Why I Got Nothing Done Today

Today I reached new lows of unproductiveness. Dan came early and started painting ceilings, and the phone line guy and fence guy showed up at about the same time. The phone line guy arranged for us to have a new line running to the house, since the old one is ragged from years of rubbing against the roof. The new line will be underground, but is currently lying on the grass, waiting for me to forget about it and whack it to bits with the lawnmower. The fence guy gave us an estimate on fencing the backyard, which is something which desperately needs to be done since Bo and K. will wander near the busy street in front of our house despite our repeated warnings about the dangers of cars and trucks. His estimate was about what we had figured, but, disappointingly, he couldn’t make out any better than we had been able to exactly where our property line is by looking at the aerial photo with lot lines which Ed picked up at the courthouse. Surveys here cost an absolute fortune, so he suggested that we could look for the “pins,” which are little metal spikes which might, once upon a time, have been put in at the corners of the property. I’m not sure when he thinks these pins might have been installed, but I’m quite sure the property hasn’t been surveyed within recent memory. We do know that one corner is at the power pole at the front of the yard, and another is a little past our driveway, but the property lines slant a bit, and the corners in the back are less certain. The fence guy suggested that we put the fence in about five feet from where we think the line might be on the side with lots of trees, since it is easier not to have to climb through trees and a luxuriant growth of poison oak and poison ivy to install a fence, but I am reluctant to give up my possible claim to some really lovely big trees toward the back of the yard. I may brave the poison oak and have a bit of a poke around in the back shrubbery (really brush and brambles) for those magical pins.

As soon as we were done with the phone and fence guys, the air conditioner guy showed up to get our new unit up to speed. Actually, the system was already running, and cleverly turned itself on last night, so that we awoke to a 65 degree house this morning, rather than the 40 degree house we would have had without its admirable services. This is a heat pump system, which is different from the air conditioners in Florida that I’m used to and which you have to tell whether to heat or cool. It is only for the second floor, and Ed said we needed it because the existing system didn’t cool upstairs. Being the cheapskate I am, I said that we were in the frozen north and didn’t really need an air conditioner – a window unit would do if we got really warm for a couple months. Ed’s answer to this was that the system he wanted would warm the second floor in the winter and allow us to keep the furnace heated first floor at a low, cheapskate friendly temperature at night. I really don’t know how a heat pump works (and don’t want to, despite Ed’s excellent explanations), but apparently it doesn’t use much electricity except if the temperature gets down in the 20’s, and it should never get down in the 20’s in the house since we have a furnace. Anyway, the air conditioner guy adjusted vents, added Freon, and explained things to me, and I tinkered with the thermostat and made a nuisance of myself.

T. and I got a very late start with school, and K., who thinks that her days would be much more fun if I didn’t steal her playmate and waste hours of his day with education, came up with her best distraction to date. She was drawing with colored pencils, and came to me with a pensive expression, saying “I think I put a pencil in my ear.” I got a flashlight and looked, and by golly, she Had. Not a whole pencil, of course, but the broken off “lead” of a bright blue pencil. I took her out on the back porch where the light was better, and it looked like I could reach the lead with tweezers. I told her not to move, and Not to stick her finger in her ear, and I’d be right back with the tweezers. When I got back, though, the lead was much deeper. She admitted that she had put her finger in her ear. I brought her inside and tried the vacuum. While dramatic, this was also ineffective. Ed had gone off to his second home at Lowe’s, and I decided to try Susan next door, on the theory that she might have encountered this sort of thing in her work on the fire/paramedics squad. Susan suggested Vaseline on a Q-tip, but, since she didn’t have any Vaseline, she tried Noxema. That didn’t work. She then said that she thought they would squirt water into K.’s ear, if we were to go to the doctor, so we headed back across the driveway to try this. I put K. in the tub and tried squirting with a syringe, to no effect. Then I thought of the turkey baster. If you ever need to wash a pencil lead out of a small ear, a turkey baster is the tool you want – we finally got the lead out! K. was very pleased.
And that is why we Still haven’t read our history chapter this week, and another day passed without my putting K.’s room in order.