Ongoing Letter - Allan's Place
Allan's journal to the world. (Sounds important, doesn't it?)
Our Christmas dinner guest (TF) is coming so it is time to get the house cleaned up. The last item on the cleaning list: the bathtub. After coming home covered in dust, the bathtub gets a little grotty. But my shoulder and wrist is tired and sore from work. So how to clean?
Allan cleaning bathtub with nylon brush on drill 20241225_123846.mp4
Don’t judge me.
It all started when someone forgot to turn down the heat at night. Usually Floyd does, but sometimes it is me. I woke up with a headache.
The conversation turned to how cool it is in Floyd’s bedroom (the north end of the house). Mom & Floyd had a dresser left over from another bedroom set. Mom has been gone for a while now, but the cabinet remained there. It had been reorganized a few times but essentially remained there. The issue is, it covered a heat register.
I said, “Why don’t we just drill holes in the bottom of it to let some heat out? So last night Floyd and I did that.
There are holes on the side, too, closer to the window.
What do you mean, I’m miserly?
This is weird, almost as weird as the hidden receptacle (see hidden power). For the past several years, there was a green tinge of … well, a kind of goo, stuck to one of the receptacles in the kitchen. I often wondered, “Where is this green coming from?” I wracked my brain (but not much of a brain wrack – just a things-that-make-you-go-hmm kind of wrack), wondering what would cause it.
I finally figured it out. My Mom must have dribbled a little green food colouring on the end of the cord to the mixer. The mixer is about 45 or 50 years old – a Sunbeam, I think. Every time I beat some whipping cream, I got some green on the outlet. Duh.
The funny thing is, Mom hated the colour green.
Our new refrigerator came yesterday.
Floyd has a hard time stooping over to see what is crammed into the back, stuffed into a corner, or relegated to the bottom of the old fridge. He can’t get down on his knees to see under the freezer level. Food that gets forgotten gets rotten. But all the freezerless fridges out there are right-hand swing (hinges on the right) and does not fit out kitchen. This Frigidaire was the first and only all-fridge model that had a reversible door that wasn’t six thousand dollars. So, after a few years of looking and thinking and comparing, I found this fridge at Home Depot.
I was going to put “new flooring” as a heading and realized that the flooring I’m using at home is not new. It’s rejected pieces from 520. They just need to be scraped and scrubbed clean of debris to stick to the floor.
We had a sewer backup. It seeped into the bathroom and entrance flooring layers that were put down over time. It all had to be taken up. There was wood laminate with foam cushion, then linoleum, then more linoleum. Out it came.
That was about 1.5 years ago. Yes, it’s taken a long time! I’ve been busy.
While Floyd is in Saskatchewan, I’m here. I delivered him there but found I had nothing to do, so I drove back again and started this project.
Whenever I try to do something heavy, like using the vice, the bench hops around and prevents any serious work being done. It wasn’t fastened to the walls – it was just sitting directly on the plastic shelving (see pics).
So I pulled it all apart.
I was in the kitchen straightening the curtains by the kitchen table when I saw this outlet (the top one).
Why is that surprising?
About 7 or 8 years ago I was miffed that the house didn’t come with an outlet on that wall. I bought a box, an outlet, and some wiring and tapped power from the outlet in the storage room on the opposite side of the wall. I installed the outlet in the picture (bottom). I could then plug in a laptop to read the news over morning breakfast. This is also a convenient place for a CO detector. Gotta be safe.
So today, while straightening the curtains, I saw the top outlet. “Floyd,” I said, “has this always been here?”
After more than 10 years of living here, no one knew there was an outlet there. We had a good laugh.
In investigating the crawl space under the house, F and I stopped to talk about the rat’s nest of wires and disused electrical junk that is (or was) our communications box. Is this not the sloppiest bit of work you’ve seen?
There’s a hole in our siding. What the heck made this? If you look closely at the paper beneath, you’ll see some scratches. I think it was likely a deer with its antlers.
hole in siding 20211010_152931.jpg hole in siding 20211010_152950.jpg
