think of the landfill.

The parts, a new enhanced cleaning head (I don’t know how it was enhanced), purchased for $49 with free shipping, arrived yesterday. Three minutes later, the Roomba was repaired and making its rounds again.  The weird thing was that iRobot had sent new screws with the replacement part. I used them, which meant I had four perfectly good screws left over.

Perfectly good.

I’m like a compulsive scavenger. Whenever I have left over screws, nuts, bolts, or hardware, I add them to my collection. It’s a fine collection, begun when I first moved out when I was eighteen. At first, I integrated left over screws with others in my various drawers and containers. Then I began keeping them separate, with little notes. The notes had their original planned use and the date. That way, see —

I don’t know what was planned there. It was just an idea. What I’d realized was that most of the screws, bolts, nuts, and fasteners were too unique to be used elsewhere. Most of the time when a fastener was required, I’d go through the collection, testing their viability, conclude that what I have doesn’t work, and go buy new ones.

Having recognized this, I threw the four Roomba screws away. It required a lot of grit, opening the trash can, putting my hand with the screws over it, letting the screws go, and closing the lid. It took a lot of grit, and just five minutes, but I did it. I kept my eyes closed, though. I couldn’t bear to watch.

So that’s it. My days of being screwed are over.

Now, what do I do with the old, un-enhanced Roomba cleaning head? I could just trash it, I suppose, but I think I can make some room on a shelf. Because you never know when it might come in handy, right?

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