Old Fools Journal: A Week of Make

This past week was rather busy for me. I made a terrycloth after bath kilt from two cheap towels, bought and started stripping the paint from a 50+ year old wooden door, replaced the glass in the kitchen door, put more seed in the ground, put in more tomato seedlings and carried a lot of water for the plants.

The results are:

The after bath kilt is too heavy and too hot. I should have made another sarong type. In the summer with the air conditioner on I may sing a different tune.

The new old door is not giving up its paint easily. I have used a quart of paint stripper, a chemical that is volatile stuff. It not only removes paint it removes skin as well. It doesn't really but it makes you want to take it off. I wear as little clothing as possible when it's hot and humid and getting that stuff on your belly is not good. On the other hand the fumes get you high and after a while you don't care. Probably causes brain damage. The dogs (they pick up everything I throw down and test for edibility) won't touch it. OK that job is on hold until I get more deadly chemicals. It's going to be our new old front door.
The ice tea is Earl Grey with a touch of pomegranate.



Replacing the glass in the kitchen door will take just a few minutes, right? Yeah, right (example of a double positive that makes a negative). In the first place it took a hammer and chisel to get the old glass loose from the old caulking. The reason for replacing it was that it is double pane glass which is dirty inside and cannot be cleaned. A window you can't see through is pretty much not a window. This glass is very expensive stuff that gives some imagined insulation from the outside elements and will stay clear for about 20 minutes after installation. The only one I considered was very expensive and had a 5 year guarantee for the glass only. Screw that, I bought 1/4 inch tempered glass that bullets will bounce off of for less than half the cost of the double pane

For starters while cleaning some of the caulk around the edge of the frame I managed to get some in my hair almost immediately. I have long fine gray hair and it is just naturally attracted to anything sticky and nasty. That was not fun. After that folly and many bad words in English and Spanish and pulling my hair out I did manage to remove the glass without breaking it

All I have to do now is put the new glass in (beware of anything that starts with "all you have to do ..."). OK, but first I needed to clean off the old caulk. After a couple of hours discovering that there is nothing that will clean that shit off I decided since this is a protected door it didn't have to be perfect. I smoothed the old stuff and applied new caulk on top. Now all I have to do is (there is that phrase again) pick up the frame and stick it back in the door and fasten the other side. Of course everything slipped and caulk covered everything in sight. The glass was so heavy we couldn't attach the inner frame *%^$#@*&^%$!!@# of a *^$@!@#$%^>>.

After cleaning the caulk off everything we took the door down. It took all of 5 minutes and it's what I should have done in the first place. Back in the old days when I had a brain I would have done that but that was then and this is now. Now since I had plenty of recent experience (an hour ago) in caulking, redoing that was easy and I didn't get any in my hair. I got dog hair in the caulking instead but my dog is red and I love red hair. Cleaning the caulk from the glass was another story. After I made a monumental mess SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) easily cleaned it in just a few minutes and didn't call me stupid even once. She did explain what she was doing in very simple sentences using only single syllable words.

But that wasn't the end of it. The old glass was 1/2 inch thick, the new glass is 1/4 inch thick, the frame is made for the old glass. It gives me a headache just thinking about it. So out comes the device for removing human limbs (table saw) and some lumber that I had not yet turned into sawdust and little pieces of kindling. To make this long story shorter I'll just say that I didn't make anymore big mistakes and we got the door back into the door hole before the mosquito's started swarming. A bottle of wine and a large can of atmosphere polluting mosquito spray later all was right. Being able to see through the glass and the added light in the kitchen is nice

Reseeding the radish patch was necessary because of a grub powered Armadillo playing rototiller in my new just coming up seedlings.

I wonder if Armadillo really taste like chicken. See the new fencearound the radish patch. Armadillos don't climb they dig but just outside of that little fence is two foot of oyster and clam shell mixed with a little dirt over dense clay. It's an old driveway and you need a jackhammer to dig through it.

We now have nine 10 week old tomato plants with little tiny tomatoes so soon I should have giant green tomato worms and every kind of tomato disease known to man. We also have an uncounted number of volunteers from last year. I wonder if you can eat tomato worms.

We hand carried approximately 1500 lbs of water last week.Maybe I should try that new thing they call a hose.


I stuck my hand into the blades of the Whirling Blades of Death a few days back (I think I took that name from someone else but I can't find it anywhere. If and when I do I will give credit. I can't believe it's mine, it's too good) Anyway I would like to report the gore of red blood and white bone splattered everywhere and show glossy 8 X 10 pictures with circles and arrows of the scene of the disaster but alas it only tickled the back of my hand and there was nothing to take a picture of. The backs of my hands are sensitive since 1975 when I slid down the street at sixty MPH on top of them, a Seiko self winding watch (no electricity in this watch) and a Honda 175 on the way home from an all night drunken sex orgy. It was actually a Bon Voyage party for an old friend that was single handing his 25 foot sailboat to Hawaii. He made it all right of course as he was an old hand and it was his second time. He only makes one way trips as he sank them both but he was good at going.
I, on the other hand, didn't look so good.

The Seiko? Ground the face and hands right off but Seiko fixed it right up no charge. I still have it and it keeps perfect time. Perfect enough for me anyway since I don't wear a watch. It took a little more for me to heal and I still don't keep perfect time.
"Time does not exist, clocks do." wall graffiti

LIST
Pick up used lumber. (free)
Dress wounds from picking up lumber
Make bread
Make new raised bed
Dress wounds from making raised bed
Make fence around raspberries.That damned Armadillo again(I wonder how you clean those things).
Dress wounds from making fence
Put in bell pepper seedlings
Find fly back transformer to make a sparking thing
Buy fire extinguisher before making sparking thing.
Install new air compressor.
Dress wounds from installing air compressor
Install homemade train whistle on air tank
Dress wounds from installing whistle
Buy more band aids