Tomorrow is Another Day

So today was a day of penance.  Sins of omission had to be paid for with sins of commission.  The pool fence has a gate with a closing/locking mechanism that requires the two posts and the door to be in rather finicky alignment to work properly.  Well, it’s been getting more and more out of whack for the last couple of years but I’ve been putting it off because … well because I’m a very lazy man.

But yesterday the pool guys opened up the pool so I figured I couldn’t stall any longer.  I had all my tools (drill, 200-foot extension cord, screwdrivers, pliers, wrench, two different socket sets and drivers, a small sledge hammer, wheel barrow, shovel, ear protection, eye protection, hacksaw) and the kits I was using to shore up the two posts and the hardware I needed to repair the gate.  The wheelbarrow and shovel were to fill a hole next to one of the posts.  I had dug it and filled it with large stones (~fifty pounds each) to hold the post in place but this wasn’t doing the trick.  So, I removed the stones and replaced it with dirt and compacted it with the sledge hammer.  But unfortunately, I couldn’t get at this post because of a large concrete planter that Camera Girl had filled with plants right on top of the post so I had to wrestle it out of the way.  Who knew concrete and dirt were heavy?

Finally, I could get to work on the posts.  But when I moved the planter, I must have covered over a hornet’s nest.  Because now they were looking for their nest and couldn’t find it.  So, they came looking for me!  So, I’m banging the reinforcing post into the ground and bolting it together and drilling holes into the post while dodging and swatting hornets.  So, I’m swearing and moving erratically to escape the bugs and Camera Girl sees me as she’s walking in the yard.  And she comes over to see what’s wrong.  But she blows up when she gets any kind of bug bite so I’m yelling at her to stay back.  So, she thinks I must be going crazy but after additional arm waving and hollering she retreats.

Finally, I finish with the first post and quickly manhandle the planter back in place and the hornets find their home.  So I go looking for Camera Girl to explain what was going on.  She yeah-yeahs me and tells me to get back to work.  The rest of the job goes fairly well.  Of course, I make approximately a thousand trips back and forth to my tool room in the garage because nothing fits and all the hardware is wrong.  But eventually the posts are square, the gate is straight and the lock works (more or less).  I put away all of the various tools and head to the pool to empty the skimmer for the first time.  But I can tell something’s wrong with the pump.  It sounds wrong.  I turn off the power and I see smoke coming from a union near a valve that the pool guys replaced yesterday.  The union cracked and the pump has been running without water for some unknown amount of time today.  I sigh.  Yep.  One step forward.  Two steps back.

As Scarlett O’Hara wisely observed, “Tomorrow is another day.”