Yes, check that title again. It's not Goldrush, but Coldrush.
Anyone seen the TV show "Goldrush"? It's about a group of guys, trying to find gold in Alaska. You would think that they could just do what they need to do and find the gold, but amazingly enough, that doesn't happen. Our family finds it deeply fascinating to watch these men struggle with equipment failure after equipment failure throughout each hour-long episode. It seems that as soon as they get one piece of equipment working, another one breaks down. They want to run the dirt for 24 hours straight, but the water filter backs up after 20 hours. We sometimes feel like we are hitting our own heads against a wall watching them.
This morning, we got a few inches of snow. School was delayed until the roads were clear. After I took the girls to school, I headed home, anticipating the opportunity to plow the driveway for the first time this year.
I love running the tractor. It doesn't matter if the garden needs to be tilled under, or our acres mowed, or the driveway plowed. I am there, oh-so-happy to do it.
After my Special K breakfast, I headed out to the machine, hidden amongst the pine trees (they protect it from the bad weather). I was dressed in my boots, mittens, down coat and Michigan hat. It's a beautiful day--24 degrees outside with the sun shining. THIS is what winter is supposed to be (not the 50 degree rain that has doused us for the past two months). I hopped up, excited to start my orange friend again. I put in the key, and ...
click, click, click.
I wondered if there was something I needed to do, like open the throttle. I know all the levers and gears on the tractor, and I wondered if there was a button that I didn't know existed. I tried again. And again. Nothing.
I called John, and he told me that the battery is probably dead. Since we have sold one truck, and Mark has the other, there's no way to drive down and jump the battery. However, John told me that I could stretch the extension cords out to the tractor and use the "battery charging machine" that we own.
No problem. I headed into our second, and smaller garage. I hate this garage, because it is overwhelmingly messy. Tools, tools, and more tools are everywhere. The work bench that Ethan and I built several years ago is covered in crap. Useful crap, I'm sure, but when I can't find anything, it feels just like crap.
John told me that I would probably find the extension cord in the tool box. What a surprise to NOT find it there! No, instead I found it behind the back wheel of the Monte Carlo. On the ground. In a massive heap of cord.
If you ask the kids one thing I hate, it's tangled Christmas lights. Or anything that has a cord that I must untangle. I envision those cords like a cartoon where they become living snakes and they surround me and strangle me to death. In fact, as much as I like to be thrifty, I will buy new Christmas lights each year just to avoid having to untangle the ones from the year before.
I decided that I needed to sing a song while untangling, just to keep myself calm, cool and collected. "Sunshine in My Soul" although I was changing all of the lyrics to fit my situation, and believe me, some of them would NOT have been allowed in church.
Finally, after what felt like a year, I got that stupid extension cord untangled. I went to plug it in, and no surprise to me, the tongs were bent and about to fall out. I pushed them back in, straightened them out, plugged them in and hoped for the best.
The dogs and I headed back out to the tractor. Wouldn't you know it that the extension cord was about 20 feet too short? Of course it was. Back to the garage, and digging through the previously mentioned "crap", I found another extension cord. Much shorter, but much more orangey. And it had been chewed through at some point. Again, I just hoped for the best.
Finally, I was back out to the tractor. John had told me how to lift the "bonnet" to get to the battery. Just pull some knob down, up by the grill. Low and behold, I found a little diagram, showing the knob being pulled down with the instruction "Pull a knob to arrow". I'm thinking that the Koreans need to get a better translator for the English instructions on their tractors. It took me a minute to realize that once I pulled the knob, the bonnet didn't just magically open like the hood on a car, but I had to pull the bonnet open. That would have been helpful to know in those not-so-helpful instructions.
Did I mention that it's 20 degrees outside?
By this time, Dash, one of our boy dogs, was bored, and peed on the "battery charging machine" box that was laying in the snow. Nice, Dash.
So, the extension cords were plugged in, the battery was ready to be hooked up. All I needed to do was plug in the machine and attach it to the tractor. No sweat. I pulled the machine out of the box (after wiping the box off in the snow--and yes, this is a reminder: don't eat yellow snow), and wouldn't you know it? One of the clamps broke off the wire.
Unbelievable.
And yet, not so unbelievable. Anytime I head out to do anything outside, it's like this.
The lawn mower needs gas, but there is no gas in the gas cans. Fill up the gas cans and fill up the lawnmower. Pull the string until my shoulder is dislocated with no success. Call John and find out that the primer is broken, and I need to unscrew a specific cap from the side of the lawnmower, fill it with a tiny bit of gasoline, screw it back on, pull the string, and hope it works.
I want to hang a picture. Is the hammer hanging on the hook that I specified as the "hammer-hanging-hook"? No, of course not. When I finally find the hammer (amongst all the crap), can I find a nail? Well, I can now that I bought drawers for specific hammers and screws and nuts and bolts and other various assorted things.
When we had the old tractor, the lawn would need to be mowed. Every 10 minutes or so, the connector from the Bush Hog to the tractor would pop off, and I would need to turn off the tractor, hop off, go around to the back, and try and put it back on. With my bare hands. My piano hands. And most of the time, it wasn't lined up quite right, so I would need to hop back on the tractor, turn it on, move it 1.5 inches, turn it off, hop off and try again.
When I want to water our garden (without transporting gallons and gallons of water by hand--envision "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" but just me), I need to hook up four hoses so that they will stretch out to the garden. Every time, without doubt, one of them is either missing, or broken. Man, I can almost feel the sweat running down my face as I try and hook up all of that and put parts back together.
To save money, John likes to change the oil in our cars. Thankfully, he and the boys have gotten pretty good at doing this job. However, do you know what we have sitting in our garage for months afterwards? Oil. Lots and lots of oil. I'm glad we have that sitting around, but no gas in the gas cans.
I came in crying after this. I know, it's a very girlie thing to do, but I was frustrated. Frustrated mostly by the fact that when I try and work outside, my success is frequently stymied by my lack of knowledge of something mechanical, electrical or otherwise.
Even now, as I'm writing, I'm watching the UPS truck gingerly make its way up our snow-covered driveway, and I'm frustrated because it doesn't have to be that way.
When I lost my patience with John on the phone about all of this, I tried to liken it to anything in the house. He brought up the vacuum cleaner which he occasionally empties and can't find another bag to replace the used one. Somehow, the two don't seem quite the same. I compared it to this scenario (which I might add has never happened): John has no clothes (it couldn't physically happen, looking at his collection of t-shirts, but for arguments' sake, we'll imagine he has a limited number of shirts). He needs clothes to wear to work. When he walks in the laundry room, there are stacks and stacks of clothes, stacks that are six-feet high. Every piece of clothing is either ripped, stained, filthy, or missing. What would he need to do? Mend them, clean them or find them. This will take time and will affect his life. He will be late to work, or else smell really, really bad, or look really, really bad. How does it feel?
(Just a reminder to myself and my readers: I. Love. My. Husband.)
Yes, I am incredibly frustrated, and I have decided that situations like this are best left to those who have the patience to deal with them. I will happily watch the gold miners work it all out, but leave the frustration in Alaska. I just want to plow my driveway.
Anyone seen the TV show "Goldrush"? It's about a group of guys, trying to find gold in Alaska. You would think that they could just do what they need to do and find the gold, but amazingly enough, that doesn't happen. Our family finds it deeply fascinating to watch these men struggle with equipment failure after equipment failure throughout each hour-long episode. It seems that as soon as they get one piece of equipment working, another one breaks down. They want to run the dirt for 24 hours straight, but the water filter backs up after 20 hours. We sometimes feel like we are hitting our own heads against a wall watching them.
This morning, we got a few inches of snow. School was delayed until the roads were clear. After I took the girls to school, I headed home, anticipating the opportunity to plow the driveway for the first time this year.
I love running the tractor. It doesn't matter if the garden needs to be tilled under, or our acres mowed, or the driveway plowed. I am there, oh-so-happy to do it.
After my Special K breakfast, I headed out to the machine, hidden amongst the pine trees (they protect it from the bad weather). I was dressed in my boots, mittens, down coat and Michigan hat. It's a beautiful day--24 degrees outside with the sun shining. THIS is what winter is supposed to be (not the 50 degree rain that has doused us for the past two months). I hopped up, excited to start my orange friend again. I put in the key, and ...
click, click, click.
I wondered if there was something I needed to do, like open the throttle. I know all the levers and gears on the tractor, and I wondered if there was a button that I didn't know existed. I tried again. And again. Nothing.
I called John, and he told me that the battery is probably dead. Since we have sold one truck, and Mark has the other, there's no way to drive down and jump the battery. However, John told me that I could stretch the extension cords out to the tractor and use the "battery charging machine" that we own.
John told me that I would probably find the extension cord in the tool box. What a surprise to NOT find it there! No, instead I found it behind the back wheel of the Monte Carlo. On the ground. In a massive heap of cord.
If you ask the kids one thing I hate, it's tangled Christmas lights. Or anything that has a cord that I must untangle. I envision those cords like a cartoon where they become living snakes and they surround me and strangle me to death. In fact, as much as I like to be thrifty, I will buy new Christmas lights each year just to avoid having to untangle the ones from the year before.
I decided that I needed to sing a song while untangling, just to keep myself calm, cool and collected. "Sunshine in My Soul" although I was changing all of the lyrics to fit my situation, and believe me, some of them would NOT have been allowed in church.
Finally, after what felt like a year, I got that stupid extension cord untangled. I went to plug it in, and no surprise to me, the tongs were bent and about to fall out. I pushed them back in, straightened them out, plugged them in and hoped for the best.
The dogs and I headed back out to the tractor. Wouldn't you know it that the extension cord was about 20 feet too short? Of course it was. Back to the garage, and digging through the previously mentioned "crap", I found another extension cord. Much shorter, but much more orangey. And it had been chewed through at some point. Again, I just hoped for the best.
Finally, I was back out to the tractor. John had told me how to lift the "bonnet" to get to the battery. Just pull some knob down, up by the grill. Low and behold, I found a little diagram, showing the knob being pulled down with the instruction "Pull a knob to arrow". I'm thinking that the Koreans need to get a better translator for the English instructions on their tractors. It took me a minute to realize that once I pulled the knob, the bonnet didn't just magically open like the hood on a car, but I had to pull the bonnet open. That would have been helpful to know in those not-so-helpful instructions.
Did I mention that it's 20 degrees outside?
By this time, Dash, one of our boy dogs, was bored, and peed on the "battery charging machine" box that was laying in the snow. Nice, Dash.
So, the extension cords were plugged in, the battery was ready to be hooked up. All I needed to do was plug in the machine and attach it to the tractor. No sweat. I pulled the machine out of the box (after wiping the box off in the snow--and yes, this is a reminder: don't eat yellow snow), and wouldn't you know it? One of the clamps broke off the wire.
Unbelievable.
And yet, not so unbelievable. Anytime I head out to do anything outside, it's like this.
The lawn mower needs gas, but there is no gas in the gas cans. Fill up the gas cans and fill up the lawnmower. Pull the string until my shoulder is dislocated with no success. Call John and find out that the primer is broken, and I need to unscrew a specific cap from the side of the lawnmower, fill it with a tiny bit of gasoline, screw it back on, pull the string, and hope it works.
I want to hang a picture. Is the hammer hanging on the hook that I specified as the "hammer-hanging-hook"? No, of course not. When I finally find the hammer (amongst all the crap), can I find a nail? Well, I can now that I bought drawers for specific hammers and screws and nuts and bolts and other various assorted things.
When we had the old tractor, the lawn would need to be mowed. Every 10 minutes or so, the connector from the Bush Hog to the tractor would pop off, and I would need to turn off the tractor, hop off, go around to the back, and try and put it back on. With my bare hands. My piano hands. And most of the time, it wasn't lined up quite right, so I would need to hop back on the tractor, turn it on, move it 1.5 inches, turn it off, hop off and try again.
When I want to water our garden (without transporting gallons and gallons of water by hand--envision "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" but just me), I need to hook up four hoses so that they will stretch out to the garden. Every time, without doubt, one of them is either missing, or broken. Man, I can almost feel the sweat running down my face as I try and hook up all of that and put parts back together.
To save money, John likes to change the oil in our cars. Thankfully, he and the boys have gotten pretty good at doing this job. However, do you know what we have sitting in our garage for months afterwards? Oil. Lots and lots of oil. I'm glad we have that sitting around, but no gas in the gas cans.
I came in crying after this. I know, it's a very girlie thing to do, but I was frustrated. Frustrated mostly by the fact that when I try and work outside, my success is frequently stymied by my lack of knowledge of something mechanical, electrical or otherwise.
Even now, as I'm writing, I'm watching the UPS truck gingerly make its way up our snow-covered driveway, and I'm frustrated because it doesn't have to be that way.
When I lost my patience with John on the phone about all of this, I tried to liken it to anything in the house. He brought up the vacuum cleaner which he occasionally empties and can't find another bag to replace the used one. Somehow, the two don't seem quite the same. I compared it to this scenario (which I might add has never happened): John has no clothes (it couldn't physically happen, looking at his collection of t-shirts, but for arguments' sake, we'll imagine he has a limited number of shirts). He needs clothes to wear to work. When he walks in the laundry room, there are stacks and stacks of clothes, stacks that are six-feet high. Every piece of clothing is either ripped, stained, filthy, or missing. What would he need to do? Mend them, clean them or find them. This will take time and will affect his life. He will be late to work, or else smell really, really bad, or look really, really bad. How does it feel?
(Just a reminder to myself and my readers: I. Love. My. Husband.)
Yes, I am incredibly frustrated, and I have decided that situations like this are best left to those who have the patience to deal with them. I will happily watch the gold miners work it all out, but leave the frustration in Alaska. I just want to plow my driveway.
Haha Mommy, I have to say, I kind of appreciate the feeling. Trying to change the oil on my car the first time was a nightmare. I probably called Daddy about 10 times before I actually got the oil out of the car. However, I did not do that in 20 degree weather...I'm sorry. I have to say though, Dash is hilarious!!! Haha he got bored cause he wanted to help you with his manliness, but doesn't have opposable thumbs(: So he resorted to trying to warm up the battery charger box for your cold hands(:(:
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