A lack of mechanical know how and abilities is a normal state
for me. Not sure why. It’s not genetic. Or at least Mom and Dad knew which way
to turn a screw driver. I have to stop and think about it. And now days, at my
age, if I have to stop and think about which way to turn a screw driver, I’ll
forget why I have to turn it in the first place. Can’t tarry too long over
whatever project I’ve taken on for that day.
And Good Grief! Mechanical things seem not to want to
cooperate with me, but seem to be after me too. And last week was no different,
maybe even a little worse.
It all started with the coffee pot. It is, or was, a fairly
new coffee pot, maybe two or three years old. And that’s new compared to the
one it replaced, which had served as good 15 years before refusing to drip any
more. So I comparison shopped and got what I thought was a good
replacement. It is all digital, and
could be programmed to have that cuppa joe waiting on you as soon as you got up
out of bed in the morning. I didn’t mess with that too much. It was too much
trouble. And it has all kinds of water and coffee filters, just to be sure you
got the best coffee ever every morning.
And that was OK, until Saturday. Had my pot ready to go, but when I pushed
that digital button, all my coffee pot would do was tell me, “ERROR.” What?!?
What kind of pot tells you, on its little digital window, that you have caused
on ERROR? Should I have poured the water in better? Should I have stirred the
coffee grounds? What to do?
Those of you who know me, know that I’m lucky if I can even
find the floor in the morning, much less the kitchen and the coffee pot. And I
remain in that Never-NeverLand until the first swallow of caffeine. After that,
everything is OK. Everything was not OK Saturday morning. I have another coffee
pot. In fact I have two backups just in case. Coffee is a necessity. But where
were they? Good grief! I was being forced to think before the caffeine hit the
brain cells. Where is that other POT!?! Just where I left it. On top the
dishwasher, ready to go at moment’s notice. This was that moment. And a few
moments later I sighed with happiness, now that I had my coffee and was
beginning to wake up, for real.
I have begun the search for a new, every-day pot. And I have
decided to go retro. There will be no digital. There will be no multiple
filters. There will be a simple on-off switch, because I never want to get an
ERROR message (yes, the message was in all caps) again from a coffee pot.
But, the coffee pot fiasco pales
when compared to Wednesday’s strange occurrence. That’s when my spare tire
decided to remind me that it has hung underneath my pickup truck for the last
20 years without so much as one thought on my part.
It all started with a hiss. I had
just shown off my gardening exploits to Darling Daughter (she has the green
thumb, I have the black thumb), and was walking back with her to her pickup
truck when she announced, “Oh-oh Mom.” She heard the hiss before I did. And
Darling Daughter, being much younger of course, got down on the driveway to
check out which of my tires was announcing its demise by hissing. She found
that none of them were, not the ones attached to the truck’s wheels anyway. That
caused me to at least bend over to assist. If it wasn’t a tire going flat, what
could it be? Bending over didn’t help. You had to get down on all fours. That’s
where Darling Daughter and I witnessed a sight never seen before. . .a spare
tire going flat before it ever got on the vehicle. And it wasn’t just going
flat, it was unpeeling itself. How does a tire, that’s not on vehicle and under
no pressure, just burst out of its rubber layers all by itself? It’s a mystery,
to me at least. A Darling Daughter backed me up quickly with the announcement,
“Don’t touch it. It might explode!”
Well of course it will! Coffee
pots announce “ERROR,” and my spare tire wants to explode. Sometimes I’m glad I
am not mechanically inclined. I’m gonna’ leave all this up to the fix-it guys,
right after that first cup of coffee in the morning.
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