Post Two, Take Two, and --- ACTION!

Over at Tam’s she tells the tale of her day.  It involves gravity, a staircase and the sudden stop at the bottom.  “Ow!” Indeed…

I’ve had a few “incidents” myself today.

Incident one and a half had me very thankful that I’d taken the time to go in the house and get my OSHA certified side-shield safety glasses.  I was using my sawsall to trim away some now excess framing from around the water heater door frame that had been part of the hinge when the long since missing original hatch was installed thirty-five years ago.  Well the one metal cutting blade I had on hand snapped.  What’s more the busted off end decided it wanted to test the robustness of those very safety glasses.  The ones about half an inch in front of mine own eyes!  I am pleased to report that both the glasses and more importantly my eyes are undamaged.  I was just annoyed that the blade snapped.  I had to make due with a not very striate universal blade instead.  It got the job done.

Incident one involved my not getting a good measurement for the width of the door.  20 ¼ will do very nicely I think.  The plywood I had cut at my local ‘big boys toys ‘is’ us’ is a nice and neat 21 inches even.  Well, at least I don’t need the lumber stretcher…

For now I reinstalled the old plywood that fits on the new hinges with the new hasp that has an integral lock.  It’s much better than the old version with all the drywall screws holding it in place.  I can now access the water heater with the turn of a key instead of needing a screw gun.  I’ll trim the new weather resistant plywood and install that another time.  I may even paint it!

As I was putting away the tools and stuff from the water heater door project I decided that now would be a dandy time to get that accursed vine out of the rhododendron out front.

You know, it’s annoying enough how much detangling you have to do to separate this kind of vine from the plant you are trying to save.  But then when you start pulling with the intent of getting as much root as possible – my ghawd!  The root structure on this damned thing is phenomenal!  We could use napalm on it and this weed would be the first thing to grow back!

Well, I managed to get most of the vine out of the rhody and took a lot of root along with it.  Then I was working on the last two strands that had wrapped themselves around each other like a cable.  I had a good two fisted grip around its throat, er, well, vine, and I gave a mighty heave with all that I had to put into it, when, suddenly, it snapped.

Pulling that hard when you all of a sudden find yourself with no resistance whatsomever can lead to some rather entertaining unpleasant things.  I damn near did a back flip right there in the driveway.  Or at least I landed in the driveway.  On the pavement.  On my right elbow and hand.

I do believe the air turned a wee might blue at that very moment…

So there I am lying face down in my driveway.  I hear a car go by a few feet away in front of the house.  They apparently must have been honor students in the local school system because they “didn’t get involved” with the obvious “man down” at the end of his driveway.

I did a self assessment lying there and decided that as much as things hurt nothing was apparently broken.  OK, so now how do I move and brace so I can get up without doing any more damage, given that I wasn’t assured as of yet as to the accuracy of my initial assessment?  Well, I managed, picked up my hat which had landed some distance away, and sat down on the back bumper of the flea van to catch my breath.

Apparently the initial assessment was fairly accurate.  My hand is sore, but (rather obviously if you are reading this) I can still type while actually using both hands.

Then, a little while ago, as I was typing Take One of this very post, the Godiva Dark Chocolate Pearls tin that I had placed under the near edge of the potato chip bag intending to keep the chips from spilling out all over the keyboard fell off the counter, bounced off the back edge of the keyboard it was supposed to be protecting, hit the switch on the power box --- and shut off the computer.

I had not saved.

I blame it on the calendar.  It may not be a Friday, but still…

So shortly after I’d written and posted the previous item with those unexpected musical gems I’m sitting here thinking quietly to myself “An out of shape fifty-three year old man taking a header like that ain’t the same as a twenty year old athlete doing the same thing” when all of a sudden Mum starts laughing her head off.  She’s reading a Stephanie Plum novel.  The timing couldn’t have been better if it had been choreographed!

Updated to add:

 Road Rash is a BITCH!

The improved water heater hatch.  

Once I get the new plywood in place what color should I paint it?