What Rants May Come (Monthly Mini-Rants)

The BBQ Pit
201

My next-door neighbours on both sides are very nice people, and the ones on one side are an elderly couple who you might expect would be the least problematic of all. No, because they’re always Doing Things. And the things they do invariably Make a Noise. They seem congenitally unable to just sit still and be quiet.

They have, for instance, about 3,452 relatives and friends who they constantly host for barbeques and garden parties. This includes toddlers who are, if anything, even loader than the parents. They cook vast batches of things that emit their stench over to my place when I innocently try to sit outside.

When I found an enterprising kid who, with a partner, runs a lawn mowing business, they commandeered his services and since they have a very large lawn and like to have it mowed approximately every couple of days, the kid considers them a major customer and now I’m being neglected.

They’re constantly hammering on things in the backyard. They appear to be building things, then demolishing them, and building them again. It’s some sort of perverse hobby whose only function is to Make Noise.

And just now there was a strange whining noise coming from my open window. I didn’t know what the noise was, but it was annoying and was accompanied by a petroleum stench, so I immediately assumed it must be Them again. And sure enough, when I went over to have a look, they were having their driveway sealed. Why? Their driveway was already in better shape than mine has ever been, so in God’s name, why. except to annoy me and create poisonous fumes wafting into my house so I have to close the windows.

As a bonus, as part of Doing Things, some years ago they planted the world’s fastest growing tree in a corner of their back yard. I have a tree, too, and it grows about an inch a year. Theirs grows about ten feet every year, spreading out its branches like the lord of all it surveys, and dumping about a ton of leaves on my back lawn every fall.

Like I said, a very nice older couple, except for their energetic propensity for Doing Things, all of which are either loud and/or annoying. I can’t fault them for any one of those things, it’s just that they do so many of them!

The good news is, it used to be even worse. To add to the cacophony, they also used to have one of those extremely yappy little dogs. Perfectly fitting, right? But the dog disappeared some years ago and was never replaced. I suspect one of the other neighbours mentally snapped and shot the stupid yappy thing.

202

Could I just get through one week without spending hundreds of dollars? I’m so tired of this. It started last month with fixing a roof leak, then electrical wiring that had pulled away from the house. I had to put one cat with a brain tumor to sleep and another was diagnosed with diabetes and kidney disease with all the ongoing care that involves. Then I had to have my HVAC system replaced. Last week was a car repair and now my kitchen sink is stopped up. My phone is being wonky so I’m probably going to have to replace that soon. Gah! I thought I was going to get to relax this week.

203

We started last week with a heat wave, this weekend, a long, holiday weekend away it was awful, rainy, windy, & cold. Didn’t even have most of the briefings it was that bad for (not) flying.

On the way out of town I stopped at the very picturesque National Cemetery on a hill as we usually do. Not only all of the symmetry of all of the same headstones on rolling hills with trees but the added bonus of every one of them has an American flag for Memorial Day. As I was leaving I drove past a mother holding the hands of three young kids; looked like twin girls, maybe kindergarten & a slightly older brother. He looked up at me, you could see his eyes had been crying. I was listening to the radio on the way there, & the person being interviewed said the best way to honor someone else loved one is to ask them about them, to have the family member talk about the decedent. I briefly thought about it but didn’t & just kept driving; I don’t know what Dad died of, or when but it was heartbreaking to see that.

The the car decided it didn’t want to go home last night. Silver lining is the check engine light came on & it went into limp mode right near a hotel we stay at every year for an event so I knew where I was; turns out a spark plug broke so a bunch o’ Benjamin’s later (including the hotel) I have an unexpected day off & don’t know what to do on the rest of ride home.

I guess I should not be so mad anymore at Google Maps - It gave me three route options, I chose B, not the fastest but way less boring than the soul-sucking interstate. At one point I caught it - “I found a faster route” (which I had already declined once; why would you suggest it again?) I guess I missed it the second time I did it & by the time I realized it, I basically had to take the interstate route home which is how I ended up here as opposed to some Podunkville where I probably wouldn’t have been able to find a place to stay & would have even been questionable if I would have had phone service to even call for a tow twuck.

204

When AI’s get clairvoyant like that you start to wonder whether they’re in cahoots with your car just to F*** with you.

205

This is what my June looks like. I’m in the middle of closing on a house (hopefully culminating one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done.) My husband talked me into going on vacation June 11-17th which I told him was going to be a massive problem in the middle of trying to find a place to live, but he didn’t believe me (he has since apologized.) Since we already committed to this thing with his Dad in Chicago, I just… don’t know how we’re going to get out of it.

My kid needs surgery at some point this summer, so we have to see a doctor and figure that out. He has obstructive sleep apnea and needs a tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy and we can all hope and pray that it resolves him constantly getting in trouble at school. That’s going to be 7-14 days at least working from home. I suspect between his feeding disorder and his sensory issues, it’s going to be a really rough recovery.

When is he having this surgery? Right after we move? Good God. We haven’t even started on selling the old place.

We are moving so he can start a new school.

I’m working through the weekend on one grant and I was hoping next week to relax a bit. HA!

I now have a federal grant due the day of closing on my house.

The only reason I’m not under my bed right now is I know the stakes are too high.

206

Damn that’s hectic.
Good luck with it all. If we don’t hear much from you in June
we’ll know why !

207

Many years ago I had the following week:
Mon - make settlement
Tues - took her to horsepistol (induced)
Wed - kidlet was born
Thurs - I moved.

There were some minor complications & they weren’t letting him out of the NICU at first. It was a “any minute”, “soon”, “a little bit longer” type of thing. I finally blew up at them, stating that I wanted to see the two of them together & then I needed to go as I had other things to do. After I left the nurses came in to her & said how they felt so bad for her that I didn’t want to be there. She was like, "No, he really needs to go & do other things, like finish packing. (which she wasn’t very helpful with being full term & on bedrest).


As for me, this is definitely not a mini rant - Baby Gurl went to the vet this morning for surgery; had some reaction with the anesthesia & is now at an animal hospital where they are monitoring her heart. I don’t even have any more info than that to know how worried I should be.

208

Oh, goddamnit. The new A/C system I had put in a month ago has stopped working! It was feeling a bit muggy earlier so I went to lower the temp and the thermostat showed 80 (set on 76). I tried turning the system off and back on but nothing happened. I went outside to look at the unit in case someone had messed with it or something and it looks ok. Of course, it happened on a weekend. When it’s abnormally hot for May - high of 92 tomorrow. Fuck. The only good thing is that several years ago I put in a window unit in the bedroom in case of emergency. Thank goodness that is still working so I’ll at least be able to sleep comfortably.

209

That sucks! At least, with the system just a month old, it’ll be covered under warranty.

I haven’t tried turning on mine yet this season. We did have a few days of hot weather earlier but there was cooler weather in the forecast so I never bothered switching over from heat to A/C.

I fear I may be in for some repair costs as last summer the primary water discharge hose from the dehumidifier coils was blocked and water was gushing out of the secondary emergency discharge. I cleaned out some gunk from the primary hose but I’m not sure if that was the cause. The weather turned cool after that and I never had the chance to test it. The A/C will work with only the secondary discharge, but I can’t let it run that way for long since if that gets blocked, too, it will dump water down into the furnace and pretty much destroy it!

210

I got home from work Saturday morning a bit after 7:00. Used one button on my key fob to open the stree-level gate to the garage, then used the other button to open the gate to the lower level, and proceeded to my parking spot. To my surprise and consternation, someone had parked a Jeep SUV there.

After dithering for a few moments, I parked in the adjacent spot (which, thankfully, turned out to be unassigned), and went up to my apartment. Instead of going to bed, I had to wait until 10:00 for the office to open, so I could report the offending vehicle. I had taken a photo of the license plate, so the staffer could look it up, in case the SUV belonged to a new tenant (there was no record that it did).

The Jeep was still in my space when I left for work at 9 PM, but at least there was a note from the office promising to tow it away if it wasn’t removed. The office is closed Sunday and Monday, and I don’t know who’s going to call for the tow if it’s still there in about two hours from now. I also don’t know how the driver got the garage gates to open (or how they’re supposed to get a tow truck down there - - there’s only about eight feet of clearance).

211

I don’t know what hassle is involved in “switching over” whatever sort of system you have.

On systems I’ve owned where it’s as easy as pushing a button on the thermostat, I always make a point to run the system in the other mode on one of the first days the weather permits that. IOW, the first warm spring day run the A/C for a few hours. Likewise first cool, not cold, day in fall, run the heat a few hours. Yes, you’ll be unnecessarily expending a dollar of energy to heat or cool a house that doesn’t need it, but IMO it’s a worthwhile investment. Because …

If my system needs service, I’d much rather have my system repaired about a month before the entire county turns on their system for the first time and 10% of them discover they need service right now!!!1!.

Go early and beat the crowds.

212

That’s why I usually have my HVAC tune-up scheduled in March and late September.

213

Did you all know that thermostats have batteries? And that (at least some of them) don’t work if the batteries die?

We woke up this morning to the house at 52 degrees f, which is damn cold. Especially for the last day of May! Looked at the thermostat display, which was helpfully totally blank. Oh, well. we had replaced both of them at the same time mumble years ago. About three years ago the one downstairs had died and we replaced it. (We in the sense I stood there holding a flashlight and handing over screwdrivers on request.) The upstairs one was running fine, so we left it alone. So, clearly, this one had simply given up the ghost a few years after its brother. Fine. We added ‘trip to the hardware store’ to tomorrow’s agenda, and I watched a couple of youtube vids about replacing Honeywell thermostats in prep for my important role to come.

Which reminded me: I’d better check to see if the flashlight batteries were okay. And as I was standing there at the junk drawer, I thought, hmmm. Batteries? The CO monitor screams at us when its batteries are low, but I’ve never even heard of anyone replacing a thermostat battery. Hubby pooh-poohed the idea. Apparently the thermostat also sucks its power from the house current by wire, and so the batteries only matter if you have a prolonged power outage, which we haven’t had for years.

Still. I said, well, how hard is it to check? And he ‘humored’ me by pulling off the thermostat … and discovered the batteries in fact had partially split open and disgusting gross stuff was growing out of them! Well, he figured that was what had probably killed the thermostat but at my suggestion/nagging he managed to dig the old batteries out (they were dated 2003!), and brushed out the cavity well to clean away the crud, and popped in the new ones I handed him (handing stuff to the doer is clearly the peak of my repair talents!) and the thermostat display rose from the dead!

Turned out the thing actually somehow remembers our programmed settings even after "dying’, so he snapped it back into place and within two minutes the baseboard heaters ticked back into service.

Let’s hear it for my technological expertise!

Blue June... (Monthly Mini-Rants)
214

Hooray for your techno-sense!!

I would not be surprised to find your thermostats had / have a low battery icon on the display. Which isn’t very obvious unless one is in the habit of scrutinizing one’s thermostat regularly.

The last set of good Honeywells I had had a bright red light that turned on for low battery, loss of program, or filter needs changing. You might not notice that red light instantly, but within a day or two for sure.

215

That sounds like a much better indicator for sure. The thermostats are in a corner where the main hallways split into NS branches to either the kitchen/dining room or two bedroom, and it’s way away from any window. Unless we deliberately set out to read them, we simply won’t ever notice some medium gray battery symbol on the light gray background.

216

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