Weeknotes #94

I am now a father of two.

Instead of sleeping when the baby sleeps, I have been busying myself with inessential jobs:

• Following a tip from a paint sprayer, I covered up the most obvious scratches on our 15 year old Volkswagen Golf with a permanent marker.

• I fixed the leaking shower in C——’s bathroom by replacing its thermostatic cartridge. After hacking through an entire tube’s worth of caulk to remove the shower controls from the wall, I cut myself while trying to remove a rusted screw. Replacement cartridge installed, we no longer discover phantom shower spray on the bathroom floor at random times of the day.

• Having learned how our shower controls are meant to be put together, I took the other shower apart to check it.

• As shower repairs require cutting off the water, I discovered our stopcock wasn’t actually fully stopping our water supply. I’d made do during the shower repair by running the tap on the closest sink. I suspected I’d overtightened a leaking gland nut on the stopcock which was preventing its tap from fully closing. I loosened the gland nut and used PTFE tape as new packing so I didn’t have to tighten it as much.

• The door in our “utility” (a little, windowless room off our kitchen where I do most of my baking) always swung shut, requiring a doorstop to keep it open. Fed up with this, I took the top hinge pin out and bent it slightly so it no longer closes by itself.

• We’ve been in our house a year now and this is first time I’ve ever been responsible for a garden lawn. It has not been doing well with more white clover and creeping buttercup than grass.

  I decided to treat it with some “feed and weed” which has led me to borrow my parents’ scarifier and take one step further along the path of completely ruining my garden.

• When E—— reported that our bathroom toilet was running, I attempted to take it apart. This triggered my second migraine in two days so it was time for a break.

In an attempt to combat my self-destructive love of “jobs” during downtime and instead cultivate the ability to simply do nothing, I resubscribed to Headspace for a year.

C—— keeps me busy with a steady supply of broken toys that need repairing. The Repair Shop has taught me that it is not enough to apply glue to things: they must also be held together while setting. When a wheel broke off a toy Jeep, I made use of this revelation and used rubber bands to hold it in place overnight.

A—— was born a few days after my birthday. My late grandfather and I shared our birthday and the essential turmoil of the occasion made me reminisce about him.

When I was a boy, he’d let me change the gears of his car as he drove, calling out “into second”, “into third” and so on. He would never have his seatbelt fastened before pulling away, instead reserving that for the short drive to the nearest junction, occasionally joined by a quick shave from the electric razor he kept in the ashtray.

Known to enjoy an afternoon nap in his reclining chair, my sister and I once applied make-up to his sleeping face. I vividly recall using a felt-tip pen to draw an expression of surprise, confident that his continued unconsciousness implied consent.

I can’t recall his reaction upon waking but I do remember my grandmother doubled over with laughter in the kitchen.