I Wish . . . .and Help From Friends

 Random thought of the day:  Sometime I feel like I am the one who is a ghost, wandering through the remnants of a past life.

"I wish."  Those were words I had to be careful about using, along with things like "wouldn't it be cool if" or "oooooo, I like that."   Because if I didn't follow it up quickly with "just thinking out loud, just admiring it but don't really want it" or some other disclaimer - Bob would make it happen.  He would do it, or buy it, or make it.  Yeah - I was spoiled.

Sometimes it backfired.  Simple things - like the time I had a large bag of sunflower seeds temporarily stashed in the den until I needed to refill the bucket on the back deck.  It was the type of bag with the stitched strip across the top, which if you pull the string correctly it unzips - or you can spend 20 minutes trying to pick it off stitch by stitch.  I had to get into the cabinet it was leaning against and started to pick it up from the top corners.  Bob came hustling over, grabbed the little strip and string, and zipped it off with a "Ta Dah!"  look on his face.  I gave him a blank look.  "Nice.  Happy for you.  Now could you go get a stapler or some tape so we can close this back up until we need it and won't spill seeds everywhere if it tips over?"

Hmmm.  Got a little sidetracked there.  It's about 5 a.m.  I went to bed early last night so now seem to be awake, which I will regret in a few hours.  

Anyway - the I wish.  Most of the time it really was lovely.  Such as the time that I was wishing I had a bigger work surface in the cottage.  The cottage had come with a freestanding kitchen counter about 6 feet long, 18" wide which we had moved out to be a work table.  But I really wanted something wider.  Bob came up with the idea of getting a set of kitchen cabinets and setting them up parallel to the counter, taking the old narrow counter off, and putting on a 4' by 6' top.  Worked a champ, and gave me a lot more storage space.

It had the added bonus of some "deep" storage space, as there was a gap between the old counter and the new cabinets, wide enough to slide in some storage boxes.

As I was happily arranging stuff in my new space, Bob wandered out to the barn.  He soon returned with that "TaDah!" look on his face, dragging his new creation.  He had taken a long board, reinforced the ends, put on casters, and fashioned a folding handle out of PVC pipe.  The idea was that when I needed to get to the stored boxes I could just pull them all out, instead of having to get on my hands and knees and crawl under.  Pretty clever.

That was years ago, but I was remembering it this week because a friend wanted some wool fleece for another friend to insulate some beehives, and I was digging out some stuff in "deep storage" which meant that I would likely never get around to spinning it.  So out it came, along with all the memories.

I was cleaning up in the cottage anyway (meaning "clearing a path.")  A few months ago, when it was cold, I had my electric radiator on, and, without thinking, plugged a hair dryer into the same outlet to hurry up a painting job (it was when I was putting highlights on my crow lamp).  And blew the circuit breaker.  But when I flipped the circuit breaker back on the outlet was still dead.  I replaced the outlet - no joy.  I used a multimeter to test the wires - no juice. That is the full extent to which I will play with electricity.  I have other outlets in that room.  

But hot weather is coming, and that is the outlet for my air conditioner.  I check with Rik and Christy at the feed store - because they are the people who know everybody, and would know a good electrician.  Rik thought it might be something simple, and came over yesterday with a friend who is good with it and with a bit of poking and prodding and testing outlets and following wires came to the conclusion that it was the breaker that had burned out - it's an easy fix.  I have my outlet back.

It was really nice of them; the sort of thing you do for a friend, and they were happy to help me.  And it's nice to have it fixed.  And yet, after they left, I was restless.  I pulled some stuff out of the barn to take to the dump tomorrow, washed out some flowerpots to donate at the community garden, swept the front deck.  Finally, I fixed a carb-heavy dinner, hit the wine, watched BattleBots, and went to bed early.  Hence - up at 5 a.m.

Why depressed over getting an outlet fixed?  Well, for one, I've always been territorial about my stuff, and having a couple of people poking around my cottage was disconcerting.  Mostly I think it was because stuff like this underscores the fact that Bob ain't here, and he ain't coming back, and he won't be the one to fix things for me with that happy flourish of "TaDah!"