Getting Organized

It's another summer season and those of us who have been away must get organized once again. Just getting things going is one big challenge. I threw away the o-ring when I emptied the water filter last September and find that the water system can't hold its water without it. Then I got lucky - the missing o-ring was in the grass outside the door where I dumped it. We'll have a spare here next year.

Then there's the case of the missing handsaw. I was almost sure I had purchased a new one last season but couldn't find it until I bumped into it in the attic. I had put it there, carefully oiled, so it wouldn't rust and completely forgotten that I did that. Then there was the good, carbide stone chisel that I needed to repair some masonry which was damaged during the winter. That's a valuable tool and I might have hidden it under the mattress except that I couldn't have slept with it there. But it wasn't in the likely places - or I didn't think so - until it appeared in the bottom of a bucket used for masonry tools. I'll do well to paint that one yellow to save me an hour of searching next year.

The usual mechanical problems appear. One neighbor complained that only one of his four machines powered by infernal combustion engines worked. And I brought the parts that I was sure to fix the truck but they were the wrong parts. The boat ran fine on land and then failed on launch. So it goes. It won't be long before everything is humming again and I'll forget all this trouble.