Just another Friday

Friday morning is our shopping day at Sobey’s, during the senior’s dawn patrol. Unfortunately my wife has a new fracture in her arm, and can not push a supermarket trolley, so I had to do it alone, rising at 6:15 am, a lot earlier than normal. Fortunately we have a very sophisticated shopping list on a spread sheet that can easily be modified as we realise a new need during the week. It was updated on Thursday night, and as I entered the supermarket I remembered it was still on the kitchen table. I did the shopping anyway and more or less got things right.
Once the groceries had been put safely away, I proceeded to the planned activities of the day.
About 20 years ago the concrete steps to our front door had tilted, due to frost heave, to the point that they had to be removed, and they were replaced by wooden steps and a covered porch. On each side of the steps was a wooden grid, presumably to prevent skunks from moving in. Over the years a couple of trees had started to grow under and through the steps and the grid, a fact I could no longer ignore. I discovered that I could remove the grids to get access to the trees, but they suffered in the process and needed repair. Being a complete incompetent as far as carpentry, I went to a local hardware store and asked about buying some replacement strips (which I now are called lathes) for the grids. I was told that they came in bundles of 50, and why did I want to use them anyway. It appeared that I could buy a four by eight foot grid for only $9. That seemed
much more sensible, so I bought two of them. I then realised that 8×4 grids would not fit in our Honda Civic, so I had to call a friend with a pickup who kindly “volunteered “ to come down and pick them up.

We loaded the grids and went back to the store to pick some other stuff up, and then as I was about to drive away, the car shuddered and there was a grinding noise. Another car moving in to the adjacent parking space had not noticed the bike rack protruding from the back of my car. He hd ripped open the panelling on his doors. He was very upset and apologetic, he was 91 and had not had an accident in 65 years, we exchanged insurance information, and I realised that bike rack was dead, After phoning my insurance company, I went to the bike shop to try to buy a new rack, they had one at a reasonable price, but they could not get the old one off. I had not taken it off during the winter as I still bike then, and the attachment to the car had firmly welded itself together, brute force did not work to pull it apart, I finally found a friendly service station who removed the whole thing from the car and by use of heating managed to open up the connection, and replace the important bit on the car. So I could now buy and install the new carrier.

Now I returned home and settled down to trying to paint the new grids, cut them down to size and install them all in more than a days work. Fortunately the man with a pickup also had a very fancy saw which he plugged in and removed the trees under the steps.

It was my turn to make dinner so I felt that my problems were over for the day, until I got the refrigerator crisper drawer jammed on a box of spinach, and an entire box of blue berries spilled and rolled all over the kitchen floor.

I felt fully entitled to my post dinner scotch.