Friday, January 27, 2012

Do It Yourselfer Blues

      I am a chronic do it your selfer. I'm somewhat independent. I don't have any skills or talent in mechanics, carpentry, plumbing or electrical but I dabble in all of them when it comes to my house or vehicles. I've written before about my lack of natural ability when it comes to being a handyman.


     So here's the situation. It's about minus 5 here in the daytime. I don't have a garage and my ancient cars are parked outside. From time to time those old beaters will not run. So  I can solve  most of the problems . It just takes hard work and a little know how.


     Last week I accidentally left a car door improperly closed so that the interior light stayed on. So two days later when I discovered the door improperly closed... I had a dead battery. So downstairs and dig out my trusty battery charger. Find cords. Set up the charger. So for a lot of this it's bare hands kind of work. 6 1/2 hours later the battery is charged and the car starts. Problem solved.


    This week I needed the other car to haul some junk and I find it has a dead battery. This is a more serious problem. I set up my trusty battery  charger and soon find out my battery's toast!


    Now the next part is to find a replacement battery. This is where my live in professional shopper takes over. So 6 hours of phoning later she has found the best battery deal and off we go. She's also wangled a free battery test just to be sure the battery is completely finished. Next I have to get the battery out of the vehicle. There is one bolt that holds the battery in place. It's in a very confined space and it's extremely rusty. So making only a 1/8 turn at a time, many bad words, cut knuckles and cold hands I finally remove the battery 45 minutes later. 


     Off we go to purchase a battery. We race home to install the battery before dark. Ten minutes later the battery is installed and the old beater is running. 


    Now I know any farmer reading this will say, "What's he complaining about? I'm outside in the cold every day." For me, as I said in my last post, I didn't have to wear gloves until I was sixty. At 72 it's a different story. My hands don't get cold but the skin cracks to the point of cuts that bleed.


     So when I think this over it's the hard difficult work I do. I don't run with my money and ask the first guy I see to fix the problem. I'll save my money for the highly technical problems that I can't handle.


     I'm disappointed that in all the cold I was not going to take any pictures of this procedure. So I apologize. I hope you'll understand!

13 comments:

  1. In all those years you never wore gloves? You ARE from a different planet, Red. And now you are complaining that you need gloves now? Sheesh! :-) :-)

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  2. Ya DJan, gloves are a pain. There are still some days I take the gloves off. I'm not tough. I'm just lucky to not suffer from being cold.

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  3. You are very lucky to do away with gloves :) I just cant do without my socks and double gloves :) And having a professional shopper by your side is very comforting!

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  4. Red after reading your linked in post, when you started talking about your wife calling around for six hours, I literally laughed out loud! Thanks for the laugh, sorry to hear that your hands just about froze and no worries about a photo of this event... I totally understand!

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  5. Anytime when one has to work outdoors on metal objects is not a good day;)

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  6. Ruby, now that I am older I have to wear gloves, not from cold, but from skin cracking.

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  7. Well, Darlin the six hours included some searching for places to call. sometimes you find real bimbos and it's difficult to get information.

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  8. Linda, I can tell you've done this a time or two. Some things you just can't do with gloves.

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  9. Well good for you.. and now I'll know who to ask when I need to find a car battery at the best price. But I hope the savings, divided by 6 was worth the per-hour rate for your professional shopper.

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  10. Since we farm I can really understand...working outside on metal in bitter cold...never a good thing to have to do.


    Linda
    http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
    http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com

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  11. I hope you charge your own batteries. You're on a roll.

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  12. I love that you use the word "wangle" when referring to Mrs Red ... if it doesn't appear in a dictionary it should because I am sure we all know exactly what you meant! I also enjoyed that fact that you show that a determined atttitude will take us very far in our day to day lives. As an aside I do believe that every decade longer that we stay on this esrth our internal furnace works less and less efficiently getting the heat around the parts it needs to go to! Thanks RED for your posts always very entertaning when I get time to read them!

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  13. Cheryl, I will have to grudgingly admit that you are right when you say our internal furnace slows down. I hate to admit that you are right. Thanks for visiting Hiawatha House.

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