Keeping Things Running

It is amazing how much times it takes just to take care of daily chores, and one's home.

Working 65 hours a week, has put me even more behind this summer than ever. We always clean our rain gutters in April. Yesterday, the 5th Andy and I cleaned them in anticipation of heavy thunderstorms coming--we got 2.8 inches or rain over into this morning.

First, the down spout plugged in front of the garage when Andy was hosing out the front gutter. I took that apart and unclogged it and reassembled it--it is held together with 1/4 inch hex screws.

Then he was working on the West roof, and the downspout clogged going to the garage roof, where all the West side water flows to. I got on the roof and disconnected the angled downspout. I tapped it and a rush of mud, leaves, branches and a small, active wasp hive came flowing out. The wasps were temporarily dazed being, wet, so I borrowed the hose from Andy and washed them off the roof into the grass. They came right back up to where their home was.

I was leaving and I noticed a cup saucer size hole in the fascia board running along the roof above the garage. The downy woodpeckers for years drill holes in the boards all around the house. So we stopped and spackled that, and will return to sand and paint it.

Earlier in the afternoon I noticed the water bibcock in front of the house was spraying water. We isolated the 3/4 inch copper line and I removed it. On the way home from work today I bought a replacement bibcock and some teflon tape, and screwed in on its male copper fitting.

We are splitting wood for winter, just stained the back deck, weeding beds and picking blueberries and raspberries now ripening fast.

These mundane tasks are a lot of work and take a lot of time, but nothing grounds an intellectual and idealist like I am like doing chores. If one is active in the world of nature, and the material world, one remains more realistic and practical. These moderating experiences influence one, making one appreciate how much constant time, money, effort and attention is required to make things work in the human world.  The fanatical idealist, the purist, shrugs off such objections, but really hurts coerced humankind when ignoring how difficult and complex it is to get things done, and keep things running smoothly out there in the real world. Making things work and keeping them working  is not magic, maintenance-free, without skill or investment to keep the wheels turning.

Every idealist should have a house to care for--it might mitigate his Procrustean designs on people regarding perfect performance, or else.