Post by papaof2 on Jul 23, 2018 19:50:01 GMT -6
Not fiction, just the real world where I am.
Too Much Work
You know that feeling? The one that tells you it's not going to be a quiet day? I had one of those feelings Saturday.
A long-time and very involved member of the church died last week and the funeral was at 11AM Saturday. My wife was singing in the choir and had made up a new bean casserole to take to the covered dish lunch. I didn't sleep Friday night - none, zero - so I looked and felt like death warmed over and I went to bed after she left for the church.
She woke me when she got back and told me of the idiot who stopped her vehicle in the middle of the road to get out and pick up something - my wife couldn't tell what it was. Anyway, my wife stopped quickly and some of the bean casserole tsunami'ed out of the pan and under the driver's seat of her SUV. She had cleaned up some before she woke me but when I got on my knees on the garage floor (Man, but that concrete is hard!) I saw that she hadn't gotten her head down far enough. With my eyes almost to carpet level and my body twisted to an unnatural angle, I could see "stuff" in and under the ductwork that runs under the front seat to provide heat to the back seat as well as under the carpet around the opening that ductwork comes through. Long minutes (felt like hours) later, I had half a 33 gallon trash bag of "soupy" paper towels and one bit I recognized as a lima bean. With one outlet in the garage and it not easily accessible when both vehicles are parked there, I set up a battery powered fan to dry the carpet. The fan is an 8 inch 12 volt fan that runs on a wall wart or 8 D cells. I just made up a cable for connecting the 12 amp hour battery that was in the grandkids' pink Power Wheels Jeep. That battery can run the fan on its highest speed for more than 4 hours. After some 4 hours of fan work, the carpet felt dry but the garage smelled a bit of cooked beans so I put the battery on charge because I expected us to notice the smell in the garage more than the smell in the vehicle until the next day.
Sunday morning she parked in the limited shade in the church lot but said the smell was bad when she got in the hot vehicle after the service. I set the fan back up for another 4 hours or so and again put the battery on charge when finished.
Monday we have sun, so I suggest she move the vehicle out into the sun to dry things faster and speed up any further smell production. Again I set up the fan but after 3 hours I decided that sun was more likely than rain for the rest of the day so I got out a 15 watt solar panel and a charge controller to keep the fan running longer. The fan draws about half an amp but the solar system was producing just over 1 amp so it was running the fan and charging the battery. I left it running for about 5 hours - until the clouds started getting gray and black and it seemed prudent to roll up the windows and move the vehicle back into the garage. When my wife got out of the vehicle, she said it smelled like getting laundry off the clothesline "that clean, fresh smell" so I've apparently gotten most of the spill cleaned and dried.
I put the portable window fan in one of the garage windows, raised one door a few inches and used the fan to ventilate the garage for an hour. I got everything closed up and put away shortly before the rain found us.
Why the bean casserole instead of her famous sweet potato casserole? She thought cutting up fresh sweet potatoes would be "too much work".
Too Much Work
You know that feeling? The one that tells you it's not going to be a quiet day? I had one of those feelings Saturday.
A long-time and very involved member of the church died last week and the funeral was at 11AM Saturday. My wife was singing in the choir and had made up a new bean casserole to take to the covered dish lunch. I didn't sleep Friday night - none, zero - so I looked and felt like death warmed over and I went to bed after she left for the church.
She woke me when she got back and told me of the idiot who stopped her vehicle in the middle of the road to get out and pick up something - my wife couldn't tell what it was. Anyway, my wife stopped quickly and some of the bean casserole tsunami'ed out of the pan and under the driver's seat of her SUV. She had cleaned up some before she woke me but when I got on my knees on the garage floor (Man, but that concrete is hard!) I saw that she hadn't gotten her head down far enough. With my eyes almost to carpet level and my body twisted to an unnatural angle, I could see "stuff" in and under the ductwork that runs under the front seat to provide heat to the back seat as well as under the carpet around the opening that ductwork comes through. Long minutes (felt like hours) later, I had half a 33 gallon trash bag of "soupy" paper towels and one bit I recognized as a lima bean. With one outlet in the garage and it not easily accessible when both vehicles are parked there, I set up a battery powered fan to dry the carpet. The fan is an 8 inch 12 volt fan that runs on a wall wart or 8 D cells. I just made up a cable for connecting the 12 amp hour battery that was in the grandkids' pink Power Wheels Jeep. That battery can run the fan on its highest speed for more than 4 hours. After some 4 hours of fan work, the carpet felt dry but the garage smelled a bit of cooked beans so I put the battery on charge because I expected us to notice the smell in the garage more than the smell in the vehicle until the next day.
Sunday morning she parked in the limited shade in the church lot but said the smell was bad when she got in the hot vehicle after the service. I set the fan back up for another 4 hours or so and again put the battery on charge when finished.
Monday we have sun, so I suggest she move the vehicle out into the sun to dry things faster and speed up any further smell production. Again I set up the fan but after 3 hours I decided that sun was more likely than rain for the rest of the day so I got out a 15 watt solar panel and a charge controller to keep the fan running longer. The fan draws about half an amp but the solar system was producing just over 1 amp so it was running the fan and charging the battery. I left it running for about 5 hours - until the clouds started getting gray and black and it seemed prudent to roll up the windows and move the vehicle back into the garage. When my wife got out of the vehicle, she said it smelled like getting laundry off the clothesline "that clean, fresh smell" so I've apparently gotten most of the spill cleaned and dried.
I put the portable window fan in one of the garage windows, raised one door a few inches and used the fan to ventilate the garage for an hour. I got everything closed up and put away shortly before the rain found us.
Why the bean casserole instead of her famous sweet potato casserole? She thought cutting up fresh sweet potatoes would be "too much work".
