This weekend was extremely busy as I knew it would be. On Saturday Ali was out the door early to go work a race and then she went into work to get caught up. I spent the next 3 hours on a tornado like chore spree. In that period of time I sprayed the cantaloupes in the garden, ripped out the rain barrel that was cracking, did the pool maintenance, filled the bird feeders, installed the pulled captain’s chair back into the party van, washed the bug guts off the front of the van and then washed and vacuumed the Camry.
After that blitz it was only a little before 11. I was hungry so I made myself a sandwich and watched one of the movies I downloaded that Ali had no interest in seeing, 1408. I see very few scary movies anymore for the reason mentioned in the previous sentence but I do like them. When I was younger I loaded up on Freddie Kreuger, Halloween and other similar type movies. It’s fun to be scared sometimes. 1408 did a nice job of working up a good scare. The corners of the main characters life (John Cusack) all get pulled into a somewhat confusing storyline. It had some very scary moments and also some very sad moments that started to soften me up. I liked it. B+
After my movie break it was back to work. The carpets need to be steam cleaned. Doing this is a very lengthy process. First I had to vacuum the house thoroughly and then hit it again with the steam cleaner. Steam cleaning is a slow process. On the up stroke you squeeze the trigger to apply the solution, on the pull the solution gets vacuumed up. Normally I will go over each area multiple times to pull as much solution off the carpet as possible. This translates into a ton of pushing and pulling. By the time I am done my right shoulder is normally burning. Each time I emptied the dirty water tank my efforts seem validated by the muddy looking water that was coming out, the carpet needed it.
So finally I get done, the carpet looks a shade or two lighter and is perfect, pristine condition, almost like fresh snow. I am admiring the fruit of my effort as I walk around. Then I see it. Right in front of the kitchen island, a f’in fresh SKIDMARK! Although I said nothing, in my head I am thinking “OH NO YOU DIDN’T”. The f’ing cat just drug her ass across the carpet I have been working on for 2 hours! I was insane with anger. Instantly I scan the room looking for her. She isn’t hard to find, she is just sitting by wall acting like nothing was wrong. As she saw my body language and heard me screaming at her “YOU F”ING CAT!” she tensed up and then tried to escape. Like a WWE wrestler applying a death grip, I slap my hand on the scruff on her neck and yank her up. I carry her over to the stripe of feces, slam her in front of it and yell “YOU DON’T WIPE YOUR ASS ON THE CARPET, WHAT THE F IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!???” As I finished my speech I throw her angrily towards the tv which she decides to scamper behind for cover.
During my screamfest Nicki came running in. She loves when I yell at the cats and when I threw Buttons she chased her like a dog toy, eager to add to the humiliation. Anyway, I wasn’t done ranting yet. Buttons going behind the TV only fueled my rage. I had images running through my head of the dried up cat excrement I discovered back there a couple months ago. So I yank the TV away from the wall, grab Ali’s rolled up yoga mat and start jamming it behind the TV, screaming at the cat to get out. Nicki was waiting at the other side to pounce. Buttons had to decide what was the lesser of two evils, getting hit with a yoga mat or chased by the dog. She chose the latter. She sprints out from behind the tv and Nicki immediately gives chase. Buttons scrambles behind a big basket for cover. Luckily I had our bedroom door closed, else she would have surely went under our bed. I’m still furious, I stomp over, pick her up again and carry her over the sliding door. I open the door and throw the cat out like I was rolling a bowling ball. Buttons barrel rolled once or twice and then skidded to a stop. She scurried under the gas grill. “WELCOME TO YOUR NEW HOME!” I shouted as I slammed close the slider.
I was so f’ing pissed. Even as I am getting out the SpotBot to clean up the cat shit I am swearing to myself about the cats and how sick I was of them. I entertained the idea of picking Buttons up and throwing her into the pool. Let’s see if cats swim. Eventually I calmed down and Buttons was allowed back in the house an hour or two later. It was like nothing happened as far as she was concerned. It was almost like she expects hell to be brought upon her when she uses the rug as toilet paper. She takes the abuse and then it is back to business as usual. It’s amazing how much I loved cats growing up compared to how much I hate them now. I now realize it was because I wasn’t their primary care giver. Mom was always the one to handle the nasty end of things.
Ali came home around 6:00 or so. We had vegetarian brauts and sweet potatoes for dinner while we sat down and watched the latest FF4 movie. To me, the Fantastic Four and X-men movies have always been sort of the ugly step children of the super hero movies. Of those two the FF4, are the least enjoyable. I almost feel like I am watching arena football or minor league baseball. It was just ok. They sort of jumped the shark with this one when the flame guy inherited the powers of all four of them at once to beat the bad guy. I mean where do you go from there? Plus the Silver Surfer angle doesn’t correspond to what I remember in the comic books. I thought he was just another super hero fighting baddies. In this flick he is basically bad until the end. By the end of the movie I just didn’t care what happened to any of the characters, it was lame. I’ll award it a C, which is terrible for a super hero movie considering I am so biased towards liking them before I even see it.
As busy as Saturday was, Sunday was busier. Ali, Nicki and I piled in the truck. Before we left I collected all the stuff I imagined I would need for the dry wall job at mom’s and loaded it up. I dropped Ali off at the gym for spinning class and then headed to my mom’s. The plan was I could do the prep work and then pick Ali up, go to Home Depot to get the drywall and accessories and then back to mom’s to do it. The roof over mom’s lanai leaked like mad for ages. The landlord drug his feet getting it fixed but finally got around to having someone do it a few weeks ago. The leaking water destroyed the old drywall ceiling ages ago, most of it simply fell out.
What remained was the warped, shorted out ceiling fan, a few pieces of drywall around the edges and the old screws that held it in, lots of screws. It was quite humid outside, mom hooked up a small table fan to assist in keeping the air moving which helped a bit. The fan and the old drywall was down fast, the screws took a lot longer. I opted to back each one out instead of turning them in or breaking them off with a hammer. By the time I got the last screw out it was just about time for me to go pick Ali back up, good timing.
So I leave Nicki with mom and pick up Ali and head to Home Depot. What I was hoping would be a quick stop turned into an extended visit. We picked up a number of things for our place as well as the stuff for mom’s, including a new fancy shmancy Cub Cadet weed whacker WITH blower attachment. (more on that later) Getting the blue board dry wall sheets into the cart and the back of the truck was a bit difficult. They were difficult for Ali to manage on her end. 500 dollars and an hour and a half after I left mom’s we return. We were both hungry so mom threw a small pizza in for us to chow down on before the labor begun. Since we were going in and out a lot mom didn’t want to have the ac running, as a result as I sat at the table and looked at the thermometer on the fridge, an 86 degree reading stared back at me, whew…
So finally the work began in earnest. I never had done drywall before so although I knew the concept was rather simple I printed out some pointers I found on the web. I didn’t refer to them once while there though, relying on what I read ahead of time. Doing drywall on a ceiling adds a new challenge to the mix. Of course it is much harder to support something overhead, get it lined up and screwed in. Thank goodness mom and Ali were there, they used a small rake and an old mop to provide auxiliary support while I went around and secured the drywall.. We had some issues with the first piece because the wall of the house was a rough texture and not straight, so in some parts the drywall cleared where other spots the bulge in the wall was hanging it up. Eventually we got it jammed in there at the expense of a few bent spots on the edge that could be patched up with plaster. The second piece was trickier. It was the one that had to have a cut out for the ceiling fan. We had to mark the cutout twice as the first time we reversed what it should have been, not thinking about how the drywall would be inverted when put into place. After some grunting and groaning we got the piece in and the cutout actually lined up. I was pretty pleased with myself.
Then I saw along the edge by the screen door that the edge of the piece wasn’t all the way in place, it was hung up on the piece next to it. I had already sunk a number of screws in place to hold the piece so I figured if I bumped the seam with something it would pop into place. Well I hit it a bit too hard and instead of lining it up, I popped it through so now it was ABOVE the other piece. I was pissed. I dicked around with it for awhile trying to get it down. The best I could do was get it lined up with the other piece but then the entire joint along the wall was raised up a bit. Mom repeatedly told me it was fine and to not worry about it. It bugged me but I finally relented and just let it go.
The last piece we tried to put in as one section but since it was the last piece there was very little room for play and we had no luck getting the angle right to wedge it in there. So we decided to cut it in half and do it. It just meant one more small joint to tape. Cutting it worked like a charm, both pieces fit in well. I dropped in a number of screws to hold it all. It didn’t look half bad.
So now we turned our attention to replacing the ceiling fan, we got her a nice outdoor model. As mom assembled the fan blades I worked on the putting the main body together. I hooked it into the electric, hung it and then before putting the blades on I wanted to flip the switch to make sure it was working. I have mom flip it, fully expecting the motor to start spinning. Instead I get nothing. I pull the chain a few times, wondering if maybe it ships in the off position, nothing. I tell mom to turn it back off. Shit. I spend a few moments weighing the possible cause of the problem. A flipped circuit breaker could have done it although mom was confident they were all on. I went to the box which had nothing labeled and flipped all the 15 amp circuits off and on. I tried the switch again, nothing.
Then I noticed that on the fan where the blades are mounted there were rubber pieces screwed in that evidently are there to keep the motor from spinning during shipping. Ah, that must be it. I quickly remove them, confidently go back to the switch and throw it, NOTHING. Damn it. So I pull the fan down, thinking maybe the electrical connections I made were not solid. When I removed the wire caps I saw they were still intact. Even so I removed them reattached them and tried again. Nope. Unfortunately one thing I did not bring with me was my meter. I didn’t expect to have electricity issues. I had no easy way to verify if current was coming out of the wires. Mom even went next door to a neighbor that is an electrician but he wasn’t home. Shit! Well the fan project had to be put on hold until I could get back there with my meter.
While I was screwing with the fan, Ali had been going around with the plaster and filling the screw holes. All that was left to do was the joint taping. I started on it but almost immediately realized I was doing a shitty job of it. I asked Ali if she wanted to try that as well. She did a much better job. She laid down the initial coat of compound and then I would press the tape into it and then she would go back over it and finish it up. She did a great job. We reached our stopping point for the day. The panels were up, taped and compounded. All that was left to do is sand down the compound once it dries, paint it and get the damn fan working. We cleaned up the tools and materials and were out of there by around 3:30. Mom was very grateful for our efforts as she spends a decent amount of time out on the lanai (smoking unfortunately) and having a ceiling overhead instead of bare studs was a nice change.
So we hurried home. The weather looked rainish which wasn’t good since we had the left over drywall panel and a half in the back of the truck. We made it to about a mile from our house before it started to rain. I quickly dumped all the stuff in the garage to be sorted out later. I wanted to dig into my new, expensive Cub Cadet weed whacker. 
This sucker was expensive. 190 bucks plus another 80 or so for a blower attachment for it. This thing had a long, straight shaft and used an unconventional (for a weedwhacker) 4 cycle motor, meaning you don’t have to feed it a gas/oil mixture. Plus I have had a good experience with my Cub Cadet lawn tractor. I expected more goodness from their weed whackers.
As I unpacked it I noticed the head of the unit looked strange, it used a fixed length cord instead of the continuous feed I am used to. It’s one “commercial” quality string instead of a spool of line that feeds out as it gets worn off. That was my first red flag. I was leery of the string holding up very long in my landscape where I am trimming up against concrete and wire fencing regularly. I shelved my concerns, hoping that since it is a Cub Cadet, it would be fine.
The next thing I noticed was how long and how heavy the machine was compared to my Homelite curved model. Again I told myself it is a Cub Cadet, I’m sure it is perfectly balanced to offset the increased weight. I take it outside and add the oil to it thinking it would be nice to be more environmentally responsible using a 4 stroke engine that spits out less emissions. I didn’t think about the need outlined in the manual to check the oil level every single time you use it and the regular, tedious maintenance that was recommended for a 4 stroke motor. (the 2 cycle motor in my old Homelite has never been “maintained” for 6 years)
So I attach the normal weed cutting head, fire it up after a couple pulls and knock down a some grass. The motor sounded much more civilized than what I was accustomed to and I noticed I had to be applying considerably throttle to get the head spinning fast enough to do damage, oh well no big deal. After the whacking test run I switched attachments and put the blower end on. I fired it up and had some fun blowing the chunks of grass I just cut off the driveway. I brought Ali out to show her my new toy, despite the reservations I had to that point. Ok this isn’t bad I thought. Let’s put it to a real world test. I put on my long pants, my glasses and my bug spray and started my weed whacking circuit.
It did not go well. The shaft of the CC was long and straight, the intention being that you wouldn’t need to lean over to reach the ground. It also made it very difficult to do any precise, down to the ground trimming. Plus, my long gorilla like arms naturally held the unit too low, to keep the angle correct I had to keep my arms bent and shoulders tensed. It didn’t take long at all for fatigue to start to set in. Almost instantly I was feeling frustration with this thing. The only thing it did well was cut down grass in an open area. If I tried to angle it to cut low against an obstacle it was a major pain in the ass, requiring me to lift and angle the whacker awkwardly. Even so I continued on, telling myself I needed to give it more of a try, this thing was expensive, it has to be awesome right? Well I got maybe a third into my normal run when I turned it off in the middle of trying to whack along the fence in Nicki’s area. I looked down at the commercial cord and saw it was already halfway gone. I would have to be reloading string three our four times per run, fighting extreme shoulder and arm fatigue the entire time. I said to myself, this thing sucks….
Defeated I walked inside and told Ali that I didn’t like it. It was too heavy and awkward to be used in our set up and the cord configuration would be ridiculous to work with. She felt bad that the excitement I had for it had turned to discontent so quickly. Now I had to come up with an escape plan. I called Home Depot to see if I could return the unit even if I ran it. I was very relieved to hear YES come over the phone. So I cleaned up the Cadet the best I could dumped the gas out of it and jammed it back into the box. Even though it was 6:30 at night by this time, I wanted to get the situation resolved.
I went to the Bonita Home Depot even though I bought it at one of the Naples stores. An older grumpy guy handled the exchange. He didn’t say more than a couple sentences to me. I told him how I tried it but didn’t like it. he said nothing and just went over to the box, made sure stuff was in there and then came back with a look on his face like someone just farted. I had the feeling he thought I was lame for returning a weed whacker I already used but he completed the return, handed me the slip and that was that.
I immediately headed over to the weed whackers to make a more careful decision. I learned several things that I needed in a weed whacker. It had to be light. It had to have continuous spool feeding and I it would be cool if it had the ability to add attachments. I spent a lot of time comparing the models and ironically the only one that fit my specs all the way around was another Homelite model. It was the lightest model, had the curved shaft I liked AND took attachments. As a bonus, it was much less expensive than the Cub Cadet. Yea sure it isn’t as high of quality as a Cub but the the Homelite I have at home has lasted since we owned the house, it ain’t that bad. I was able to get a new trimmer with a blower attachment AND a hedge trimmer attachment for 40 dollars less than what I spent on the CC.
I hurried home as daylight was fading. I quickly put the Homelite together and took it outside to give it a test run. It was totally dark now but I didn’t care. I weed whacked, blew grass clippings and trimmed hedges by spotlight. It all worked decently and most importantly, the Homelite felt comfortable to wield. It felt like a feather compared to the Cub Cadet. I was happy to have the issue put to bed before I hit the bed. I really need to be more careful with some buying decisions. If I would have seen at the store that the Cub Cadet had that single line trimmer head I would have shit canned it right away.
a SpotBot to add to my robotic army. Last night I put it to the test with a stain that has been in the carpet in our bedroom for ever. It was the end result of Nicki chewing a rawhide that was “beef basted”. It was brownish, reddish in color. Evidently the combination of whatever colored the bone and Nicki’s saliva created a substance that has resisted all attempts to clean it. 
