Despite staying up way too late last night, I managed to get up on time for my 07:00 video call with my sisters, which is good, since I haven’t seen them since before we went to Ireland, and with events on the next coming three weekends, I won’t see them till after we are done with those.
We chatted for just over an hour, by which point my sisters in Seattle, where it was getting late, were both feeling very sleepy, and I wanted to go back to bed. Kirsty, in the middle of the afternoon in Australia, was the only one of us with energy. So we said goodnight, and I started to return to bed, only to find Keldor getting dressed. Darn! I had been looking forward to curling back up with him!
Luckily for me, he is super sweet, and lay back down with me for a short bit as he asked how things are with my family (good, though just now they are a bit too obsessed with soccer World Cup for my taste). Then he mentioned that he was going to head to town to buy the concrete and sand needed to finish getting the concrete deck supports properly in their place, so I decided that I may as well get up and head in with him.
Since we were in town we also bought some white paint of the sort designed to be used on stone and concrete walls, so I could paint a base coat on the walls in the cellar bathroom. On the way home we bought some groceries, and this time I made my salad directly upon getting home, instead of deciding I was too tired to deal with it. Yum!
Alas, in the time it took me to eat the salad, I totally forgot that Keldor had wanted eggnog, and we had bought some cream to make it, so when he went to go out to put sand under the deck supports in their holes to make them all the same height, I just went to the cellar to start painting the wall.
I was still painting when he came in to get some lunch, and by the time I went up stairs Rizza and her sister were busy cleaning the house. Keldor mentioned then the eggnog, to which I replied “can I wait till they are done cleaning and head home?”. Then I returned to the cellar to start painting the lists as they finished up, and he went down to start taking apart a big wooden pallet or something that he’d brought home from work. As I worked I totally forgot the eggnog, again. Ooops. He didn’t remind me again, either.
While waiting for the paint on the lists to dry so I could do the next coat I went up and did some yoga, after which things got weird. I was about to head down to paint again, and he started asking me, again about the attachment for the hose, which didn’t make sense, as I had told him hours before that it was all together with the big wall mount retractable hose, and hadn’t he taken that out when he went to do the concrete? One needs water for concrete…
I replied that it was with the hose, and wondered if he had taken it out, and if he had taken out the new one we purchased in the autumn, as I wanted to get rid of the horrid, stiff hose that came with the house. He told me to come out, so he could show me what was missing, and pointed to the faucet on the wall, and the old green hose, next to it, with its modern style tug and pop together hose ends (there is probably a technical term for those). I asked him about the new hose, because we were going to get rid of the green one, and he said he didn’t care about that, where is the thing to attach the hose to the faucet?
With the wall-mounted hose, I put everything together when brought them into the house in the autumn. He persisted in demanding the attachment, and saying it wasn’t with the hose. I was certain it was, and went to where he had mounted it on the wall earlier today, looked at the short end of the hose—the part that sticks out of the base of the retracting unit to attach to the extra hose that stretches along the wall to attach to the faucet. Yes, sure enough the Y shaped connector that he bought last year so that we could either have the retractable hose on, or another one.
I handed it to him, pointing out that it was right where I had said it was, where I had put it last winter to be certain we wouldn’t lose it, because logic. He replied that he saw no logic in having it with the retractable hose. (Perhaps because he thought it should have stayed attached to the old green hose? The one I hated so much because it is too stiff to uncurl from the coil it has settled into.)
He looked at the Y, decided that this can’t be the right piece, it doesn’t attach, and demanded to know where the other bit is that actually attaches to the faucet, because this one doesn’t fit. I was very confused, because I didn’t remember another piece, and went in to try to find it. Perhaps past me had left it with the new, unopened grey hose? I had no luck finding any sort of thing to attach to the faucet, and didn’t remember its existence at all, but the new hose package had a variety of attachment ends, so I carried it out to Keldor, asking as I approached “is one of these the thing you are looking for?”
At which point I proved that I am difficult to live with, because when he replied in very frustrated tone of voice “I don’t know”, I ceased to have any patience, and replied “then fucking look at them”, at which point he turned and walked away, saying he had no interest anymore. I, getting super frustrated with first what I interpreted to be wilful ignorance when he said he didn’t know (probably not at all what he meant to communicate) followed him in to try to talk with him and resolve the problem.
This didn’t work, and when I got to the point where I said “everything you say is just getting me more angry”, he replied “then I won’t say anything” and went to bed. This time I didn’t try to follow him, as I was feeling too unreasonable to be able to communicate, so I went back out, and opened the new hose package to see what it had for attachments. Answer: more bits than there are hose ends, but none of them of the sort to screw on to the end of this faucet.
So I attached the two bits that attach to the hose itself, and then stuck two of the three other attachments into the socket so as not to lose them, and looked again at the third bit, which does have an opening that looks like it could screw onto a faucet, but is too big to screw onto this faucet.
Then I looked again at the Y shaped piece that I had been certain was what we used last year, and saw that the ends of the Y were just long enough to be in the way to turn it, so I couldn’t get the threads to take. Was Keldor right? is there another adapter in the house somewhere? I looked. Didn’t see anything that could be such a thing. Went back out, feeling certain that we used that Y adaptor last year. Tried, nope. Tried again. Eventually, I did manage too get it to align just right to start turning onto the faucet, and it turns out that if one manages that part the ends of the Y don’t quite hit the wall, and one can turn it into place.
Tested it on just the new hose. Yes, it works. Uncoiled the new hose, and ran it along the wall and attached it to the retractable hose, tested that. Yes, it works. Decided that it would be smart to cut a length of the new hose that just reaches the wall mounted retractable hose, so I did. Then I took the ends off of the old green hose, and put them on the remaining bit of the new hose, attached one end to the other half of the Y, and draped the rest over the old wire hose holder that came with the house.
Then I decided that I should fill in the last of the holes with the concrete deck supports with dirt, as Keldor had run out of energy today before he’d finished filling them in. But I wasn’t interested in carrying one shovel-full at a time, so I went to the garage to get the wheelbarrow. Alas, it was inaccessible behind a bunch of stuff, so it took a fair bit of time to move everything and get it out, and then even more time to put stuff back, so we can get through the room.
But eventually I was able to head outside with the wheelbarrow, and to use to carry dirt from the pile he’d put on a tarp as he’d dug the holes (how he got it there from the holes that are further away, without a wheelbarrow, I have no idea). It started raining as I worked, which just strengthened my resolve to get this task done, in case there would be a heavy rain that might have cased problems with the holes.
Once I got the last of the holes filled in I went and got the other, larger tarp, and covered what was left of the pile of dirt, as didn’t want it to get wet, and become heavier. I even remembered to weigh down the sides of the tarp.
Then I painted a third coat of paint for the lists, and came up to type up this. Now it is after 01:00, and I am having problems keeping my eyes open, so I think I will head to bed.
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