I was pretty sure that my life was going to settle down once all the twenty/thiry-somethings cleared out and I could get back to something close to routine, until another message popped up on my instant messenger:
Does my sister still have my car?
Yes.
What's Prince Charming's phone number?
555.555.5555
A couple of beats later, my phone rang. Darling Daughter on the other end:
"I'm in Soldier Son's car and I've looked all over, but I can't find his meal ticket."
Meal ticket? Now we're looking for a meal ticket?
DD has borrowed SS's car on Monday so she and PC could visit his family and friends down the road, and SS was pretty sure he had left the meal ticket somewhere in it. I'm not too sure why the US military still issues badly laminated meal tickets to soldiers (our university has had swipe stripes on student ID cards for years for campus purchases), but sure enough, SS had left home without his.
I had seen it. Somewhere. I had been in his car, and it could easily enough have been in his console. I also had been in his room, which we had ransacked in the early hours of Sunday morning, and it could have been in there. One other place came to mind.
Text to Number One Son, who was home from class:
SS has lost his meal ticket. See if it's on the marble top dresser.
Seconds later, the response:
I've got it in my hand.
Ours may be the only university in the country with an airport on its property, although I suppose others may have fully functioning, stand-alone post offices. I swung by on the way into the office this afternoon to express-mail the lunch card.
I'm really proud of my soldier, but the one who forgot his lunch card? That one's still my son!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Of *course* it couldn't have been that simple....
The kids' idea to stay up all night and see SS off to the airport at 6 o'clock on a Sunday morning amused me, but I figured I'd sneak out around 1 and get some sleep. Which seemed okay until I realized that it was already about 3 and I was sort of running interference between the honoree and his guests. T heyhad decided to hang out on the driveway instead of the dining room, where he was sort of hoping to play 42. I tried to be subtle about suggesting that at least some of them might go inside.
Once they drifted in in twos or threes to join him in dominoes (none of them seemed to know how to play 42 except the most annoying one in the bunch), they got the sillies and started reciting the scripts of favorite old movies—way too much fun for me to miss for a couple of hours of possible sleep. So I wound up staying up with them.
As 6 o'clock neared, I again urged SS to get his stuff together and into the truck so we could make our dawn adventure, and we all piled in. Since I was the only one who hadn't been drinking, I drove, and the rest of the crowd sorted themselves into the nooks and crannies left around SS's pile of travel goods.
We zipped the couple of miles to the airport, where everybody tumbled out of the van for hugs and good-byes in maybe the sweetest parting scene I've ever seen. SS took off for the door, and the rest of us piled back into the truck. I watched as he lugged his stuff up to the counter and started to check in, and the lump forming in my throat urged me to linger just a few minutes more until he headed to the security area. But the sleepy people in the truck, the cold ones in the back, and the growing line of traffic behind me told me I needed to move on.
I headed out of the airport and to the south to deliver the only person who wasn't planning to sleep at my house to his apartment. The trip took only a few minutes—nothing in our town takes many—so we were soon back at the house and ready to turn in for a few hours of rest.
And then the phone rang.
SS was on the other end, furious because he had been calling almost since we had pulled out of the loading zone and hadn't reached us. I didn't have pockets in the pants I was wearing, and I had left my cell phone at home. He had tried his sister, but she wasn't answering, either. (I don't know whether she had her phone with her or not; he thought it had a dead battery.)
His problem was urgent: the page of orders that would get him through customs in Germany was not with him, and he had to have it.
NOS answered the only corded phone in the house and got the word that SS needed the paper, which was supposed to be next to the tv in his room. DD was on it—up the stairs in record time—as I got the cordless phone to stay in communication with him, especially since the paper clearly wasn't there. SS had had me sorting through a stack of other papers in search of my updated power of attorney, and DD ripped through all of them in search of the orders. They simply weren't there.
I jumped into the first car on the driveway and roared back to the airport to get him to come and look for himself. If we found it quickly enough, we might—just might—still get him on the plane.
No such luck. He looked through the mess in the room until he finally realized that since it had been a bad photocopy to begin with and had been folded to fit into his pocket, he could easily have brushed it off into the trash with other papers. He grabbed the trashcan he had been using and dumped it over, to no avail. Hoping that the paper might still be in the outside trash can, he raced down the stairs and dumped it over. By some miracle, he had missed Thursday's trash collection: the orders were there.
But by now it was almost time for the plane to leave, and even though he had a ticket, we didn't have much hope of getting him aboard. If we didn't, we'd have to get him to the connecting flight—out of Dallas, which is about a 3-hour drive. Add in the couple of hours he might need to get through customs in a big airport, and we had only a couple of hours of leeway. We had to try.
DD insisted on going back to the local airport with us to see if she could help get him on the plane here, but to no avail; I suspect that the airline had called his name a time or two while they were loading the plane, but when he didn't respond, they gave his seat to somebody on standby. Our only recourse was a long drive on little sleep.
I had asked DD to give up her morning to make the drive with me, and she at first had grudgingly agreed to go. But she was right: this was supposed to be a vacation trip for her, she hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days, and she badly needed rest. She convinced NOS to go, but I really wanted him to stay around so that if the crowd started to wake up before I got back, he could supervise some rudimentary housekeeping.
SS and I were left with each other. His steel blue eyes are often playful, but when he is serious, they are firm. He argued logically: he had drunk less than anyone at the party except for me, and the morning's misadventures had been a huge wake-up call for him. He also had slept 6 hours later than me Saturday morning, and he had spent a year in Iraq as a driver for the military. He could drive to Dallas if I could handle the trip home.
Worst-case scenario, if I wasn't up to driving when we arrived, I have a sister in Dallas who would let me crash at her place. That wasn't a good plan for several reasons: this is the worst of all possible times for me not to be available to zip into the office, so driving back on a Monday morning wasn't at all optimal. And if I had to drive out of Dallas on a Sunday, I'd much prefer morning to night. And I've been getting emails from my sister lately that said she was miserable with seasonal crud, and I can't afford to get sick.
I grabbed my favorite cuddly blanket and changed from the pants without pockets to pants with, and we loaded into the car. SS grabbed a handful of cokes from the fridge, threw a stack of CDs into the back seat, and climbed behind the wheel. I laid the seat back as far as it would go and pulled the blanket up over my head to keep the sun out.
I don't have any idea how long I slept. I remember thinking I was awake for miles and miles, and I think I sensed when SS turned from the highway near our house to the one that would take us halfway to Dallas, but I don't remember slowing down for the first town, maybe 20 miles away. I roused up when he made a pit stop about an hour down the road, so he asked if I needed anything. I muttered something like " peanuts or something," and was pleased when he came back with cashews instead. I was just sure I'd know when he made the next highway interchange, but I suspect all I was sensing was a change of lanes or two.
When he pulled off after about another hour for another pit stop, I was ready to go in, too. I saw when we came out that he'd gotten himself an energy drink, so I don't know how well he was really holding up, but he seemed fine. In fact, he soon became downright chatty, and over the last 50 miles or so, we had a really nice visit. He doesn't have much experience at being the "honoree," so he didn't know how to respond to it, but his words on the last leg of the trip were all about how glad he was that he had sprung for the tickets and had had such very special people around him.
Gracie Garmin was no more help than the highway signs about getting us into the airport; for some reason she routed us to the north entrance, which wound back around to the south to get in, and we had no clue about which terminal we needed until we passed the toll booth on the way in. We arrived at about 11 for his 2:40 flight, leaving him enough time to check in, go through security, and hang out at the USO before he had to board the plane. Of course, we both realized at about the time we got to the airport that if he had left home without the orders, the USO might have been able to fix him up—but we both were glad we didn't have to rely on that.
He found the terminal, piled out, and grabbed his gear, and I moved over to the driver's seat. As soon as I texted the crowd at home that I was on my way back, I unwound my way out of the airport without problems except for my curiosity about why Gracie had steered us through Fort Worth to get there and through Dallas to get back. Except for a U-turn in Euless that made no sense to me, the trip was a pretty straight shot to US 20, and the rest of the road was a trail I had followed plenty of times before.
I made it back to the first northbound pit stop before I slowed down for gas, and I let the home crowd know I was about an hour away. They were all just starting to move and seemed pretty amazed that I was so close to home. A few minutes later, DD called to tell me they were about to leave for a bar where they could get food and watch football. Did I want to join them?
My knee-jerk said no, because I didn't need more junk food in my life and I wanted to go to bed. (Except for the sleep on the trip north, I had been up for more than 30 hours.) But on further consideration, I figured I could join them long enough to feed myself, and if I wanted to crash before they left, I'd have my car. I called back to find out where to meet them and joined them for a meal. One team won; the other lost in the last few seconds of play; and the food and the company were well worth the trip.
I managed to stay vertical long enough to watch in amazement as my house guests made a commendable stab at straightening up my house while DD made a perfunctory visit to her dad. When she got back, the whole group piled back into the pickup to attend a "house party" that turned out to be in the very house where I grew up.
I barely managed to get through a quick bath before I tucked myself in before 8 p.m., but I still resented the alarm when it finally dragged me out of bed at 7.
When I got to the office around noon, a single instant message popped up on my computer screen: safe in germany.
I finally could rest.
Once they drifted in in twos or threes to join him in dominoes (none of them seemed to know how to play 42 except the most annoying one in the bunch), they got the sillies and started reciting the scripts of favorite old movies—way too much fun for me to miss for a couple of hours of possible sleep. So I wound up staying up with them.
As 6 o'clock neared, I again urged SS to get his stuff together and into the truck so we could make our dawn adventure, and we all piled in. Since I was the only one who hadn't been drinking, I drove, and the rest of the crowd sorted themselves into the nooks and crannies left around SS's pile of travel goods.
We zipped the couple of miles to the airport, where everybody tumbled out of the van for hugs and good-byes in maybe the sweetest parting scene I've ever seen. SS took off for the door, and the rest of us piled back into the truck. I watched as he lugged his stuff up to the counter and started to check in, and the lump forming in my throat urged me to linger just a few minutes more until he headed to the security area. But the sleepy people in the truck, the cold ones in the back, and the growing line of traffic behind me told me I needed to move on.
I headed out of the airport and to the south to deliver the only person who wasn't planning to sleep at my house to his apartment. The trip took only a few minutes—nothing in our town takes many—so we were soon back at the house and ready to turn in for a few hours of rest.
And then the phone rang.
SS was on the other end, furious because he had been calling almost since we had pulled out of the loading zone and hadn't reached us. I didn't have pockets in the pants I was wearing, and I had left my cell phone at home. He had tried his sister, but she wasn't answering, either. (I don't know whether she had her phone with her or not; he thought it had a dead battery.)
His problem was urgent: the page of orders that would get him through customs in Germany was not with him, and he had to have it.
NOS answered the only corded phone in the house and got the word that SS needed the paper, which was supposed to be next to the tv in his room. DD was on it—up the stairs in record time—as I got the cordless phone to stay in communication with him, especially since the paper clearly wasn't there. SS had had me sorting through a stack of other papers in search of my updated power of attorney, and DD ripped through all of them in search of the orders. They simply weren't there.
I jumped into the first car on the driveway and roared back to the airport to get him to come and look for himself. If we found it quickly enough, we might—just might—still get him on the plane.
No such luck. He looked through the mess in the room until he finally realized that since it had been a bad photocopy to begin with and had been folded to fit into his pocket, he could easily have brushed it off into the trash with other papers. He grabbed the trashcan he had been using and dumped it over, to no avail. Hoping that the paper might still be in the outside trash can, he raced down the stairs and dumped it over. By some miracle, he had missed Thursday's trash collection: the orders were there.
But by now it was almost time for the plane to leave, and even though he had a ticket, we didn't have much hope of getting him aboard. If we didn't, we'd have to get him to the connecting flight—out of Dallas, which is about a 3-hour drive. Add in the couple of hours he might need to get through customs in a big airport, and we had only a couple of hours of leeway. We had to try.
DD insisted on going back to the local airport with us to see if she could help get him on the plane here, but to no avail; I suspect that the airline had called his name a time or two while they were loading the plane, but when he didn't respond, they gave his seat to somebody on standby. Our only recourse was a long drive on little sleep.
I had asked DD to give up her morning to make the drive with me, and she at first had grudgingly agreed to go. But she was right: this was supposed to be a vacation trip for her, she hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days, and she badly needed rest. She convinced NOS to go, but I really wanted him to stay around so that if the crowd started to wake up before I got back, he could supervise some rudimentary housekeeping.
SS and I were left with each other. His steel blue eyes are often playful, but when he is serious, they are firm. He argued logically: he had drunk less than anyone at the party except for me, and the morning's misadventures had been a huge wake-up call for him. He also had slept 6 hours later than me Saturday morning, and he had spent a year in Iraq as a driver for the military. He could drive to Dallas if I could handle the trip home.
Worst-case scenario, if I wasn't up to driving when we arrived, I have a sister in Dallas who would let me crash at her place. That wasn't a good plan for several reasons: this is the worst of all possible times for me not to be available to zip into the office, so driving back on a Monday morning wasn't at all optimal. And if I had to drive out of Dallas on a Sunday, I'd much prefer morning to night. And I've been getting emails from my sister lately that said she was miserable with seasonal crud, and I can't afford to get sick.
I grabbed my favorite cuddly blanket and changed from the pants without pockets to pants with, and we loaded into the car. SS grabbed a handful of cokes from the fridge, threw a stack of CDs into the back seat, and climbed behind the wheel. I laid the seat back as far as it would go and pulled the blanket up over my head to keep the sun out.
I don't have any idea how long I slept. I remember thinking I was awake for miles and miles, and I think I sensed when SS turned from the highway near our house to the one that would take us halfway to Dallas, but I don't remember slowing down for the first town, maybe 20 miles away. I roused up when he made a pit stop about an hour down the road, so he asked if I needed anything. I muttered something like " peanuts or something," and was pleased when he came back with cashews instead. I was just sure I'd know when he made the next highway interchange, but I suspect all I was sensing was a change of lanes or two.
When he pulled off after about another hour for another pit stop, I was ready to go in, too. I saw when we came out that he'd gotten himself an energy drink, so I don't know how well he was really holding up, but he seemed fine. In fact, he soon became downright chatty, and over the last 50 miles or so, we had a really nice visit. He doesn't have much experience at being the "honoree," so he didn't know how to respond to it, but his words on the last leg of the trip were all about how glad he was that he had sprung for the tickets and had had such very special people around him.
Gracie Garmin was no more help than the highway signs about getting us into the airport; for some reason she routed us to the north entrance, which wound back around to the south to get in, and we had no clue about which terminal we needed until we passed the toll booth on the way in. We arrived at about 11 for his 2:40 flight, leaving him enough time to check in, go through security, and hang out at the USO before he had to board the plane. Of course, we both realized at about the time we got to the airport that if he had left home without the orders, the USO might have been able to fix him up—but we both were glad we didn't have to rely on that.
He found the terminal, piled out, and grabbed his gear, and I moved over to the driver's seat. As soon as I texted the crowd at home that I was on my way back, I unwound my way out of the airport without problems except for my curiosity about why Gracie had steered us through Fort Worth to get there and through Dallas to get back. Except for a U-turn in Euless that made no sense to me, the trip was a pretty straight shot to US 20, and the rest of the road was a trail I had followed plenty of times before.
I made it back to the first northbound pit stop before I slowed down for gas, and I let the home crowd know I was about an hour away. They were all just starting to move and seemed pretty amazed that I was so close to home. A few minutes later, DD called to tell me they were about to leave for a bar where they could get food and watch football. Did I want to join them?
My knee-jerk said no, because I didn't need more junk food in my life and I wanted to go to bed. (Except for the sleep on the trip north, I had been up for more than 30 hours.) But on further consideration, I figured I could join them long enough to feed myself, and if I wanted to crash before they left, I'd have my car. I called back to find out where to meet them and joined them for a meal. One team won; the other lost in the last few seconds of play; and the food and the company were well worth the trip.
I managed to stay vertical long enough to watch in amazement as my house guests made a commendable stab at straightening up my house while DD made a perfunctory visit to her dad. When she got back, the whole group piled back into the pickup to attend a "house party" that turned out to be in the very house where I grew up.
I barely managed to get through a quick bath before I tucked myself in before 8 p.m., but I still resented the alarm when it finally dragged me out of bed at 7.
When I got to the office around noon, a single instant message popped up on my computer screen: safe in germany.
I finally could rest.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Whoop! He called it!
When Soldier Son stepped off the plane from Germany a couple of weeks ago, he had one thought on his mind: Aggie football. Number One Son was eager to pick him up from the airport, but SS's instructions were explicit: my job was to pick him up at the airport, and NOS's job was to get a table at a local bar that would have the game on tv.
Almost from the time he got off the plane, SS was all about the Aggies. "They're better than people think," he assured me. "Nobody is giving them credit for how good they are. The coach knows what he's doing." I was so glad to have him home after almost a year away that I didn't care what he had to say, and seeing his determination that he was supporting the right team had me almost as excited as he was.
The first play of the game made him look right. The bad guys snapped the ball badly, and our guys had 2 points. SS lit up like a Christmas tree. By the half, we were up 19 zip, and SS was sailing. In the third quarter, though, the bad guys roared back 17 points, and I was in a knot over what looked to me like a looming loss. NOS had crashed in his car (he had been up late for several nights getting the house ready for his brother to come home, and a few beers had put him down). I left SS with a friend and took NOS home.
A few minutes later, Darling Daughter's Prince Charming tweeted me: "How's SS liking the game?" I had run out, so I had no clue. "33-19" came the answer. In a few seconds, "Yep, 33-19. That's the final." I had to work on that a few minutes to realize that we weren't the team with the 19. SS had been right; whatever anybody thought, we had clearly won that one.
A friend from Germany whose family lives up the road a few miles had an extra ticket for the next week's game, and SS took him up on the offer to use it. He came home beaming about the 42-30 score against a team that was supposed to be much better than ours.
I was a little worried about this week: tonight is SS's last night at home before he ships back to Germany and then on to Afghanistan for a year-long tour, and I'm more than a little sad to see him go. But he had purchased tickets weeks ago so he and his siblings and cousins could go to see our team play a team that is ranked much higher than ours, and I just wasn't convinced that the evening was likely to go very well for him.
As things turned out, I could have gone to the game except that I was working on a project for my consulting business and, well, I didn't think I could cope well with a game that was likely to be as disappointing as I thought this one could be.
As it turned out, I dropped the troops off for a tailgate party and headed home to work on my job. After a couple of hours I surfed the web enough to discover that we had held the bad guys to 3 points in the first quarter, which was much better than the blowout I was afraid of.
A little later, I saw that we had tied it up at 3, which was not exactly a big win for the good guys, but it was okay. Two weeks ago, the bad guys scored on us in the third quarter; last week we pulled ahead in the third. This week we pulled ahead, but in keeping with the early part of the game, only by 3. Good, but not good enough.
I checked back several times in the fourth, but after I saw a tied score at a little more than 6 minutes left, the website I was checking seemed to freeze up, and the time and the score stayed stuck. When I finally got a new time on the game clock, I also saw a new score—and we were ahead!
SS organized the troops to come back home instead of hanging out at bars after the game (fighting the traffic to get home would be less trouble than standing in line), and the troops have decided to stay up all night so we can drop him at the airport early in the morning together.
I don't know how this trip has been for him; he's had some chances to get spoiled and some frustrations that he hasn't been able to do everything he had hoped to do. But I do know that he couldn't be happier about his favorite team and his favorite sport.
He called it!
Almost from the time he got off the plane, SS was all about the Aggies. "They're better than people think," he assured me. "Nobody is giving them credit for how good they are. The coach knows what he's doing." I was so glad to have him home after almost a year away that I didn't care what he had to say, and seeing his determination that he was supporting the right team had me almost as excited as he was.
The first play of the game made him look right. The bad guys snapped the ball badly, and our guys had 2 points. SS lit up like a Christmas tree. By the half, we were up 19 zip, and SS was sailing. In the third quarter, though, the bad guys roared back 17 points, and I was in a knot over what looked to me like a looming loss. NOS had crashed in his car (he had been up late for several nights getting the house ready for his brother to come home, and a few beers had put him down). I left SS with a friend and took NOS home.
A few minutes later, Darling Daughter's Prince Charming tweeted me: "How's SS liking the game?" I had run out, so I had no clue. "33-19" came the answer. In a few seconds, "Yep, 33-19. That's the final." I had to work on that a few minutes to realize that we weren't the team with the 19. SS had been right; whatever anybody thought, we had clearly won that one.
A friend from Germany whose family lives up the road a few miles had an extra ticket for the next week's game, and SS took him up on the offer to use it. He came home beaming about the 42-30 score against a team that was supposed to be much better than ours.
I was a little worried about this week: tonight is SS's last night at home before he ships back to Germany and then on to Afghanistan for a year-long tour, and I'm more than a little sad to see him go. But he had purchased tickets weeks ago so he and his siblings and cousins could go to see our team play a team that is ranked much higher than ours, and I just wasn't convinced that the evening was likely to go very well for him.
As things turned out, I could have gone to the game except that I was working on a project for my consulting business and, well, I didn't think I could cope well with a game that was likely to be as disappointing as I thought this one could be.
As it turned out, I dropped the troops off for a tailgate party and headed home to work on my job. After a couple of hours I surfed the web enough to discover that we had held the bad guys to 3 points in the first quarter, which was much better than the blowout I was afraid of.
A little later, I saw that we had tied it up at 3, which was not exactly a big win for the good guys, but it was okay. Two weeks ago, the bad guys scored on us in the third quarter; last week we pulled ahead in the third. This week we pulled ahead, but in keeping with the early part of the game, only by 3. Good, but not good enough.
I checked back several times in the fourth, but after I saw a tied score at a little more than 6 minutes left, the website I was checking seemed to freeze up, and the time and the score stayed stuck. When I finally got a new time on the game clock, I also saw a new score—and we were ahead!
SS organized the troops to come back home instead of hanging out at bars after the game (fighting the traffic to get home would be less trouble than standing in line), and the troops have decided to stay up all night so we can drop him at the airport early in the morning together.
I don't know how this trip has been for him; he's had some chances to get spoiled and some frustrations that he hasn't been able to do everything he had hoped to do. But I do know that he couldn't be happier about his favorite team and his favorite sport.
He called it!
Friday, November 19, 2010
I like happy grams
I didn't want to go to work this morning (well, okay, by the clock this is Saturday, but my body still thinks it's Friday) because all my kids—Number One Son, Soldier Son, Darling Daughter, and Prince Charming—and all three dogs were at home. But I had to go because I had an appointment with a student to discuss his problems with his term paper for my course.
The student showed up late, which gave me a chance to check my office email before he got there. To say I was intrigued to see a message with "Smiley High School" as the subject line might be an understatement: I had started my teaching career there nearly 40 years ago, but I hadn't been back since I left there after 5 years on the job.
The message turned out to be from a former student who had been in my class that very first year. He went on from the school to become a missionary, and he has moved to my town as Director of International Relations at our university's new health science center.
He had stumbled across my name in a hunt for something else, and he emailed me just to see if I were the teacher he remembered from all those years ago. I have to say that his memory is better than mine is; I don't remember many names from that first year, and his isn't one of them.
But the message—including that he was happy to see that I'm still teaching—was a delight.
The best happy grams of all are the ones you never expect.
The student showed up late, which gave me a chance to check my office email before he got there. To say I was intrigued to see a message with "Smiley High School" as the subject line might be an understatement: I had started my teaching career there nearly 40 years ago, but I hadn't been back since I left there after 5 years on the job.
The message turned out to be from a former student who had been in my class that very first year. He went on from the school to become a missionary, and he has moved to my town as Director of International Relations at our university's new health science center.
He had stumbled across my name in a hunt for something else, and he emailed me just to see if I were the teacher he remembered from all those years ago. I have to say that his memory is better than mine is; I don't remember many names from that first year, and his isn't one of them.
But the message—including that he was happy to see that I'm still teaching—was a delight.
The best happy grams of all are the ones you never expect.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Margaret Joan's rule of thumb
My next-older sister, Margaret Joan, has joked for years about her formula for determining the amount of time a do-it-yourself project will take. My best recollection of it is this:
I should have remembered that tidbit from my days in gradeschool when mother and daddy remodeled our house and mother complained frequently about "3-day delivery," which she said was the amount of time all deliveries take to arrive at the job site. Obviously, some showed up a bit earlier; most arrived a good deal later. But the contractors always assured her the needed materials would be delivered in 3 days; apparently, some 3-day stretches are longer than others.
My case is that I have toyed for a long time with the problem of corroded knobs in the upstairs bathtub that have needed to be replaced. I had a plumber in several years ago now to switch out the valves in the downstairs tub. That was a pretty serious problem that entailed taking out a kitchen cabinet shelf to get to the waterworks, but the cabinet problem was within my range of engineering, so we managed to handle it efficiently enough. And the valves downstairs weren't as badly corroded as these were, probably at least partly because I replaced them several layers of corrosion earlier.
At some past time, I took out the upstairs potty so I could tile the floor up there, and my lack of plumbing expertise meant that I spent a whole lot of time crouched in a pocket of the attic next to the bathroom wall replacing a pipe that I might not have had to replace if I'd gone to a plumbing supply house and bought a different part than the one the d-i-y shop had. (I try to ease that memory by telling myself that the pipe I replaced really was too corroded to accept the easier-to-fix part.)
That lesson was enough to tell me that the tub repair upstairs wasn't going to happen from inside an adjoining cabinet or attic; this tub abuts the outer wall of the house beyond the attic, so getting to the valves was going to require cutting in through the stucco on the outside and hoping the slope of the adjoining roof would allow that to reach the valves, or cutting out at least some of the tiles on the inside.
I called a couple of plumbers, and one offered to come out for a free estimate. The young kid who showed up for the estimate told me about a couple of options, one of which would entail only cutting through the tiles in the area where the pipes come into the system and putting a "chromette" plate behind the shower valve. The price for the plate (which turned out to be plastic) was ridiculous, but it was both more efficient and cheaper than Option 2: retiling the entire shower. (This place is 30+ years old, and I suspect the tile color in the bathrooms was "whatever was going out of style and therefore on sale cheap." Knocking out and replacing a few tiles was pretty much out of the question.)
The plumber kid told me the whole job would take a couple of hours, which would mean we'd have plenty of time to do the job, start to finish, well ahead of Soldier Son's scheduled return from overseas duty this weekend.
Or not. PK arrived as scheduled yesterday morning and carefully removed a couple of tiles in the area of the valves and frowned. He removed a few more tiles and reported the bad news: apparently because the tub is in a corner of the house, the builders had an upright running between the hot-water valve and the shower head. For reasons nobody really seems to know, the wall there is thicker than most,with two 2x4s filling the space where one should normally be. The builders had bored a hole in the front 2x4 so they could run the hot water pipe through it.
All of this meant that PK couldn't possibly reach the pipes he needed to fix without knocking out far more tiles than his little plate could cover, and he couldn't possibly finish the job in his estimated 2 hours.
I had sort of assumed I might be looking at retiling the shower anyway, so I told him to do what he needed to do. That entailed not only knocking out a lot of tiles but also building a complex piping system to move the valve stems forward enough to fit into the new single-handle valve. And cutting through the odd 2x4 that had had the pipe running through it. (PK cut it more than I think he needed to, but I think there's plenty of wood left up there to keep the house from caving in.)
By noon, I had two plumbers and a tiler in my bathtub. The tiler came in and got his measurements, looked around a bit, and assured me he could get tiles in today if I picked a style he had in stock. All I had to do was drop by his office and pick out my tiles.
When I got to his office, he showed me several suggestions, and we agreed on a plan. He didn't actually have my tiles in stock, but he expected them today, and he could have tilers at my house before noon. As long as 3-day delivery didn't come into play.
All I had to do was get the old tiles, the backboard, the mortar, and the wire mesh that used to be hung behind tiles out of the way before they arrived.
Fortunately, Number One Son has been eager to work around the house lately because I'm willing to help him pay his flight fare to go visit a buddy in Denver in January. He's pretty much paid off the ticket, but he was short on effort on last month's rent, so I was willing to bribe him to tear out the old tile. I forgot at first that I actually own a sheetrock saw, so he muddled through with a couple of cutting blades, a heavy pair of work gloves, a 22-ounce hammer, and a 2-pound sledge. Four hours or so after he started, he was finishing up with his Shop-Vac.
The tilers arrived bright and early this morning and puttered around for several hours before I had to leave for the office. I don't have any idea how long they stayed here, but when I got home, they had tiles stuck in the right places with little blue plastic separators scattered merrily throughout; they're do back tomorrow to do the grouting, and then I'll be able to get the plumbers back to finish up with the faucets and handles.
If things go well, I'll get them back here tomorrow, or they may not be able to get here until Friday.
Which means that our 2-hour job could easily fit write within MJ's estimate of 4 days.
And it's not even do-it-yourself!
- Estimate the amount of time you think the job should take.
- Double it.
- Advance it to the next unit of time.
I should have remembered that tidbit from my days in gradeschool when mother and daddy remodeled our house and mother complained frequently about "3-day delivery," which she said was the amount of time all deliveries take to arrive at the job site. Obviously, some showed up a bit earlier; most arrived a good deal later. But the contractors always assured her the needed materials would be delivered in 3 days; apparently, some 3-day stretches are longer than others.
My case is that I have toyed for a long time with the problem of corroded knobs in the upstairs bathtub that have needed to be replaced. I had a plumber in several years ago now to switch out the valves in the downstairs tub. That was a pretty serious problem that entailed taking out a kitchen cabinet shelf to get to the waterworks, but the cabinet problem was within my range of engineering, so we managed to handle it efficiently enough. And the valves downstairs weren't as badly corroded as these were, probably at least partly because I replaced them several layers of corrosion earlier.
At some past time, I took out the upstairs potty so I could tile the floor up there, and my lack of plumbing expertise meant that I spent a whole lot of time crouched in a pocket of the attic next to the bathroom wall replacing a pipe that I might not have had to replace if I'd gone to a plumbing supply house and bought a different part than the one the d-i-y shop had. (I try to ease that memory by telling myself that the pipe I replaced really was too corroded to accept the easier-to-fix part.)
That lesson was enough to tell me that the tub repair upstairs wasn't going to happen from inside an adjoining cabinet or attic; this tub abuts the outer wall of the house beyond the attic, so getting to the valves was going to require cutting in through the stucco on the outside and hoping the slope of the adjoining roof would allow that to reach the valves, or cutting out at least some of the tiles on the inside.
I called a couple of plumbers, and one offered to come out for a free estimate. The young kid who showed up for the estimate told me about a couple of options, one of which would entail only cutting through the tiles in the area where the pipes come into the system and putting a "chromette" plate behind the shower valve. The price for the plate (which turned out to be plastic) was ridiculous, but it was both more efficient and cheaper than Option 2: retiling the entire shower. (This place is 30+ years old, and I suspect the tile color in the bathrooms was "whatever was going out of style and therefore on sale cheap." Knocking out and replacing a few tiles was pretty much out of the question.)
The plumber kid told me the whole job would take a couple of hours, which would mean we'd have plenty of time to do the job, start to finish, well ahead of Soldier Son's scheduled return from overseas duty this weekend.
Or not. PK arrived as scheduled yesterday morning and carefully removed a couple of tiles in the area of the valves and frowned. He removed a few more tiles and reported the bad news: apparently because the tub is in a corner of the house, the builders had an upright running between the hot-water valve and the shower head. For reasons nobody really seems to know, the wall there is thicker than most,with two 2x4s filling the space where one should normally be. The builders had bored a hole in the front 2x4 so they could run the hot water pipe through it.
All of this meant that PK couldn't possibly reach the pipes he needed to fix without knocking out far more tiles than his little plate could cover, and he couldn't possibly finish the job in his estimated 2 hours.
I had sort of assumed I might be looking at retiling the shower anyway, so I told him to do what he needed to do. That entailed not only knocking out a lot of tiles but also building a complex piping system to move the valve stems forward enough to fit into the new single-handle valve. And cutting through the odd 2x4 that had had the pipe running through it. (PK cut it more than I think he needed to, but I think there's plenty of wood left up there to keep the house from caving in.)
By noon, I had two plumbers and a tiler in my bathtub. The tiler came in and got his measurements, looked around a bit, and assured me he could get tiles in today if I picked a style he had in stock. All I had to do was drop by his office and pick out my tiles.
When I got to his office, he showed me several suggestions, and we agreed on a plan. He didn't actually have my tiles in stock, but he expected them today, and he could have tilers at my house before noon. As long as 3-day delivery didn't come into play.
All I had to do was get the old tiles, the backboard, the mortar, and the wire mesh that used to be hung behind tiles out of the way before they arrived.
Fortunately, Number One Son has been eager to work around the house lately because I'm willing to help him pay his flight fare to go visit a buddy in Denver in January. He's pretty much paid off the ticket, but he was short on effort on last month's rent, so I was willing to bribe him to tear out the old tile. I forgot at first that I actually own a sheetrock saw, so he muddled through with a couple of cutting blades, a heavy pair of work gloves, a 22-ounce hammer, and a 2-pound sledge. Four hours or so after he started, he was finishing up with his Shop-Vac.
The tilers arrived bright and early this morning and puttered around for several hours before I had to leave for the office. I don't have any idea how long they stayed here, but when I got home, they had tiles stuck in the right places with little blue plastic separators scattered merrily throughout; they're do back tomorrow to do the grouting, and then I'll be able to get the plumbers back to finish up with the faucets and handles.
If things go well, I'll get them back here tomorrow, or they may not be able to get here until Friday.
Which means that our 2-hour job could easily fit write within MJ's estimate of 4 days.
And it's not even do-it-yourself!
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