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This should have been a coherent essay about some current topic, but one of the hazards of working at home is that you can't just ignore a household problem by driving off to work and focusing on that for eight hours.
Instead, the domestic problem confronts you every waking minute. In this case, we haven't had any hot water since Sunday morning. That's an overstatement. To be more precise, we haven't had any running hot water; we've been able to get as much hot water as we're willing to make by putting a big pot on the kitchen range and shoving wood into its firebox.
Even though I grew up working in commercial laundries, and once displayed considerable dexterity with yard-long pipe wrenches, household plumbing remains mostly a mystery.
In laundries, the pipes are all out in the open, so it's pretty easy to find and replace a leaking steam line or a corroded joint.
In houses, the plumbing is hidden in tiny dark recesses, and besides, how to you find the frozen section, let alone get in there with some heat? And what kind of heat can you use, down in some dark crawl space, without running the risk of leaving a few sparks that could turn into a house fire a few hours later?
We did have cold water, at least, which meant the frozen pipe or pipes had to be close to the water heater. That should be some help in directing the plumber.
Alas, last weekend's subzero blast had affected many other local houses (Salida isn't built to withstand temperatures much below zero), and so when I finally got hold of a plumber who had the requisite electric pipe-heating gear, my name would be well down the list: Wednesday looked like about the earliest, depending.
We could get by till then, I suppose. Laundry can be postponed or washed in cold water. We could do dishes in the sink rather than the dishwasher, and a bath in a washtub next to the kitchen stove could be construed as a return to traditional family values.
After all, My maternal grandfather, Byron Wollen, lived for many years on his homestead 17 miles from Bill, Wyo. He managed without any kind of running water, hot or cold; every couple of days, he filled a barrel at his windmill, which was half a mile away from the house.
At any rate, this inability to be in hot water at home
has turned into a major distraction, which means that I'll
just start cleaning the file of items that refuse to
turn into full columns.
For instance, there's a recent statement from Dick Wadhams, who serves as the frontal cortex for Republicans seeking high office from Colorado. He worked for Wayne Allard six years ago, then for Gov. Bill Owens in 1998, and now he's back to speak for Allard as the senator seeks re-election.
A conservation group had criticized Allard's voting
record; Wadhams responded not with a defense of the record,
but with an ad hominem assault: the critics were
trust-fund liberals who never worked a day in their
lives.
It is reasonable to infer from this that Wadhams and
Allard believe there is something wrong with a life of
idleness financed by inherited wealth. And in that case,
why does Allard support eliminating the death tax
?
Shouldn't he support increasing it, since a 100 percent
inheritance tax would eliminate the evil Trustafarians from
our society?
And then there's the discovery that bib overalls (which
were known as Oklahoma tuxedos
around here) are
becoming fashionable.
In ways, it makes sense. Bibs are designed for the working person who needs a lot of stuff in convenient reach -- i.e., the carpenter's got a hammer loop, and a long pocket for the utility knife, a slot for a fat pencil, etc.
The modern white-collar entrepreneur also needs to keep a lot of stuff handy: cell phone, pager, personal digital assistant, calculator, pens and pencils and notebooks. I don't even have most of those things, but I've found bibs convenient and comfortable (especially if you're overweight like me), although there are a couple of problems.
One is that there are too many pockets. You reach the point where you know you've got something on you, but you're not sure where. You end up patting yourself down all the time, trying to figure out which pocket might hold the tool that has a blade that you use for opening letters.
The other problem is that all the loops and buckles and snaps tend to snag. That seldom happens at a desk, but as I learned again this morning, wearing my bibs while I was probing into a barely accessible offshoot from the cellar where the frozen pipe zones must lurk, the snagging on various nails, knobs and hanger wires can leave you unable to retreat in good order.
But I finally escaped, went to work writing, and now the
hot water just started running, all on its own, without any
help from me. Sloth is often the best course, although I'm
sure Dick Wadhams would call it patience
if it were
practiced by one of his clients.
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