Sunday, December 21, 2014

On the second day of Christmas vacation...

I seem to have been auditioning for  comedy show.

Act One: A Bird in Hand, Sort Of

Before I went downstairs for the day, I ran off the last half hour of a Christmas movie I started last night (I may have dozed off before it was finished), while I sorted and organized the stack of papers on the the desk.

Every so often, I'd hear a thumping noise downstairs. It took a bit to realize the source.

A bird managed to get itself stuck in my chimney.

Opened the patio door wide (brr), grabbed a plastic shoe box (to trap the poor thing if needed), then opened up the glass doors fronting the fireplace...

...and nothing.

The bird was probably stuck on the little shelf next to the damper, but darned if it was smart enough to come down instead of try to fly up. There are big (ugly) caps on our chimneys that are supposed to prevent this from happening; I can only suppose either it is damaged, or this is a pretty small bird.

Eight hours later, I think it escaped. Well, I hope it escaped. There is no more noise, so I'm taking the optimistic approach.

This happened before I'd had any coffee.

Act Two: Tangled

After the initial inspection, I figured the bird would be fine while I went out to pick up some coffee and breakfast. And doughnuts. Because a bird in the flue demands a highly sugared approach.

On the way out, I wantedd to move a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer, so I could put the shower curtain (which I had removed from the upstairs shower prior to the bird discovery) in the wash, needing to get it washed, dried and reinstalled before tomorrow morning.

I'd tossed four little half yards of fabric in for prewashing, along with a lingerie bag with half a dozen pair of pantyhose. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for remembering to include the pantyhose, since it meant one less thing to frantically remember to do on the last day of my vacation.

Silly me.

If  you have ever prewashed fabric, you know that it tends to unravel a bit, creating long thread strings that can wrap around the fabric as the washer agitates it. You sometimes end up with a knotted ball of fabric, held together by those nasty strings, which need to be cut so the fabric can be freed before you put it in the dryer.

Well, add to that pantyhose that decided to take a walk out of the lingerie bag and have a party with the fabric. The end result? A huge knot of thread, fabric and pantyhose. It took fifteen minutes and a boxcutter (used on the threads only) to free everything. I think the pantyhose escaped without harm, other than legs that have been stretched to fit a seven foot tall WNBA star, but I'll check them once they are dry.

Still operating without coffee.

Act Three: Sweet Interlude

Finally out the door, and at Dunkin' Donuts' drive through, where the following conversation ensued:

"I'd like a #8 combo with a large black coffee, and...."

"So you want the ham and cheese on an english muffin?"

"Yes."

"And a large coffee instead of a medium?"

"Yes, a large black coffee."

"And do you want the hash browns with that?"

"Isn't that what makes it a combo?"

"Yes, but some people don't want the hash browns. Do you want cream and sugar in your coffee?"

"No. A.large.black.coffee. And half a dozen donuts, mixed, no filled."

"Do you want to pick your donuts, or do you want me to just do it?"

"I don't care.  You pick."

"Okay. I have a strawberry sprinkle, a chocolate cake, a blueberry..."

"No blueberry, please."

"Okay, no blueberry. Is a strawberry sprinkle okay? And a jelly..."

"NO FILLED."

"So no jelly?"

"NO."

I did eventually get my order. Serves me right for getting donuts, I guess. The really sad thing? The couple of other times I've gone there, almost the exact same conversation has taken place, though the clerks have been different.

Epilogue

The rest of the day has been rather uneventful, other than fighting with iTunes a bit. In the end, I was successful in getting the rest of Mandisa's Christmas CD, as well as Mercy Me's Christmas Sessions CD downloaded to the iPod, synced to the iTunes account and backed up to the cloud. The laptop on which iTunes resides has been whining about running out of storage space (it lies), so another hour or so passed in e-mailing myself files I want to save (retrieve on the desktop computer, which has a 1 TB memory) and purging them.

The sing-along Sound of Music is tonight - doesn't everyone sing along anyway? Not sure if I will watch, as they put so very many commercials in. Still need to reinstall the shower curtain and the new liner,  I brought the Christmas tree up from the basement, finally, and may spend some time assembling and fluffing it out. I may not get much other than lights and an angel on it this year, but that's fine. It's a narrow enough tree that I can cover it and store it in the door-less closet space in the loft (an 80" wide, 36" deep nook in the wall that is crying out to be turned into a closet - just waiting on funds), assembled and with the lights on.

I'd better get to it, especially if I want to take a shower tomorrow morning. I'd use the bathroom downstairs, but that bathtub is where I store my batting...



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