Tonight, "Boom" seems particularly appropriate, since the theme song to the cartoon goes like this:
- She's Katie Ka-Boom
- Katie Ka-Boom
- She lives in a house with a garden in bloom
- Her family knows that any time soon
- Their little lady, Katie
- Goes ka-boom
There is nothing attractive or Godly in character about the irrational anger that sometimes wells up in me over things I can't figure out. Tonight, it was the #@%*$* lawn sprinklers.
I made the leap to buying a house with a lawn because it had sprinklers on a timer. I do not hand water things in the yard. For verification of this, simply check with Liann about the number of dead flowers and patches of brown vinca she would come home to after she had gone away on vacation and foolishly placed me in charge of the yard. The house would be spotless inside, but the yard would be dead. I hate watering.
So, while Corrina is happily plant, plant, planting away in Springs, I am here battling with my Nelson EZ (HA!) irrigation timer. There are directions in the panel of the timer; I follow them; nothing. I look up directions online; pretty much the same as what's in the panel; I follow them; nothing. Oh, the fury. I try to just run the simple little test it can do; nothing. I finally decide Zone 1 does not actually exist in my lawn. In fact none of the zones, up to 7, actually exist here. Maybe I am watering some old lady's lawn in Montana, 'cause there ain't nothin' happenin' on my lawn.
I actually call my father, who, while he was here last week, professes to have gotten the sprinklers to work when he ran them on a test cycle. I saw the grass afterward; yeah, it was wet. But I call now to make sure that it was wet from the sprinklers and not from the hose or some weird alien fly-by. Yes, Kathie, it was the sprinklers.
@^$#!*!!!
By now, I have decided that I was tricked into buying this house, because everyone in the world can get the sprinklers to run except me. It was like an out of body experience, the frustration was so high. I smacked my garage door opener a little too hard in a moment of angst, and had to get a screwdriver to fiddle with it a little bit to get it to work again. %@$%^#@^.
There is something seriously wrong with my patience meter, and my, "I can do it MYSELF" meter. Dad politely suggests asking the neighbor for help. For me, this is equivalent to having to drink a bottle of ammonia or something; I should be able to figure this OUT! And even before I call Dad, I know that I should just wait like two hours and let God clear my head and start again, and the answer will be a cinch. But I can't give it up until I have an anger headache that is so snarly that I know if I go to bed with it, as cheesed off as I am at me, the sprinkler designers, and the neighbors at the end of the cul-de-sac who are watching me go in and out and in and out and in out of the house to see if water is spraying from ANYTHING, I will wake up mean and ugly, and of course, I have to greet at church in the morning.
That will be pretty.
I spend from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM monkeying with everything I can think of. I finally surrender. And, yes, there was prayer interspersed throughout the two hours. And some talking to myself. And some $@$^#@ thoughts.
For some reason, about 8:20, I go out to the garage and try one more time for a test cycle. What is that noise? Is that water? Zone 4 starts to do something. It works. What the...? There is a Zone 1 after all? Well, I never...
So, if you find a gasket lying about, it's mine. I blew one clean off tonight. If you find any pretty flowers, they are The Boom's. She is the one with the patience meter that is nicely adjusted.
See why we need that kid around? Good and humbling in all the right ways :)
4 comments:
Greg, the neighbor, and I got fairly soaked when we finally figured out to turn off the "drain" fitting and turn on the "water" fitting deep down in the four foot pit in the back yard. The sprinklers worked just long enough to give me more than faith, but a reality of system integrity.
You, on the other hand, like your mother, expect everything to work at the lilt of your voice or twinkle of an eye (having to twinkle two would be tantamount to climbing Everest with a two gallon carboy of water and no breathing apparatus).
Remember, this %#*&&$% thing was made by a man, most likely, or a woman trained to think like a man in some wit infested school of engineering by students who couldn't win on "Battle of the Robots" after four years and finally left, sheep skin in hand and head up knowing they had helped to create some seriously malfunctioning thing to plague mankind for eternity having to do with some simple process as turning on a porch light.
That's why I suggested that you talk to Greg (the neighbor) who is on good terms with Adam (the previous owner) to learn how to set the timer.
It isn't the timer that is important to the man... it is the comradery in the battle over the machinery that leads to victory and a hardy celebration of our manliness in conquest (jousting went out a few hundred years ago and besides it hurt).
Next time, take Dad's advice. Swallow your pride (or the bottle of ammonia if it bolsters your nerve) and go ask a man. It isn't that they're better or smarter or stronger. It's just that they are trained in the use of &^*&)(^ pieces of machinery and are somewhat jaded to failure (having accustomed themselves through many unfortunate attempts in such games as baseball, football, and golf).
Sleep tight, sweety.
Pop
Oh, I hope your dad is one of our neighbors in heaven...:-)
I am so with you on the patience factor with mechanical and electronic things. THAT is why I married when I was 19! He liked my cooking, he fixed something on my car, and we were a couple forever more!
HE won't ask for help at Lowe's (or any other store) so he takes me along to badger the employees. In return, he musters up all his manly prowess and conquers leaky washers and tangled wires to make my life run smoothly. Enjoyed the story, although I am sure it was hard to go through!
Has your package arrived yet?
TM
ROFL not because I'm insensitive to your plight, but because I can picture it perfectly! Lest you think you're alone in this, you could substitute heavy traffic in place of the sprinkler system, and simply insert my face right into the picture. Add in a sense of urgency to get somewhere by a certain time, and perhaps throw in a wrong direction or an unexpected one-way grid, and my blood pressure will be rising to atronomical levels. Naturally that's when some #@*&$! races up a merge lane that he/she knows is about to end and forces his/her way to the front of the line. Or perhaps the person on the cell phone nearly sideswipes my &%!*# car and doesn't even have the decency to look shocked or abashed. Or some guy in his @*&#! Lexus deliberately blocks me from changing lanes so he can beat me to some fictional destination by 5 seconds when all I really want to do is get to the %!#*& exit lane. Truly, I'm at my "best" in these scenarios, assuming that by "best" you mean spluttering and ranting about the lack of basic human decency in the world. I don't know why traffic turns me into a cynic with a sailor's mouth, but it does. SERENITY NOW! :o)
Risa, I love it--SERENITY NOW! sounds like the name of a high-stress, overachievers' recovery group, and/or a phrase we can chant at the top of our lungs with posters and signs when we march en masse through insane traffic or bear down on the headquarters of the Nelson EZ Irrigation people ;)
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