Posts Tagged ‘adulting’
Helping Family
When we got the message from Elysa that she could use some help with several home maintenance projects, Cyndie and I agreed to show up without hesitation. We packed up some tools and supplies and headed to the Cities.
I’m no carpenter but I have learned how to screw boards on a deck.
We decided to pull some boards off and flip them over as a temporary fix until a more permanent solution is figured out. The original screws were rusted almost to dust which made some easy to remove and others a real battle after the heads broke off.
While I finished putting in new screws to re-secure the boards, Cyndie helped with the removal of an unwanted bush.
Now you see it.
Now you don’t.
Next, I mounted new latch hardware on the back gate to the alley that will keep their dog from muscling his way out when the urge strikes.
Mission accomplished. Temporary fixes R us.
Somehow, I solved all the challenges of the various repairs without once resorting to using duct tape. Hopefully, the new screws hold.
It is an honor to be able to lend a hand when family is in need. Especially when I was just the beneficiary of help from Julian the day before, pounding down fence posts.
Doesn’t seem that long ago that I was shoulder to shoulder with them as little kids, looking out our master bedroom window in EP at a thunderstorm and striving to dispel anxieties over the flashing and booming. We made up a rating system to judge the impressiveness of the brilliant zig-zagging bolts and loudest booms of thunder.
Now we all face home-owner ‘adulting’ type problems. It’s nice to know we’ll never stop helping each other.
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Documents Signed
In the middle of a week that has been blurred by activity, much of it at the day-job that has been intensified by a voluminous flood of orders, Cyndie and I inserted a moment of great import. Yesterday, our children joined us downtown in Minneapolis to sign wills, health care directives, and a variety of miscellaneous legal documents to assure all our affairs are in order, in case we become incapable of making decisions for ourselves or our lives come to an end.
It’s weird to have the thought that we are now ready to die. I suppose this is why so many people tend to neglect this task.
I, for one, am very happy to have taken care of this aspect of adulting. Maybe these documents will never be needed, but if someday they are, the legal definitions of our wishes have been signed and dated.
It only cost me $20 to park in a ramp for the meeting. Luckily, at the end of the day, when meeting Cyndie and our friends, Barb and Mike in St. Paul for dinner, the parking lot pay station was broken and we didn’t have to pay anything.
Twenty dollars seems like an outrageous amount of money for parking a car for an hour-and-a-half, but there was a convenience factor involved and I only pay for parking a few times a year, so I mentally amortize the rare expense across the large expanse of many months and it doesn’t seem as burdensome as it should to me.
We had dinner at the Keg and Case Market, visiting a variety of the merchants for treats after sandwiches at Revival Smoked Meats. I had my first taste of halva, the Middle Eastern sweet confection made from sesame paste. Cyndie chose cotton candy.
Those opposite dessert choices emphatically represent one of our many personal differences!
Just as we were heading for the cars at the end of the night, we received a message from our kids that they were out together at a brewery for a fundraising event for MacPhail Center for Music where Elysa works, and they ran into Barb and Mike’s son, Ryan.
What fun synchronicity!
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Relative Something 