Catching Up

Pride does indeed goeth before a fall. I was very proud that I’d gotten all of our tax information together to send to our preparer Dennis. After mailing it at the Gotha post office, and cleverly buying both regular and international stamps so I’ll have them when needed, I somehow stepped wrong as I was leaving and managed, somewhat gracefully, to end up sitting on the ground, right next to the curb. I must have folded my right foot under me because the top of my foot and end of my pinkie toe were scraped. I hoisted myself up to sit on the curb, retrieved my purse, and assessed my condition. Nothing seemed hurt other than my pride. I said as much to the kind man who yelled over from the mailbox to ask if I were okay. Second tumble because I wasn’t paying attention. 

Last Saturday was the Art Room’s Adult Student Show, in which I showed two pieces, the holly leaves and the little boy’s bust. I’d had Denise at Windermere Art and Framing mat and mount them in frames I’d bought at a neighbor’s estate sale. For $14, I got 3 frames, one which had the only piece of his art that Vincent had on his walls. He was a caricaturist at Disney, and his house was eccentric, to say the least. Palm trees painted on the walls and ceilings, decorated furniture, chili pepper lights in the kitchen, etc. I loved it. However, with all the walls covered with art, posters, framed golf club flags, there was only one signed by him, not even one of his caricature. Those were in plastic sleeves on a table, perhaps pulled from files by the sale company. The picture is an 8”x10” mass of tropical plants in blues and greens, maybe water color, maybe marker. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m keeping it for the time being. I may put it back in its black frame, now that the show is over.

During the week, I wrote checks to Cooper to fix our sprinkler “system”, which is a mishmash of pipes and water sources. When Vanessa and Ross lived here, they added a pump at the boathouse to pull water from the canal since he assumed city water was expensive, like in his native South Africa. Somehow he tied it into the existing lines, valves, and timer. By the time we bought the house, the timer had rusted out, and only the west and north areas worked. Rather than have to flip the breaker to start the pump, we added a Bluetooth switch we could run from our phones. The rest of the yard got watered with a hose if needed. See February 14th entry for the beginning of this saga. New intake pipes installed: $600

As long as we were throwing money around, I wanted the pump turned 90°, to parallel along the fence, rather than jutting out perpendicular to it. It took up half the walkway to the big deck patio. I should have had this done when we had the deck replaced, but it never crossed my mind to get rid of that trip hazard when it would have been easy. Of course, pulling up the deck boards to re-plumb the pump was a nightmare. Theoretically, all I had to do was use the long bit I got from Pete to take out the screws that were put in at an angle between each board, so no screw heads were on top. Easy peasy, except some of the heads were covered in plastic dust from the boards, so the bit didn’t fit in. Plus, once I got all the screws out, I discovered some of the boards had been end-screwed, so I was going to have to take all the abutting boards. No! I called Pete to complain, and he came over to help, even though he was suffering from a head cold. Good guy, for sure. 

While I fought with the deck, Grant took apart and reassembled the pump, finding nothing obvious. It still didn’t pull when he reinstalled it. We told Cooper to buy the new 2-horse pump he recommended. $900. Once he installed it, reconfiguring the intake pipe, he cleaned or replaced sprinklers, then adjusted them all along the north and west sides. $430.

I also wanted Cooper to look at the 4 in-ground valves on the southeast corner of the house, so I had Grant dig them out (free labor). I had an awakening: we could keep these on city water since we rarely watered the native plants anyway. Cooper put in a new Bluetooth timer, $485, and figured out 2 zones that serve the east yard. He fixed broken pipes, added sprinklers, and capped off ends. $450. Total: $2,865. Yikes, but we couldn’t have done it, and we certainly didn’t want to do it. Now we have a working sprinkler system and know where pipes are if we want Cooper to add to it. Happy, happy.