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May 8, 1998
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The latest nesting material to appear in my bedroom is pine needles. They slide through the small hole really easily. I have taken to turning on the air conditioner every time I hear the starlings in there but I am still reluctant to leave it on all the time. For one thing, it is blowing dust and mold and essence of starling into my house and I seem to be allergic to it. For another thing, it's expensive to run the air conditioner 24/7 when it's not even hot enough to require it. I know I am going to have to break down and hire someone to come and take the air conditioner out, clean the hole, clean the air conditioner, somehow make it fit with no gaps, and put a screen over the hole. I've been reluctant to call anybody to do anything on my house since my experience with Handy Andy the book phobic homophobic painter. Besides, what kind of tradesman do I need? Somebody who specializes in starlings? I actually feel ashamed that I can't fix this myself. Surely I could just get a really long stick and knock the nesting materials out, or figure out a way to safely lean out the second floor window (actually if I were a little taller that might work). Is it shameful to have starlings nesting in my air conditioner? Is it shameful not to own a long enough ladder, or have the expertise to make a custom size screen? And another item in the indictment, when the Honda Barn fixed the broken door check they broke the child proof lock on the driver's side rear door. At first I thought they had just accidentally set the lock, but when I finally took the time to look at it, I found out it won't budge. Now what do I do? Simple, go back to the Honda Barn and get them to fix it or (horrible thought) go to North Reading Auto Body and get the door replaced. Eeeek!!!!!!!!!! Let's not awfulize here, but I have this sneaking feeling the Honda Barn is not going to be able to fix it. So far, I have not had the time to leave the car there for the whole day for them to look at it. So I have this to be ashamed of also. How dare I not be able to fix the door myself in 2 seconds? Especially when that happens to be the side of the car Andrea sits on, and it really makes her angry, not to mention she thinks I am stupid because I don't know how to turn off the childproof lock. Grrr. I should never have had them replace the door check. Listening to Andrea complain about how hard the door was to open and how badly it squeaked was not as bad as listening to her anger at not being able to open the door from the inside at all (at least it doesn't squeak or resist when you open it from the outside). Let's see, what other huge failings do I have? Oh yeah, the basement. I don't even go down there anymore. The mold is so bad that my eyes itch. For all I now I'm going to get lung cancer from the radon leaking in through the cracks in the foundation where the water comes in. After the Flood of '87 I had a drain channel dug at one end and I had Thomas and a friend of his clean the mold and mildew with special flood disaster cleaning stuff. But I never had the entire foundation waterproofed, nor have I had anybody in after the last couple of wet basement type storms. To top it off, the cleaning lady locked Wilbur in the basement by mistake a couple of times and by the time I got home, he'd relieved himself in the basement and now it smells like a good place to go so he sneaks down there whenever I open the door. Arrgghhh!!!!!!!!!!! And for that matter, I have not made Joan-west's travel arrangements or registered her for the Michael Roach retreat or whatever else I promised to do for her. Zsolt is coming over tomorrow to work on the grant application, now that we finally got the PIN number from the NSF, and I know that's going to take all day so I don't know when I will have time to shop for a Mother's Day gift. But I do have books Mom lent me that I can return - in the spirit of Egan family gift giving the longer you've kept the borrowed item the better gift it makes. To top all that off, Fetch kept crashing when I was uploading my journal entries and it blew away the journal index page totally. So if people have been wondering where the journal went, blame it on Fetch. |
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