Monday, March 31, 2008

Comedy of Errors Sunday

Fail the first: Sunday morning I woke up, went downstairs, and opened the back door to let the cats out. We have 2 bird feeders in the back yard (one thistle, one seed). They are suspended on 2 large shepherds hooks. I have the 2 hooks zip tied together about half way up to support each other.

As I'm letting Lenny out I notice that a squirrel is on the hooks to the feeder, which is not surprising since they climb them all the time to help themselves to some bird food. But something looked strange, I took a second look. Turns out the squirrel had wedged himself between the 2 uprights, just behind the front legs and could not move. I rushed upstairs, threw pants and socks on, grabbed some shoes and threw on my coat and thick winter gloves and went outside. I thought the poor thing was dead, but as I came closer, I could see the rapid rise and fall of his/ her chest. The poor squirrel was terrified, but it could not move and was probably exausted from struggling. With my thick gloves on I carefully placed one hand on each side of the shepherds hooks and lifted him up. He tried to bite me the entire time (not surprising), but he was no match for my gloves. Once he was free he sprung from my hands and raced out of the yard, right past Lenny, who was looking quite confused.

In looking back, I should have taken a picture, cause the scene really was hilarious. At the time I almost walked out the door without pants in my hurry to help him. That would have been a whole different type of hillarious for my neighbors.

Fail the second: My bike was ready to be picked up on Sunday, so I went and got it and decided to test ride my route to work since it was such a nice day (we are supposed to get 4-8 inches of snow today so that would be fail the third). I got my helmet, bottle of water, checked my tires, grabbed my cell phone (it would have helped if I had checked to see if it was charged, fail the fourth), wallet and knitting and headed off. As I was riding along the bike path that followed 61 and turned onto Warner road my pedals started to feel odd. Something felt loose. Then something felt really loose, and then I noticed that things were no longer attached and hanging free on my pedal arm. 3 miles from home. Fantastic. Essentially my drive shaft came apart. This would be the section that they diagnosed as "loose" and they were going to "tighten". Either they didn't do that, or by doing that they caused the device to fail. I walked the bike home, loaded it into the van and drove back to Erik's, which was closed by then. I decided to not waste the trip and went to Panera and had a cinnamon roll and 2 cups of coffee while I knit. They have a 30 day guarantee on their service so I'll bring it in today, or Tuesday since the roads might be interesting with the snow tonight.

Fail the fifth: No knitting at G2's tonight.

On a bright spot: I finished the first cuff for the second set of silk stockings on Sunday, my class at SUNrise on Saturday went really well and my friends had a good time at their first event. I guess everything balances itself out. There was a yellow crocus in bloom in my front garden and the tips of other bulbs were starting to come up. Spring really is coming, despite the current conditions outside.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

Oh, G! What a terrible day! I can't believe you wrangled a squirrel. Hope the bike gets fixed correctly this time!

Alwen said...

There certainly are those days when about the only thing safe is to sit in the middle of the room and not touch anything.

Of course, on that kind of day, the light fixture would probably come out of the ceiling onto my head.

*sigh*