DIY - Part Deux

In the spirit of Do It Yourselfers everywhere, we occasionally step off the slippery slope into some pretty rough waters.  I have learned our DIY gene kicks in most often when our bank account is most lean.  And on reflection...this is probably when we should most definitely resist DIO (Doing It Ourselves).

If you know me at all you know I am a person who doesn't mind being alone.  In fact...I prefer it most of the time.  But God has an amazing sense of humor and it seems he enjoys challenging us with our preferences.  I.Am.Never.Alone.  EVER.  Please understand, I wouldn't like to be alone always, but sometimes would be great.

In my quest to have a moment alone I recently offered to transport a dog for a friend  **side note: I don't mind having animals along for the ride**

I picked up the dog and all her stuff and went home to finish gathering my items for the trip and when it was time to leave, my car wouldn't start.  Now...the car had been having some issues in this area.  We don't like to be proactive about issues.  We like to wait and do those knee jerk reactionary things that usually cause far more problems than we originally had.

Battery.  We thought.  New Battery.  Nope.  This issue had tendrils of catastrophe wrapped all around it - paid cash for the battery except for $18.00 on the debit card.  And, when we returned the battery, they refunded all $118.00 back onto the debit card (which takes 4 - 5 days to show up).  Now...we have a cash crisis on top of everything else.

It is now starting to look like it is a starter issue.  Or, a non-starter issue as it were.  So, collectively we foolishly decide to DIO.  Since the car won't start it is a non moving hunk of metal sitting on a driveway incline.  Efforts to push said hunk of metal onto car ramps proved problematic.  So, we pushed it into the street and pushed it rear first back onto the driveway.  Now we have gravity at our disposal and can effortlessly push the car onto the car ramps.

Which we did.  However, like I said gravity that fickle witch worked so well we went up on the car ramps and right back off the front of them.  At this point, I removed myself from the DIY project and took to my bed.  A tow truck arrived, the car departed and I rode the bus to work the following Monday (there's a story there too, but I'll not bore you with that one.)

My amazing children paid for the car repairs with the explanation they were probably getting out easy.  I think they thought having to pay for waffles and gas for the LEGs might have been more expensive in the long run.  LOL

Just to clarify, neither myself or my husband are totally inept.  We are actually quite good at fixing things, etc.  It is just a further indication of our old friend gravity.  When we are struggling the most, gravity seems to work against us by making everything we attempt just a little bit harder.  And constant struggles seems to cloud one's thinking and more than minimally diminish confidence levels.

But, the good news is we continually to struggle on.  We haven't thrown in the towel yet and we do have faith that this too shall pass

DIY - Does This Mean DIE - Like in Expire, Pass Over?

Apparently DIY (which is an Acronym for Do It Yourself) could be construed to mean DIE sucker DIE!

DIY is all the rage right now and yes, I confess to having been chomped on by the DIY bug.  I blame my mother whose phrase "don't pay for that we can make it" still resonates with me and I find myself using it from time to time.  And while it is true I have these twinges of guilt over it because I know that the person whose item I am mentally cataloging has spent time working on for the purpose of making MO-NEY.

One thing I have learned is if I am going to DIY (both literally and figuratively) I need to find a block of time when the hub-a-lump is not in residence.  This adds a whole other level of skill to the project - trying to DIY without being noticed....and helped.

Recently, I had this idea...

Yes, I realize...big deal it's a pot of flowers sitting on a table.  But wait....in this case, the umbrella goes through the pot and through the table and into the stand.  I thought myself most clever.  Darling hubs had the idea to shield the umbrella pole with PVC pipe to prevent it from rotting due to exposure to wet conditions in the pot...GREAT IDEA!!!  Really.  He even went and obtained all the supplies to make this project ready to DIY!  However, I am a lot more like my mom than I would like to admit and when I have these moments I want them to happen NOW.  So 2 weeks after supplies, I decided to DIM (Do It Myself).  I carefully measured and cut the PVC pipe (easy peasy) then I cut a hole in the inner tray of the pot (did that with kitchen shears - again no problemo).  I was ready to tackle the hole in the outer pot.  At this moment, help arrived.  My help whipped out his trusty Bosch drill and attached a tool to it that looked like it could ream a hole through the earth all the way to China.  Inverting the pot, he commenced to drill.  The second that razor sharp paddle thingie touched that plastic pot an explosion happened.  Plastic shards flew everywhere (and no kids we weren't wearing our safety glasses).  This resulted in a different explosion, one of the human variety as my help was not happy with the first explosion.

The upshot was I went back to the lumber yard and obtained another pot and then I used a fireplace lighter to heat up the plastic and push it around until I had a hole of sufficient size to fit over my umbrella pole.  I would like to say all were happy but me having a successful piercing of the pot didn't help the climate at my homestead one bit.  But now we are over it and neither one of us is telling the other to DIY and I've moved on to my new project.

Again, it doesn't look like much, but you have to imagine it hanging from my patio cover ceiling at night.  All that is left on this is to hang it - something I can't do as the thing weighs 1/2 as much as I do but I am hopeful this can happen without anyone having to DIY (literally.)