“Mi casa, su casa” in Spanish literally means “my house, your house.” “It seems to me that your part needs fixing up!” This is what Blue-eyes said to me shortly after we moved in.
In some earlier commentary I mentioned that we had moved to a larger house. It was not without a certain degree of pain and anguish that this was accomplished. On the positive side I was less than 10 minutes from work. On the negative side I was less than 10 minutes from home! This meant I was spending some lunch hours running home to make certain household adjustments that were being dictated by my blue-eyed señora.
Don’t get me wrong! She could handle about 90% of the minor little things that happen when you move into a new home. But not problems like the “garage door will only open halfway and if you want dinner tonight, you best come and fix it because I have to go to the store!” The only perplexing problem here was her assuming I had any concept of how to fix a 17 foot garage door. Her trust in my skill set was admirable, but often misplaced. In this particular instance I came home, fixed the garage door so she could go do her shopping and unfortunately discovered when I got home later that we couldn’t close it. Whoops!
That night I got out my trusty toolkit and was trying to figure out what could go wrong when one of the older members of our gang look at me and said “dad, what’s that little metal thingie up there?” I thought to myself, “You’re a10 a year-old, Gimme a break.” So as not to cause any permanent damage to the self-confidence of this budding genius, I looked at this particular little metal thingy, pushed it up and the damn door came down.
One thing you have to understand is that this house was not quite complete! The guy that had built it fell off the roof and hurt his head. He was not a carpenter, nor contractor but a physicist. Think about that one for a minute. Anyway, there were a multitude of issues and tasks that my skill set, being an erstwhile dyslexic engineer fit right into. Such as the installation of a toilet in one of the extra bathrooms where the plumber, who must’ve been drinking or smoking something, left the flange that the toilet was to sit on short by at least 2 inches.
That proved to be an interesting dilemma and was only solved by going down to the plumbing store and explaining what the heck was going on. An arm and a leg later, I came out with a 2 inch extension and was able to set this contraption and install a marvelous pink commode, which by the way I refused to use. Did you know that there are at least five different types of connecting fittings for water to a toilet? If you don’t believe me, check it out.
Everything worked fine once I was finished, except for one minor problem. One of the gang used it for an inaugural whiz. Success? Not quite yet. It would not shut itself off! I finally figured out that this large copper ball thingy had to be set at a certain point to close the shut off valve. I shared this newfound knowledge with my engineering team the next day, and they all thought I was nuts! I didn’t mention the garage door incident for obvious reasons. They already had serious doubts about working for a dyslexic and ambidextrous engineering manager, let alone one that could be outsmarted by a 10-year-old.
We had a swimming pool with new house — huge sucker. The only problem is it was empty, like no water. Well, a little bit of water that had turned a serious green and had a bunch of funny things swimming around. The first task was to eliminate our non-invited pool guests and see if the equipment would work. This was serious business because being well-versed in swimming pool maintenance and the associated equipment, like pump, filter and how to make the water flow, I undertook the rehabilitation of this cemented hole in the ground. I got some cleaning stuff and clean the entire 20’ x 40′ cavity and figured out how to make the pump and the filter work. I figured I needed to rinse all the chemicals out, sprayed everything down and with a portable pump got the monster dry. It was nice and clean and white, and ready for some sparkling water!
After a weekend of this I felt we were ready to fill this new recreational device and start to have lots of fun, as it was still warm out. I came home from work one afternoon and there were my gang and six of the local bomb-throwers skateboarding in this empty cavity, screaming up the sides, careening down the deep end and halfway up only to turn around and come back down. I went berserk! There were skateboard wheel marks all over my nice clean white bottom. Let me rephrase that — the pool bottom not my bottom, but beyond that I figured if one of them fell and broke something, other than the pool, I was likely to get my bottom sued! At that point I did a backflip into a vodka martini.
After a little discussion, which included many threats, I succeeded in convincing the troops that this was not “a good thing.” I was very happy when all it took was a little bit of water, some cleaning powder and scrub brush to get the marks off the pool, which I made the skateboard urchins do. I decided then and there to fill the pool before they established a statewide tournament to determine who could break their neck in JJ’s cemented hole.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to fill a swimming pool with a garden hose, let alone how much costs? I got out my slide rule, and input in the dimensions: length, width and depth, and came up with a figure of approximately 32,000 gallons of water. My reference to a slide rule is a clear indication of my age, and for those few that don’t know what it was, then I suggest you look it up. This was an engineering tool used prior to the silly thing called a handheld calculator. I still have three of them saved somewhere because I figured at some point they would have antique value. But I digress.
Before it was over I was seriously thinking about renting it out as a skateboard arena, but once again was outvoted. After a couple of days there was enough water for the gang to go in and get wet, only to discover that the water was extremely cold. Heating the pool now became a priority, and after a little investigation as to the costs. We had a budget, but like our federal government it was completely ignored based on what our family termed as mandates. Does that remind you of anything?
We believed in democracy in our family and everybody had a vote. The differentiation was each of the kids had one vote, I had five and Blue-eyes had 22. Some democracy! As an example of family cooperation we tried to decide on priorities, but no votes were extended to the horse named Lucky, the dog named Rusty and my cat, also named Rusty. The animals’ voting record was considered suspect in that you could sway their vote with a little piece of meat. That’s somewhat consistent with the pork belly system currently popular in Washington.
One of the issues that surfaced which required a family congressional subcommittee was the carpeting throughout the hall and in the bedrooms. Nobody liked it, so we decided collectively, meaning Blue-eyes decided on that as a priority. We developed the caucus system to allow each representative to make a choice as to coloring and type. This went to committee, was passed and executed. Carpet samples were brought for review and a decision was made similar to that of Henry Ford and the model A! “Any color they want as long as it’s black.” The color wasn’t black but you get the inference. So the next decision was what colors to paint the rooms, and in her wisdom she allowed the kids to pick the color scheme as long as it matched the carpeting which was selected through the aforementioned democratic process.
We had the carpeting ripped out and began the process of painting each of the bedrooms and this was indeed a family event. The kids lost interest after I painted them once or twice instead of a wall, and Blue-eyes suggested that I really wasn’t interested in painting — I was keener on tormenting our offspring. I suddenly became the proud owner of three vertical Navaho White enamel stripes on my back. Fortunately it was water-based paint.
The gang got even by developing a game where they took my golf balls, which I wasn’t using anyway, and a putter to see who could get closest to the end of the bare wood 60-foot hall without touching the end wall. It was really very clever. They would mark each spot where the ball stopped with their initials in chalk. It was a good idea, looked like fun and I joined them figuring with my skill set I was sure win. I didn’t! They cheated. What I hadn’t counted on was they had been practicing and knew the idiosyncrasies of the hall and I was destined to command last place. Good thing I didn’t bet money on it.
Blue-eyes wasn’t working at this point, so she finished painting the rooms, as well as the hall. She was a damn good painter and I offered to get her a sideline, which she promptly told me what I could do with — which I cannot repeat here. I renewed the mandate and associated cost of the new pool heater, but to no avail. The carpets came and everybody was happy, except we noticed that one room, which was the wrong shade of pink, did not quite match the color scheme. We lived with it for a while and eventually made some changes, much to the chagrin of the occupant of the pink room.
The new house also had a basement that was approximately 60’ x 30’ and fully cemented, with radiant heating. My plan, from the get-go, was to develop this into a huge family room for winter time activities and entertainment. There was only one minor problem. Even though it was built with tons of concrete, it had developed cracks and unfortunately was sitting below the ground level of the water table, mostly in the winter. Hydronics is not one of my skill sets. This was an adventure unto itself, which I will address in a later blog because of my frustration in trusting the construction wisdom and acumen of a physicist.
Moral of the story is “sometimes physics is something you take for constipation!”
J.J. Addingnuttin 